What is the best way to fix legacy overly-nested URLs?
-
Hi everyone,
Due to some really poor decisions I made back when I started my site several years ago, I'm lumbered with several hundred pages that have overly-nested URLs. For example:
/theme-parks/uk-theme-parks/alton-towers/attractions/enterprise
I'd prefer these to feature at most three layers of nesting, for example:
/reviews/alton-towers/enterprise
Is there a good approach for achieving this, or is it best just to accept the legacy URLs as an unfixable problem, and make sure that future content follows the new structure? I can easily knock together a script to update the aliases for the existing content, but I'm concerned about having hundreds of 301 redirects (could this be achieved with a single regular express in .htaccess, for example?).
Any guidance appreciated.
Thanks, Nick
-
Thanks Alan and Irving, your responses are both very helpful. In reality, these pages have relatively few external links pointing to them compared to other sections of the site, so I think I will opt to redirect them. The newer sections of the site have a nice clean URL structure and good on-page optimization, so I think it's best to bite the bullet and move the older pages over to a new system.
-
Except that hundrends of 301's means hundreds of link juice leaks
-
there's no problem with having hundreds of 301's.
having /theme-parks/ twice in the url is slightly spammy, but probably better than your second example where you don't have "theme parks" even once in the url. I would make it /theme-park-reviews/ unless your domain name already have "theme parks" in it.
If you're having great rankings with the current pages you may want to just leave the legacy pages and work on new structure for posts going forward, but if it's not brining you a ton of traffic that your business depends on, then I would 301 them to the new structure, should be fine and you could always revert if you see negative effects.
-
I would accept it, google does not mind, it is said Bing does count the folders as a signal, but with modern routing engines like MVC along with friendly urls, it is common to have many sections to a url, and Bing i assume will take that into account.
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
-
What is the best tool for getting a SiteMap url for a website with over 4k pages?
I have just migrated my website from HUGO to Wordpress and I want to submit the sitemap to Google Search Console (because I haven't done so in a couple years). It looks like there are many tools for getting a sitemap file built. But I think they probably vary in quality. Especially considering the size of my site.
Technical SEO | | DanKellyCockroach2 -
Same URL for languages sub-directories
Hi All, I have a main domain and 9 different subdirectories for languages, example: www.example.com/page.html www.example.com/uk/page-uk.html www.example.com/es/page-es.html we are implementing hreflang tags for the languages, but we are thinking to get rid of the dashes on the languages URL: -uk or -es, so it will be: www.example.com/page.html www.example.com/uk/page.html www.example.com/es/page.hrml would this be a problem? to have same page names even if they are in different subdirectories? would we need to add canonical tags, at lease for the main domain URLs? www.kornferry.com/page.html Thank you, Rachel
Technical SEO | | RaquelSaiz0 -
Canonical URL
Hi there Our website www.snowbusiness.com has a non www version and this one has 398 backlinks. What is the best way of transfering this link value if i establish the www. address as the canonical URL? Thanks, Ben
Technical SEO | | SnowFX0 -
Friendly URL
Can be Friendly URL installed on a custom made jobsite using mod rewrite / apache without any big interference to the system itself? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | tomaz770 -
Best way to setup large site for multi language
Hello, I am setting up a new site which is going to be very large, over 250,000 products. Most of our customers are in the UK (45%), the rest are from various European countries and the USA. Unfortunately we only have a team of two people writing content for these pages in English. I would value some input on the best way to setup my website structure for ranking. Obviously the best would be individual country oriented domains I.e. domain.fr domain.de domain.co.uk . However we wouldnt have the time to create content for every page and most pages would contain the same content as the English domain. Would I get a penalty for this from google? The second choice is to follow the example of overstock.com and pull in information relating to each country I.e. currency and delivery time. this would be a lot easier but I am concerned that the lack of geo focus would effect my rankings. Does any one have any ideas?
Technical SEO | | DavidLenehan0 -
What is the best way to optimize a page for a magazine
Hi i have a serious problem with a website that i am building http://www.cheapflightsgatwick.com/ with reference to letting the search engines know what the magazine is about. I am building a holiday magazine which will focus on holiday news, cheap deals and holiday reviews. I am wanting the home page to feature for the following keywords holiday news, holiday magazine, holiday ideas, best holiday deals, but the problem i have is, i have tried putting an introduction on the home page but it looks out of place, so what is the best way for me to let google know about what the site is about and to get it ranking well in the search engines any help and advice would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
What is the best way to close my blog?
I have a blog on a separate address to my website. http://cheshireweddingphotographyblog.co.uk/ and http://celynnenphotography.co.uk Now I'm going to have a new website which is going to be wordpress based and it will sit on the main website (http://celynnenphotography.co.uk ) and include both gallery and blog. now the blog does well enough on google, etc.. so i wanted to mix their SEO juju and all that, but what happens with my blog? Do i: Stop paying for hosting, nice and simple. OR Do I need to do something?
Technical SEO | | IoanSaid0 -
URLs: To Change or Not to Change
Hello, We recently launched a redesigned site in Drupal in December of last year. We are an eco-travel company. My current URL's look like this: /africa-and-middle-east/kenya-tanzania /central-south-america/galapagos-islands My pages have good term targeting grades, and the rankings for the terms we are targeting - "kenya and tanzania safaris" and "galapagos islands cruises" are decent, but not great - most are on page 2 or 3. The one URL where I targeted our most important term, "amazon river cruises," I am still on page 2. /central-south-america/amazon-river-cruises My questions are: Did I miss an opportunity with the rest of the URL's, and should I consider changing the rest to more targeted terms with 301s? Since the new site launched in January, perhaps I have not given enough time for my new URL's to index and mature. Would it be easier to set up landing pages with unique article content that targets terms such as "galapagos islands cruises" and "kenya and tanzania safaris"? If so, how can I do it in such a way as to not "compete" with the pages I want to drive them to? This also raises the question of redirecting the same URL twice i.e. I would have 2 redirects in place for the same url e.g. from the former site to the new site, and yet another redirect to the most-recent URL. Is that a problem? Sorry if I've asked too many questions in one post. 😉 Any advice appreciated.
Technical SEO | | csmithal0