Using RewriteRule - SEO Implications
-
Hi There,
My client has a website (www.activeadventures.com) which they relaunched in April 2013. The company sells inbound tourism trips to New Zealand, South America and the Himalayas. Previously, the websites for these destinations were on their own domains (activenewzealand.com, activehimalayas.com, activesouthamerica.com).
With the launch of the new website those domains were all retired (but had 301 redirects put into place to the new site), and moved into sub directories of the activeadventures.com domain (eg: activeadventures.com/new-zealand).
There has been no indication that this strategy has improved organic search results (based on analytics) and in my opinion I believe that having this structure has been detrimental to their results. My opinion is based off the following:
- Visitors to the websites are coming into the site with a specific destination in mind that they want to travel to. Thus... having the destination in the URL I believe provides more immediate relevancy and should result in a higher CTR.
- I also feel that having the sites on their own URL's will provide a more concentrated theme for the destination based search phrases.
The new site is a custom Joomla build and I want to find the easiest way to keep the current Joomla set up AND move the country specific sections of the site back onto their original URL's.
It seems on the face of it that the easiest way to get this done is to use the htaccess file and use "RewriteRule" to push all the relevant pages back onto their original domains. Obviously we will ensure we also cover off pointing the existing 301's from the new site and the old sites to this new structure.
My question is, are their any potential negative SEO implications of using the RewriteRule in the htaccess file to achieve this?
Many thanks in advance.
Kind Regards
Conrad Cranfield -
you need to tell people where you can take them in the section above the fold in your website. I would have a very large text that is clickable stating
We give guided tours to then allow people to click on their destination of choice.
New Zealand,
South America
Himalayas
If you want to get clients that are in the United States for instance, and you use a New Zealand TLD you will be unable to geo-target in Google Webmaster tools therefore it will rank better in New Zealand than the states.
Moosa
is right on the money asking about what you did prior to changing your domain.
Then you converted everything to one site did you use a tool similar to screaming frog let you 301 redirect all the pages perfectly to their new domain?
Did you tell Google you are moving domains in all 3 instances?
Try using screaming frog with this guide http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/screaming-frog-guide
this post as well should be of help to you.
http://moz.com/community/q/how-to-keep-old-url-juice-during-site-switch
&
http://moz.com/blog/achieving-an-seo-friendly-domain-migration-the-infographic
I hope this is of some help,
sincerely,
Thomas
PS if the photograph is too small use this link
-
I don’t see any negative SEO effect with what you have explained here but just to tell you what I have encountered with my client’s website in the past!
When working with .htaccess file try to use it carefully because this can even lead to a big disaster if something gone wrong! (Just sharing my experience).
Also, plan the redirections prior to the switch because without it you might see a big drop in traffic obviously shifting URL will hit you a bit in rankings and traffic but that will be mostly temporary.
Hope this helps!!
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 Removing Breadcrumbs Detrimental for SEO?
We have full navigational breadcrumbs on our site for the menu and the brand menu. i.e. Home > Clothing > Jackets Brand > Brand Name > Brand Jackets There's been talk of removing this and having it like Chico's does, where on item pages they just have a link at the top to previous category (i.e. you're on a shirt product page and at the top it says "Back to Tops" instead of listing Home > Clothing > Tops) Is doing something like this detrimental to SEO? From what I've read Breadcrumbs are for user experience but I just want to be sure.
Technical SEO | | AliMac260 -
Using rel=canonical
I have a set of static pages which were created with the purpose of targeting long tail keywords. That has resulted in Domain Authority dilution to some extent. I am now in the process of creating one page which will serve the same results but only after user selects the fields in the drop-down. I am planning to use rel=cannonical on the multiple pages pointing back to the new page. Will it serve the purpose?
Technical SEO | | glitterbug0 -
Google not using redirect
We have a GEO-IP redirect in place for our domain, so that users are pointed to the subfolder relevant for their region, e.g: Visit example.com from the UK and you will be redirected to example.com/uk This works fine when you manually type the domain into your browser, however if you search for the site and come to example.com, you end up at example.com I didn't think this was too much of an issue but our subfolders /uk and /au are not getting ranked at all in Google, even for branded keywords. I'm wondering if the fact that Google isn't picking up the redirect means that the pages aren't being indexed properly? Conversely our US region (example.com/us) is being ranked well. Has anyone encountered a similar issue?
Technical SEO | | ahyde0 -
Problems with Wordpress and Yoast SEO Plugin
Hi, I've been working with a Wordpress site and the Wordpress SEO plugin for a few months now and I've managed to get pretty decent results for some of the keywords I was targeting, however since last week I've lost all my rankings sharply and everything dropped out. This had happened once before and the problem was that the plugin was somehow stopped but not this time. I've had a look through all of the MOZ resources and I cannot find what the problem might be. Page optimization hasn't changed and the on page rankings are the same here. Everything seems to be the same except that all my top 10 ranking disappeared. I'm new to all of this and I'm still learning so I'd appreciate if anyone could help me on this. I'm up for trying any ideas you might have but I've tried almost everything I could. I've reinstalled, updated and done everything I could with the plugin, I've checked that Google is indexing the pages and it is. I've monitored for errors on the pages and critical issues, nothing major to report so I don't know anymore what to do. Thank you so much in advance for your help. M3rgAcQ paFNOlb
Technical SEO | | rodcunha0 -
Are sitewide links bad for SEO?
I have 11 real estate sites and have had links from one to another for about 7 years but someone just suggested me to take them all out because I might get penalized or affected by penguin. My main site was affected on July of 2012 and organic visits have dropped 43%...I've been working on many aspects of my SEO but it's been difficult to come back. Any suggestions are very welcome, thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | mbulox0 -
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 -
Are affiliate programs good for seo?
We found this website https://shareasale.com/learnmore.cfm Actually is an affiliate site, where the users there would be in charge of driving traffic into our website, and then we pay them in some way, I just wanted to know if this can affect my seo efforts negativele? THanks
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Is there an onsite seo api?
Im trying to find an api which I can intergrate with my database for onsite keyword checking. Does anyone know if there is one available on the market? thanks, Chris
Technical SEO | | seomasters0