Redesigning a really old Website with old-fashioned permalinks
-
Hey SEO-Pros,
I'm currently redesigning a quite old website, with the following URL structure:
TLD/category/category.php?interview_id=819
The new Version will be a little more SEO-friendly:
TLD/interviews/name-of-interview/
I know I have to do a 301-Redirect for all the old URLs to the new ones in order to keep the (until now pretty good) Google Ranking. If the rankings drop after the redesign has been done, I'll surely get killed
So, Is there any easy way of creating these 301-Redirects (must be thousands of URLs...)?
Best Regards guys and thanks for your help!
-
Thanks Ryan, so this means to get for example interview_id=819 redirected to the correct article, I have to provide the ID also in the new URL?
TLD/category/category.php?interview_id=819
to
TLD/category/interview-name-819
Should be something like this in Regex:
RewriteRule ^category/([^/]+-)?([0-9]+)/?$ category/category.php?interview_id=$2
EDIT: After working on it the whole day I found the following solution (as I'm working with Wordpress). Maybe it is useful for anyone:
I'm using the following function now:
add_action('parse_request','oldsite_redirect',0); // 0=before (most) 'parse_request' calls
function oldsite_redirect() {
if (isset($_GET['interview_id'])) {
global $wpdb;
$sql = "SELECT post_id FROM {$wpdb->postmeta} " .
"WHERE meta_key='interview_id' AND meta_value='%s'";
$sql = $wpdb->prepare($sql,$_GET['interview_id']);
$post_id = $wpdb->get_var($sql);
if ($post_id) {
$permalink = get_permalink($post_id);
if ($permalink) {wp_safe_redirect($permalink,301);
exit;}
}
}
}Solution found here: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/12824/url-rewrite-based-on-a-custom-field-value/
-
Regex is the replacement language used to provide the logic for redirects. If you can establish a logical pattern for the redirects, then someone can write the Regex expression to perform the work.
For example, if you used category ids and whenever category_id=1 you wanted it to be replaced with /interviews, you can write an expression to do such.
Without seeing more information specific to your situation, I cannot comment if you can benefit from this method. In brief, try to find a pattern and articulate it. If you can say "I want to replace X with Y" then the solution will typically work.
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
-
Is there a way to host my website.com/BLOG URL PATH from a different host than my main website.com host?
Is there a way to host my website.com/BLOG URL PATH from a different host than my main website.com host? Is it accomplish-able with DNS settings or are there other considerations that might lead to complications doing this? Specifically, we are investigating install WordPress on a dedicated host, JUST to power the blog for our main website, but our main website is on an internal proprietary hosting and CMS. So basically we're trying to host: website.com --> OFF OF CURRENT INTERNAL HOSTING website.com/blog/ --> OFF OF THIRD PARTY HOSTING (USING WORDPRESS) I know this is a technical question beyond the scope of SEO, but I'm figuring there are members of the community that may have tried this already so I'm floating it here. Many thanks! Cheers.
Web Design | | AlexVelazquez0 -
Are Breadcrumbs Really Necessary?
An SEO provider suggested we add breadcrumbs to the top of each page about 3 years ago, which we did. 3 years later we are going thru the site and find it really busy with lots of redundant and distracting elements. We would like to remove the breadcrumbs from the top of the pages. Is there any real SEO downside to doing so?
Web Design | | Kingalan1
All URLs are listed on our site map so I don't see why Google would not index all pages. Our domain is www.metro-manhattan.com I have uploaded a sample page with a breadcrumb. Thanks,
Alan kbbpS0 -
Show new mobile site to 60% users & old mobile site to 40% users
Hi, We are planning to show new mobile site to 60% users & old mobile site to 40% users. We will show the old site to google crawler. Our old site has some interlinking through footer & content whereas the new site does not has it. We wanted to do this since our new site does not supports some browsers. Will there be an issue with Google on showing the site like this. The mobile site & desktop site will have same url across devices & browsers. Regards
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
SEO strategy for UK / US websites
Hi, We currently have a UK-focused site on www.palmatin.com ; We're now targeting the North American market as well, but the contents of the site need to be different from UK. One option was to create another domain for the NA market but I assume it would be easier to rank with palmatin.com though. What would you suggest to do, if a company is targeting two different countries in the same language? thanks, jaan
Web Design | | JaanMSonberg0 -
Reasons Why Our Website Pages Randomly Loads Without Content
I know this is not a marketing question but this community is very dev savvy so I'm hoping someone can help me. At random times we're finding that our website pages load without the main body content. The header, footer and navigation loads just fine. If you refresh, it's fine but that's not a solution. Happens on Chrome, IE and Firefox, testing with multiple browser versions Happens across various page types - but seems to be only the main content section/container Happens while on the company network, as well as externally Happens after deleting cookies, temporary internet files and restarting computer We are using a CMS that is virtually unheard of - Bridgeline/Iapps Codebase is .net Our IT/Dev group keeps pushing back, blaming it on cookies or Chrome plugins because they apparently are unable to "recreate the problem". This has been going on for months and it's a terrible experience for the user to have. It's also not great when landing PPC visitors on pages that load with no content. If anyone has ideas as to why this may be happening I would really appreciate it. I'm not sure if links are allowed, by today the issue happened on this page serversdirect.com/dm/geek-biz Linking to an image example below knEUzqd
Web Design | | CliqStudios0 -
Intuit Website Hosting - Stand-Alone Webite?
Hi all! My name is Yehuda and I'm new to this community. There's an issue i'm having trouble with: My site is hosted by Intuit Websites, and I use their Website Builder. Though it has its own domain name, it seems my "site" may just be a subdomain of their intuitwebsites.com website. I'm trying to figure out if my site is actually a stand-alone website, and what ramifications/issues there be in terms of bot crawling & SEO. Does anyone have a thought on this?
Web Design | | Jorge1110 -
Website platform
I read through this 2008 Moz post and comments: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/choosing-the-right-cms-platform-for-your-website-from-an-seo-perspective but a few years have passed since the discussion. I am looking to completely revamp my site which is primarily static and built on WordPress, and create a rich community environment that is highly interactive and serves the visitor well. The question continues to come up why I'm using WP vs DotNet vs Drupal vs Juumla. The honest answer is: 1) it's easy for a non-tech like me to update, 2) seems like a lot of plugins are available for use, 3) has a high adoption rate (stable) But also, I kind of don't know what I don't know. I wanted to open up the conversation to see why others favor a specific platform as it relates to the following needs: Must be non-tech EASY to use (no high learning curve Lots of plugins and interoperability - can add and remove as needed/times change Must support forum/community needs and conversations Must be able to create granular authentication / permissions for different audiences to see "permissioned" content BONUS if it can interoperate with MS Dynamics CRM (unfortunately, sigh) I've been burned in the past by using teams that had a predilection for a platform simply because they were comfortable with it - not because it was right for my needs. I have a hard time understanding pro/con conversations if the technologies are too focused on the tech and not enough of what the technology delivers, and I'm naturally resistant to technologies that require a techie, rather than a marketing expert to use them.Thoughts anyone? Would love to hear Mozer opinions - thanks in advance 🙂
Web Design | | JeanieWalker0 -
How does the "first link" rule work with the "reasonable surfer patent" when it comes to the main navigation for a website?
In trying to figure out navigation for a new website, I am struggling with the first link rule vs. the reasonable surfer patent where the first link rule implies that Google "counts" the first link to a page including navigation, and the reasonable surfer patent that implies that navigation links carry less weight than body copy links. What is the best solution for creating main navigation so that it doesn't take away from the body copy links?
Web Design | | cindyt-170380