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
-
Does the URL structure matter?
I have a blog on entertainment. does the url structure matter to rank my blog and iam also facing the issue of indexing of my blog. visit and check this if i need further changes.
Technical SEO | | Hammad784540 -
URL structuring / redirect question
Hi there, I have a URL structuring / redirect question. I have many pages on my site but I set each page up to fall under one of two folders as I serve two unique markets and want each side to be indexed properly. I have SIDE A: www.domain/FOLDER-A.com and SIDE B: www.domain/FOLDER-B. The problem is that I have a page for www.domain.com and www.domain/FOLDER-A/page1.com but I do NOT have a page for www.domain/FOLDER-A. The reason for this is that I've opted to make what would be www.domain/FOLDER-A be www.domain.com and act the primary landing page the site. As a result, there is no page located at www.domain/FOLDER-A. My WordPress template (Divi by Elegant Themes) forced me to create a blank page to be able to build off the FOLDER-A framework. My question is that given I am forced to have this blank page, do I leave it be or create a 302 or 307 redirect to www.domain.com? I fear using a 301 redirect given I may want to utilize this page for content at some point in the future. This isn't the easiest post to follow so please let me know if I need to restate the question. Many thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | KurtWSEO0 -
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 -
URL Change, Old URLs Still In Index
Recently changed URLs on a website to remove dynamic parameters. We 301'd the old dynamic links (canonical version) to the cleaner parameter-free URLs. We then updated the canonical tags to reflect these changes. All pages dropped at least a few ranking positions and now Moz shows both the new page ranking slightly lower in results pages and the old page still in the index. I feel like I'm splitting value between the two page versions until the old one disappears... is there a way to consolidate this quickly?
Technical SEO | | ShawnW0 -
SEO impact of the anatomy of URL subdirectory structure?
I've been pushing hard to get our Americas site (DA 34) integrated with our higher domain authority (DA 51) international website. Currently our international website is setup in the following format... website.com/us-en/ website.com/fr-fr/ etc... The problem that I am facing is that I need my development framework installed in it's own directory. It cannot be at the root of the website (website.com) since that is where the other websites (us-en, fr-fr, etc.) are being generated from. Though we will have control of /us-en/ after the integration I cannot use that as the website main directory since the americas website is going to be designed for scalability (eventually adopting all regions and languages) so it cannot be region specific. What we're looking at is website.com/[base]/us-en. I'm afraid that if base has any length to it in terms of characters it is going to dilute the SEO value of whatever comes after it in the URL (website.com/[base]/us-en/store/product-name.html). Any recommendations?
Technical SEO | | bearpaw0 -
Does adding subcategory pages to an commerce site limit the link juice to the product pages?
I have a client who has an online outdoor gear company. He mostly sells high end outdoor gear (like ski jackets, vests, boots, etc) at a deep discount. His store currently only resides on Ebay. So we're building him an online store from scratch. I'm trying to determine the best site architecture and wonder if we should include subcategory pages. My issue is that I think the subcategory pages might be good from a user experience, but it'll add an additional layer between the homepage and the product pages. The problem is that I think a lot of user's might be searching for the product name to see if they can find a better deal, and my client's site would be perfect for them. So I really want to rank well for the product pages, but I'm nervous that the subcategory pages will limit the link juice of the product pages. Home --> SubCategory --> Product List --> Product Detail Home --> Men's Ski Clothing --> Men's Ski Jack --> North Face Mt Everest Jacket Should I keep the SubCategory page "Men's Ski Clothing" if it helps usability? On a separate note, the SubCategory pages would have some head keyword terms, but I don't think that he could rank well for these terms anytime soon. However, they would be great pages / terms to rank for in the long term. Should this influence the decision?
Technical SEO | | Santaur0 -
What is your opinion on ideal url structure?
Which url structure do you think is better... website.com/CO/denver/555-your-address-way-denver-co-55678/98347578 or website.com/classifying-keyword/555_your_address_way-denver_colorado-55678-98347578 orrr website.com/classifying-keyword/555-your-address-way-denver-colorado-55678-98347578
Technical SEO | | jessefriedman0 -
Blogger Blog URL Structure Questions
I'm starting to use my blog more and wanted to ask about an issue I've read about on SEOmoz in the past. I use blogger instead of wordpress. It's quick and simple - I have no interest in switching to wordpress for this particular blog. My blog is currently setup as blog.site.com. Is it still important (for seo reasons) to switch from blog.site.com to site.com/blog? If so, is there a way to do this in blogger? And if I do this, will my past posts lose their authority if their redirected to the new url structure? Rand mentions in this article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls "never use multiple subdomains" - This is an old article, but I've seen this mentioned several times. Does this still hold true? Am I losing out on links to my blog? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | ChaseH0