Correct Redirect method for switching pages from .html to /pretty urls/
-
I have a customer that has all his site files as .html extensions and i'm going to rebuild this site into a wordpress site for easier management,
regarding the new permalink structure, should i just do a 301 redirect on this?
-
thaanks Chris!
-
Yes, most definitely. I just did the exact thing. I moved a site that had originally been on asp classic, then moved to php, now to word press. The .asp pages were being processed as php by the server, and there were hundreds of pages. Within two weeks of moving site to WordPress and doing the redirects I saw immediate ranking results. Here are just a few redirects, the way I was making them:
redirect 301 /about-fort-worth-personal-injury-lawyer.php /about-for . . .
redirect 301 /arlington-personal-injury-lawyer-locations.php /arlingto . . .
redirect 301 /injury-law-news.php /injury-law-news/
redirect 301 /asbestos-claim.asp /asbestos-claim/
redirect 301 /auto-accident.asp /auto-accident/
redirect 301 /burns.asp /burns/
.
.
.Here are the steps I took to save time.
- I created an xml sitemap at one of those free online sitemap creators and downloaded as CSV.
- Used the list in php script I wrote to scrape the text from each page on the old site and insert into the WordPress database using the file name as title (replacing - with space) and droping .asp or .php
- I recreated the redirects in Exel by combining a column of the old filenames and the newly created ones. Cut and pasted.
- The new url's were in Google in about 10 days.
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
-
Over 500 thin URLs indexed from dynamically created pages (for lightboxes)
I have a client who has a resources section. This section is primarily devoted to definitions of terms in the industry. These definitions appear in colored boxes that, when you click on them, turn into a lightbox with their own unique URL. Example URL: /resources/?resource=dlna The information for these lightboxes is pulled from a standard page: /resources/dlna. Both are indexed, resulting in over 500 indexed pages that are either a simple lightbox or a full page with very minimal content. My question is this: Should they be de-indexed? Another option I'm knocking around is working with the client to create Skyscraper pages, but this is obviously a massive undertaking given how many they have. Would appreciate your thoughts. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Alces0 -
Problems with canonical urls / redirect (magento webshop)
Hi all, We're running a Magento webshop and we discover some strangs things regarding canonical urls and redirects after using the Amasty improved navigation extension. To clarify, please check these four urls. They contain the same content (the same product page). https://www.afwerkingshop.be/gyproc-gipskartonplaat-ak-2600x1200x9-5mm.html https://www.afwerkingshop.be/wanden/gyproc-gipskartonplaat-ak-2600x1200x9-5mm.html https://www.afwerkingshop.be/wanden/gipsplaten/gyproc-gipskartonplaat-ak-2600x1200x9-5mm.html https://www.afwerkingshop.be/wanden/gipsplaten/standaard/gyproc-gipskartonplaat-ak-2600x1200x9-5mm.html All these four pages have different canoncials (the page url). Obviously, that's not good. However, in Google (site:...) url (1) is the only one that's indexed. Thereby, if I visit the productpage by first going to a category page (fe. www.afwerkingshop.be/wanden.html), I'm redirected to url (1), but the canonical url is www.afwerkingshop.be/last_visited_category_name/product. So, the canonical seems dynamic depending on the last visited category. And still, only url (1) is indexed. Additionally, all aforementioned pages contain . Is anyone familiar with this issue? And more important, will it cause problems in future? Thanks in advance. Kind regards, Chendon
Technical SEO | | RBijsterveld0 -
Changing a domain name, pages redirection
when changing a domain name, should we redirect all the pages to their new pages or only the indexed pages? Thanks
Technical SEO | | bigrat950 -
Should I redirect desktop users visiting mobile page to desktop version?
So I am redirecting mobile users to mobile version of the page and also have alternate attrubute set up for that: What about the opposite case? When user from desktop computer visits mobile version of the page. Should I redirect him back to desktop version?
Technical SEO | | poiseo1 -
Using the Google Remove URL Tool to remove https pages
I have found a way to get a list of 'some' of my 180,000+ garbage URLs now, and I'm going through the tedious task of using the URL removal tool to put them in one at a time. Between that and my robots.txt file and the URL Parameters, I'm hoping to see some change each week. I have noticed when I put URL's starting with https:// in to the removal tool, it adds the http:// main URL at the front. For example, I add to the removal tool:- https://www.mydomain.com/blah.html?search_garbage_url_addition On the confirmation page, the URL actually shows as:- http://www.mydomain.com/https://www.mydomain.com/blah.html?search_garbage_url_addition I don't want to accidentally remove my main URL or cause problems. Is this the right way this should look? AND PART 2 OF MY QUESTION If you see the search description in Google for a page you want removed that says the following in the SERP results, should I still go to the trouble of putting in the removal request? www.domain.com/url.html?xsearch_... A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more.
Technical SEO | | sparrowdog1 -
How to Remove /feed URLs from Google's Index
Hey everyone, I have an issue with RSS /feed URLs being indexed by Google for some of our Wordpress sites. Have a look at this Google query, and click to show omitted search results. You'll see we have 500+ /feed URLs indexed by Google, for our many category pages/etc. Here is one of the example URLs: http://www.howdesign.com/design-creativity/fonts-typography/letterforms/attachment/gilhelveticatrade/feed/. Based on this content/code of the XML page, it looks like Wordpress is generating these: <generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.2</generator> Any idea how to get them out of Google's index without 301 redirecting them? We need the Wordpress-generated RSS feeds to work for various uses. My first two thoughts are trying to work with our Development team to see if we can get a "noindex" meta robots tag on the pages, by they are dynamically-generated pages...so I'm not sure if that will be possible. Or, perhaps we can add a "feed" paramater to GWT "URL Parameters" section...but I don't want to limit Google from crawling these again...I figure I need Google to crawl them and see some code that says to get the pages out of their index...and THEN not crawl the pages anymore. I don't think the "Remove URL" feature in GWT will work, since that tool only removes URLs from the search results, not the actual Google index. FWIW, this site is using the Yoast plugin. We set every page type to "noindex" except for the homepage, Posts, Pages and Categories. We have other sites on Yoast that do not have any /feed URLs indexed by Google at all. Side note, the /robots.txt file was previously blocking crawling of the /feed URLs on this site, which is why you'll see that note in the Google SERPs when you click on the query link given in the first paragraph.
Technical SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak0 -
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 -
How should 301 redirects affect Page Authority?
We recently setting up 301 redirects from one of our sites so that the site redirects from the www version to the non-www version for all pages. We want to quantify what we expect to see as results. From what the experts say, we'd expect that the Page Authority of the canonical versio (non-www) will be higher than either of the two separate ones were previously. For instance, if this page - www.website.com/information/ - had a PA of 57 and this one - website.com/information/ - had a PA of 53, some time after the 301 redirects from www to non-www have been put into place, we should see the non-www version of that page move up to some PA about 57. It our thinking correct? How long does it normally take to see a PA update take place in a scenario like this? Thanks, Richard
Technical SEO | | LDS-SEO0