I physically changed my URL and now I have two...How do I get rid of the old one?
-
Hi, I physically changed my URL as something else and now Google thinks I have two duplicate pages (I know not to do this in the future).
e.g. I had www.example.com/i-like-seo.aspx
and changed it to:
www.example.com/i-love-seo.aspx
Google sees this as two pages now and my CMS system is only showing one page (The new page) Also, SEOMOZ is seeing two pages and further more sees them both as having two different amounts of inbound links?
When I change content on the new url page, the old url page also updates. I'm really confused as to what has happened here and don't know how to get rid of the old url so that Google doesn't think that I have duplicate content.
Any help to what has happened or how to fix it would be so helpful and appreciated.
Many thanks.
-
Looking at the footer of your website, I see "Powered by Communications3000 C3MS"
From a quick look of the site it links to I'm guessing it's something your webdevelopers have put together rather then an 'Off The shelf" cms so to speak.
I would recomend you find an SEO who knows both SEO and some .Net who could communicate with you and your developers to see if it is indeed impossable to do a 301, or if your developers are making excuses/misunderstanding the request/e.t.c.
That would probably give a better understanding of the situation.
As everyone else has said it /does/ sound rather odd that a 301 can't be implimented between the various ways of doing it.
-
.NET is not a CMS system. It is a language your CMS is written in. (As in you can have the same menu in english and also in french, you could in theory have the same CMS in .php and .NET).
You'd need to give the name of the CMS if you want advice on it's suitability.
Honestly, your developer should be able to 301 from URL a to b without loops based on the info provided so far.
-
Weird, sounds like it. Ask them if they delete the page completely in the CMS and create it again if there will only be one URL then?
You can block one of the URLs in your robots.txt file, since it's the same page and you can't add a noindex or canonical tag to one of them without it showing on the other too, and request URL removal in the Google WMT URL removal tool. But blocking in robots.txt alone doesn't guarantee it won't get indexed again.
The sites links should be updated to point to the new URL and not reference the old URL on the site or in any sitemap.xml files.
-
Hi Irving,
Many thanks for the advice. The thing that I'm most confused about is that my web developer (whom is third party) is telling me that this is the same page but two different URLs, Hence I can't add code or alter one as they are the same thing.
I looked into removing the cache in Google, but I can't do this as they ask you to type a word that is present in your new page but not in your old one, but obviously I cant do this as its "apparently" one page.
Do you think that there may be an issue with my web developers CMS system?
Again, many thanks
-
Hi Sean,
Am I right by thinking that it should then be possible for my web developer to redirect the old URL to the new one?
In your opinion is .NET an old CMS system? If so do you think it is worth updating?
Many thanks,
-
If the old page has no PR and no traffic just 404 it or noindex it and you can canonical it to the other page.
if the old page has PR and you cannot 301 for some weird reason, just rewrite the content on the new page to make it unique and keep both pages
-
whoops, I didn't spot that, I just saw the example and didnt read the finer details!
-
hmmm....I'd want a more indepth conversation with your developer, because that doesn;t make a lot of sense.
You can get loops but that happens when the redirect has been incorrectly set up, or you have a really long convoluted chain of hops.. (I have done this myself personally and got in a couple of knots).
At the end of the day, you need to be able to reasonably rewrite your urls and it is your developers job to facilitate that and do whatever is technically necessary. You might need to look back at the history of what you've got redirecting where to prevent it going haywire.
-
The website is not on wordpress. In their example, the url ends with .aspx which is .NET not wordpress which is php.
To give you an example, we have a client on asp and we had the dev implement a url rewrite as the old urls were not pretty.
ex: www.example.com/categories.asp?id=12 was the old url so we have a field on the category backend called rewrite which we put in new-category and it not only is rewriting that category url to www.example.com/new-category.aspx but it also 301 redirects /categories.asp?id=12 to /new-category
Make sense?
-
Hi Jo,
Thanks for getting back to me. I'm not using word press, my company uses a third party web developer. I have already requested the web developer to do a 301 redirect and this is what they said:
"Solving the problems by 301 permanent re directs are out of the question as this would create infinite loops. Likely to bring down our server."
What do you think to this reply from my web developer? I personally have never heard anything like this before.
Yes, we are based in Huddersfield. I guess that makes us neighbors
Again, many thanks for your advice.
Tom
-
Hi
Technically there are two pages - the old one and the new one. That's the way Google will see it. You need to point the old page at the new page with a 301 redirect in the htaccess file.
Are you using wordpress? You can get an easy plugin called 'redirection'
Here are the SEOMoz best practises around redirecting.
By the way, are you in Hudds? I'm just over the hill in Elland!
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
-
How to deal with URLs when changing shopping cart software to ensure SEO
NSFW ALERT (LINK BELOW) We are changing the shopping section of our website. Currently the products sit on our own website and when a user goes to checkout they are taken to Mals (a shopping cart site). This means our URL’s look like this. NSFWhttps://www.aprilnites.com.au/mascara_vibe.htmlThe new software is Ecwid and we are using this with a site created in RapidWeaver so the URLs will not be clean and will have all ? And # parameters. I’m wondering if this will hurt the SEO of our whole site or just the product pages. I’m also unsure of how best to deal with the current URLs. Should I use a 301 redirect on all of them to take the user back to the home page of the shop. For us the shop is more of a catalogue. Our main website is the most important part but I want to make sure we are following best practice when making this change. Hope someone can help.Many thanks
Technical SEO | | AprilN0 -
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 -
How to keep old URL Juice During Site Switch
I am switching a local businesses website to a new template. The url structure will be different. What is the best way to not loose the old urls and what content should I serve on them? For example: The url oldwebsite.com/product-a will no longer exist when I switch to the new template. I dont want to loose the current page rank and associate seo juice. At the same time, I do not have the resources to remap every page to the correct new page. My initial thoughts are to just display the homepage content on all of the old urls. Is this a good practice?
Technical SEO | | bloomnation2 -
URL redirecting domains
Hi Is there anything wrong/dangerous forwarding a clutch of domains to a sub page (landing page) on a different domain ? Say Brand X buys Brand Z and wants to close down Brand Z site but have Brand Z domain fwd to a landing page (explaining the company acquisition) on Brand X site. In addition Brand Z had a few related but unused domains forwarding to Brand Z doman & now also wants those fwd'd to the new landing page on brand X Since the reasons for doing this forwarding are legitimate company reasons relating to an acquisition i would have thought it should be ok but can anyone think of a reason why could be bad since i remember in the old days peeps used to redirect domains for seo reasons so worried fwd'ing a load of domains could cause some sort of negative flag with big G ? Also do domain redirects transfer the authority/juice from the old site/domain to the new destination page (new landing page on brand x site) similar to how a 301 redirect works ? Many Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Friendly URLS (SEO urls)
Hello, I own a eCommerce site with more than 5k of products, urls of products are : www.site.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=61_87&product_id=266 Im thinking about make it friend to seo site.com/category/product-brand Here is my question,will I lost ranks for make that change? Its very important to me know it Thank you very much!
Technical SEO | | matiw0 -
Determine the best URL structure
Hi guys, I'm working my way through a URL restructure at the moment and I've several ideas about the best way to do it. However, it would be good to get some views on this. At the moment I'm working on a property website - http://bit.ly/N7eew7 As you can quickly see, the URL structure of the site needs a lot of work. Similar websites - http://bit.ly/WXH5WG http://bit.ly/Q3UiLC One of the sites has http://www.domain.ie/property-to-let/location/ And the other has http://www.domain.ie/rentals/location/property-to-let/ I could do with some guidance about the best steps to take with this. I've a few ideas myself but this is a massive project. Cheers, Mark
Technical SEO | | MarkScully0 -
Old Blog
I have an old blog that I started long ago and it has tons of content. I'm thinking about migrating it my current blog but am worried about panda and bringing over mediocre content. The content is fine, not bad not good. Should I bring it over or should I just delete the blog?
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
Strange duplicate url
From your csv report I have this strange issue. This url: elettrodomestici.yeppon.it/climatizzatori/condizionatori-fissi/prodotti/condizionatori-fissi-comfee/ it's a duplicate of this elettrodomestici.yeppon.it/climatizzatori/condizionatori-fissi/prodotti/condizionatori-fissi-comfee/ but the only url that I can see in the website is this one. Why the "-" is transalted some times in "%2D" referrer obviously is elettrodomestici.yeppon.it/climatizzatori/condizionatori-fissi/prodotti/condizionatori-fissi-comfee/solo-disponibili/ I have many duplicate url...Can you help me? Thanks
Technical SEO | | yeppon0