Change in url structure - added category page
-
I have recently started an e-commerce website and have now changed the url structure and added another level to my category pages.
So where it before was www.website.com/shirts it is now www.website.com/clothes/shirts. So I added the clothes category (just an example) before the shirt category and am now finding that the old url is still found in the search index and is still live on my site. How could this be?
I use wordpress and simply change the urls in the backend. The products are still under www.website.com/product/blue-shirt-123 so they won't be affected but I suppose it now means I have duplicate category pages?
So my question is: Should I 301 the the old category page (www.website.com/shirts)to the new url (www.website.com/clothes/shirts). And how can the old url still be live on my site?
If this was a bit unclear, please let me know.
Appreciate your replies!
-
Hey There
What Barry says is true - you can throw anything in there and it will load, as long as the category is at the end.
But yes, for certain, in your case I would 301 redirect /shirts to /clothes/shirts (and all other categories). Crawl the site with Screaming Frog and keep an eye on 404 errors in Webmaster Tools for anything you might have missed.
I don't think there's any issue in regards to duplicate content.
-Dan
-
Ok, I see that now, thanks. Does this also mean I do not have a duplicate pages (duplicate content) issue then?
-
You can literally put anything in the category part of the URL and it will resolve.
Try www.website.com/fhqwhgads/shirts and it will still resolve, heck throw another directory in there and it will still work www.website.com/fhqwhgads/zomg/shirts
As for why it does that, I'm probably not the best person to explain, but WP effectively just looks for the end of the URL, which is sometimes why naming pages and posts the same can cause problems.
I'm not sure what would happen if you 301'd /shirts to /clothes/shirts as it may just be looking at the last part anyway (could quickly try).
I'd consider adding a canonical tag instead.
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
-
New URL Structure
Hi Guy's, For our webshop we're considering a new URL structure because longtail keywords to rank so well. Now we have /category (main focus keywords)
Technical SEO | | Happy-SEO
/product/the-product345897345123/ (nice to rank on, not that much volume) We have over 500 categories and every one of them is placed after our domain. Because i think it's better to work with a good structure and managed a way to make categories and sub-categories. The 500 categories may be the case why not every one of them is ranking so well, so that was also the choice of thinking about a new structure. So the new URL structure will be: /category (main focus keywords)
/category/subcat/ (also main focus keywords) Everything will be redirect (301, good way), so i think there won't be to much problems. I'm thinking about what to do with the /product/ URL. Because now it will be on the same level as the subcategories, and i'm affraid that when it's on that level, Google will give the same value to both of them. My options that i'm considering are: **Old way **
/product/the-product-345897345123/ .html (seen this on big webshops)
/product/the-product-345897345123.html/ Level deeper SKU /product/the-product/345897345123/ What would you suggest? The new structure would be 20 categories 500+ sub's devided under main categories 5000+ products Thanks!0 -
How to Remove Old Comment Page Query String URLs
I used to use a comments program on my website that created comment pages in the form of http://www.example.com/web-page.htm?comm_page=2. When I switched to a new comments program, I worried that these old comment URLs would be considered duplicate content. I created a 301 redirect that, for example, would redirect http://www.example.com/web-page.htm?comm_page=2 to http://www.example.com/web-page.htm and disallowed them in robots.txt, which I later learned was not the thing to do.. I have removed the URLs from being disallowed in robots.txt. However, many months later, these comment page URLs keep appearing in Google's index from time to time. I use the "Remove URLs" tool in Google Webmaster Tools to remove the URLs from Google's index, but more URLs appear a few days later. How can I get rid of these URLs for good? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | MrFrost0 -
Question/Concern about URL structure
Hey! I have some doubts concerning structuring a websites URL’s and what would be the best practise for this case. The site has 4 (main) categories with a maximum of 4 products in each category. For example: domain -> category (natural-stones) -> product (flooring) Which I would give the follow url: www.companysite.com//natural-stones/flooring Nothing odd so far, but here is the tricky part: the category isn’t an actual page a user wouldn’t be able to visit. The category is just an item in the mainmenu. If a user hovers over the category in the main menu they will get a dropdown in which they can select a product. E.g. flooring, wall strips etc. My question is: Is the url structure as I suggested: www.companysite.com//natural-stones/flooring the best practise. Even though the category isn’t an actually page. Or would it be better to structure the site: www.companysite.com/flooring My concern with this type of structure would be that the site would seem ‘flat’ with in-depth structure. Or would a third (and maybe best?) option be to create an actual page for the category itself. Thanks for taking the time to help me with my question/concern. If you need more information let me know.
Technical SEO | | RvG0 -
Is adding reviews to your site using schema structured data markup considered duplicating content?
A client of mine whats to add reviews from other sites such as Judys Book and Yahoo to their site. (Yes the actual content of what was posted in the review. They are proud of what their clients are saying). I am not sure if using schema mark up and including the review body on the clients web site was safe or would it be considered duplicate content? Is there a "good practice" for this? Any assistance or suggestions are welcomed. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | mgordon0 -
Landing Page URL Structure
We are finally setting up landing pages to support our PPC campaigns. There has been some debate internally about the URL structure. Originally we were planning on URL's like: domain.com /california /florida /ny I would prefer to have the URL's for each state inside a "state" folder like: domain.com /state /california /florida /ny I like having the folders and pages for each state under a parent folder to keep the root folder as clean as possible. Having a folder or file for each state in the root will be very messy. Before you scream URL rewriting :-). Our current site is still running under Classic ASP which doesn't support URL rewriting. We have tried to use HeliconTech's ISAPI rewrite module for IIS but had to remove it because of too many configuration issues. Next year when our coding to MVC is complete we will use URL rewriting. So the question for now: Is there any advantage or disadvantage to one URL structure over the other?
Technical SEO | | briankb0 -
Duplicate Page Warnings, hkey and repetitive URLs
Hi, we just put our association's site in SEO Moz so we can tackle SEO and we received thousands of duplicate page content and duplicate title warnings. I searched the forum before asking 🙂 Appreciate some guidance on how many things are wrong with the URL's below that are getting flagged as duplicate page content. 1. Does the repetition of the page title and section hurt SEO? 2. Does the iMIS15 in the URL (the server) detract from relevant ranking? 3. From the forum, it looks like canonical tags should be added to the version of the page that starts with .....?hkey (is there a way to predict and "canonize" these? Or recommendations?) http://www.iiba.org/imis15/IIBA/About_IIBA/IIBA_Website/About_IIBA/About_IIBA.aspx?hkey=6d821afa-e3aa-4bef-bafa-2453238d12c6 http://www.iiba.org/imis15/IIBA/About_IIBA/IIBA_Website/About_IIBA/About_IIBA.aspx Thank you.
Technical SEO | | lyndas0 -
301 redirecting some pages directly, and the rest to a single page
I've read through the Redirect guide here already but can't get this down in my .htaccess I want to redirect some pages specifically (/contactinfo.html to the new /contact.php) And I want all other pages (not all have equivalent pages on the new site) to redirect to my new (index.php) homepage. How can I set it up so that some specific pages redirect directly, and all others go to one page? I already have the specific oldpage.html -> newpage.php redirects in place, just need to figure out the broad one for everything else.
Technical SEO | | RyanWhitney150