Changing the URL structure will it help me or hurt me?
-
I got handed a website running on Joomla without the SEO friendly URL check box selected so our URLs all look like this www.rotaryvalve.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22&Itemid=37 . I am hoping to rework this website in the near future here and plan on changing the URL structure across the website so there are some actual keywords in the URL.
When I did this I was thinking of just doing 301 redirects to the new pages and hopefully the hit from the search engines wouldn't be too bad. Can anyone speak from experience as to what the best way to go about doing this would be so I don't end up falling back ranking wise. Would change the URLs end up helping me or hurting me?
Thanks
-
Some good comments here, and I'll have to come in somewhere in the middle. I think Vahe is right that there can be meaningful benefits, both for SEOs and visitors. It's also true, though, that a site-wide URL change can carry risks. Solid planning and well-implemented 301s can mitigate most of that risk, though.
If it were only to get keywords in the URL and the site is ranking well, I'd probably hesitate. Since these dynamic URLs are creating duplicates, though, I think it's a different situation. Those duplicates could create very real risk to your rankings. If the URL change can solve both problem, I'd be much more inclined to do it.
There are other ways to deal with the duplicates - the canonical tag is probably a good bet here (although I'm not sure how tough it is to implement in Joomla). Blocking duplicate-causing parameters in Google and Bing Webmaster Tools is another option. For example, you could block "Itemid" if it had no unique value (I'm not clear on that from the example).
-
In that case I wouldn't chnge them.
Justin
-
I wouldn't bother changing the URL's. The difference in terms of SEO is rather negligible.
Of course there are points to be made on both sides, most of which have already been pointed out; however, you are bound to miss some 301's (it's natural), and in my opinion, is just not worth the hassle. Google is perfectly capable of crawling/indexing parameter-filled URL's like yours. You're basically looking to re-write the site and give it back to Google.
Any/all backlinks pointing to the existing URL's will forever lose their full power (as long as the backlink URL on the external continues to point to your old URL structure).
If you must do it, take notes from most of what has been said already. You must be very meticulous in your 301's, and even ask some of the websites that have your link up to change it to the new URL to decrease the overall permanent hit you will be taking.
-
Kathy,
You will actually be doing your site a favour should you decide to change your URLs. Having static instead of dynamic URLs will not only make it easier for search engines to crawl and index the URL in SERPs, but make it easier for users to also link to the site. This should negate some of the loss of linking URLs that you will encounter. Also as you said keywords in the URLs are a major plus.
Before you make any URL changes, it is crucial for you to take the following steps for minimising the impact for your sites traffic:
- List where the old URLs are being linked within the site (your internal URLs)
- List where the old URLs are being linked from externally (people linking to your pages).
- Create a separate sitemap XML file for the new site URL structure
- Implement your 301 redirects using regex on your htacess file
- Make sure you exactly match your old pages to the relevant new pages when 301 redirecting. Most people would get lazy and redirect to the home or category level pages.
- Check for any pages not properly 301 redirected internally by looking at the number of 404s and broken links applicable to your site.
Once you do change over the URLs start updating the old urls linking between your sites pages. Over the long term you would then need to contact the websites which have used the old URLs and ask them to update to the new version. Leave your old XML sitemap file applicable in both Bing and Google Webmaster Tools until you see them both indexing most (if not all) your new URL pages from your newly created sitemap.
Tools that I would use for the following steps could be XENU or screaming frog (my favorite).
Hope this helps
-
There are inbound links I am trying to evaluate how easy it would be to get some of those links changed. That is one major thing playing a role in all of this.
Our social media efforts have been pretty much none.
The existing pages are indexed which is why I was going to do the 301's even though I know they don't take all of the link juice I didn't know if the URLs would help make up for that or not The existing pages are bringing in traffic
There is another issue at hand that I forgot to mention and that is the fact that I'm ending up with duplicate content due to Joomla and can't figure out a way to get rid of stop it from happening other then possibly changing the URL's to SEO friendly ones. if the link is changed to http://www.rotaryvalve.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22 compared to the one I posted up top which was http://www.rotaryvalve.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22&Itemid=37 they both go to the same place and both are indexing and being linked to by people.
-
Not easy to answer without knowing:
- Are there inbound links to the pages in question?
- have the page been shared / liked etc.
- Do the existing pages appear to be indexed?
- Are you getting traffic from the existing pages?
301 redirect do not pass all link juice / umph through to the target page, so you may want to bear this in mind.
Hope this helps.
Justin
-
I wouldn't change your URLs. There will be a temporary hit while the bots catch up but the gain, if any, is minimal. Your current pages are already spidered, possibly have links, and can be found.
If you're bound and determined to do it, be meticulous in your 301s. Just be prepared for the temporary hit.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Changing URLs for SEO
Hi, Currently we have a page, /business, but we have shifted our strategy to optimize for this page for the keyword "enterprise" instead of "business". The page authority of this page is 18 and our domain authority is 35. I've already updated content and title tags to more of an enterprise focus. Would it be wise to move the page to /enterprise and create a 301 redirect from /business to /enterprise? Or is this too risky from an SEO standpoint? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | mikekeeper0 -
Will updating part of my site help a static web page
Hi, what i am trying to find out is, i have a page on my site http://www.clairehegarty.co.uk/virtual-gastric-band-with-hypnotherapy and i would like to know, once i have got the page to the way i want it, the page will not change, so i would like to know if i update my site and add pages and articles, will the updates help this page with google rankings, or do i have to keep updating this page if i want it to rank high with google. i have seen pages that have never changed but they continue to rank high with google and i would like to know their secret
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
I have altered a url as it was too long. Do I need to do a 301 redirect for the old url?
Crawl diagnostics has shown a url that is too long on one of our sites. I have altered it to make it shorter. Do I now need to do a 301 redirect from the old url? I have altered a url previously and the old url now goes to the home page - can't understand why. Anyone know what is best practice here? Thanks
Technical SEO | | kingwheelie0 -
Will having a big list of cities for areas a client services help or damage SEO on a page?
We have a client we inherited that has flat text list of all the cities and counties they service on their contact page. They service the entire southeast so the list just looks crazy ridiculous. --------- Example: ---- South Carolina: Abbeville, Aiken, Allendale, Anderson, Bamberg, Barnwell, Beaufort, Berkeley, Calhoun, Charleston, Cherokee, etc etc ------ end example ------ The question is, will this help or hinder their seo for their very specific niche industry? Is this key word spamming? It has an end-user purpose so it technically isn't spam, but perhaps the engines may look at it otherwise. I couldn't find a definitive answer to the question, any help would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Highforge0 -
How do I fix these duplicate URLs?
HI guys, I ran a report on my site and it shows some duplicate titles (example below). Do I need to add something to the htaccess file or another file to fix this? I understand that the search engines should only see 1 URL for the page. 2 pages have "Bikes for sale | used bikes | second hand bicycles" title pauslwebsite.com/bikes/ paulswebsite.com/bikes/index.asp Thanks
Technical SEO | | paulmund0 -
How much of a hit to changing urls?
Hi, We have a few pages that from an SEO perspective have poor URLs. We are planning on changing them (and 301 redirecting) the old page to the new page. I heard in the past, this can temporarily negatively impact your SERP rank etc. Since the old URLs are bad, even if there is a temporary negative hit, changing them in the long run it is better, but curious if anyone has any experience on what to expect.
Technical SEO | | NicB10 -
Will changing our colocation affect our site's link juice?
If we change our site's server location to a new IP, will this affect anything involving SEO? The site name and links will not be changing.
Technical SEO | | 9Studios0 -
Help with steps to take when fixing cannonical url structure?
I would like to 301 redirect all the variations of my site to a single url but would like some clarification on some issues. I have always been confused about how to handle cannonicalization and hopefully this can clear it up for me and others. This particular site is about 1 year old and gets approximately 15k uniques a month in a great niche. I want to make sure I do this correctly as to not hurt my existing rankings which are quite good. Here is is what I am unsure about. Basically I should pick the best url structure to redirect all the others to correct? What determines what url is best to redirect all the rest to? is it www.domain.com, http://domain.com or http://www.domain.com? Is the best one to redirect to always standard and something I should set up at the beginning of my site? Or is picking the best url to redirect to based on what url starts to rank in google and you then use that one? Should I be going through each of my rankings and seeing what url is ranking in google for each page? On this particular site ALL of my urls in google have no www. or http but instead show up in the SE as domain.com or domain.com/inner-page/html. In that case what do I do? I know the slow way to do redirects. I use my hostgator account and do it in cpanel and do it one by one. Is there a faster way where I can go and make lots of changes at once? Maybe I can choose all the variations and put in the one I want them all to redirect to? After I figure the above out is fixing all of this as simple as redirecting ALL variations to the one I will use moving forward for each page on my site? Then I am done? Thanks again for the help! Jake
Technical SEO | | PEnterprises0