What is the best practice for changing a url of an existing page
-
I a looking through the on-page SEO reports in SEOmoz for one of my sites. It suggests that I change the url of a particular page to match the desired search term I want to rank for. In this case it is a site for a local business and the url is example.com/testimonials. when it probabaly should have instead been example.com/city-business-reviews.
I have just a couple links to this page and I'm stuck towards the bottom of page 1 in the SERPs currently. Questions...
1. Should I change the url to include the exact keyword term I want the page to rank for?
2. If yes, what is the best method to ensure that any existing link juice to the current url is retained? Would I change the url, then create a new page with the old url and apply a 301 redirect to point it to the new page?
Thanks!
-
Thanks Roger and Dave. I appreciate the responses.
-
Best practices is using the 301 redirect method - permanent
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_alias.html#redirect
You can also contact the link webmaster/s if possible to let them know that the page has changed url.
For added stability and to let Google know you should rebuild your sitemap to reflect the change as well.
In addition run Xenu or Screaming Frog to find all your internal linking locations to avoid missing the buried internal links.
-
1. It's no guarantee but it's a good place to start. I would reccomend it as a best practice.
2. You could either change the name and 301 redirect the old page to the new one and 9x% of the link juice will pass. The other option is to leave both versions up and add a rel canonical tag to both pages. You would want to have the same tag on both pages referencing your preferred version. If you dont mind having 2 versions I would go with canonical, but you will have to remember to update content of multiple pages which could be problematic on a large scale if not using a content management system. Either solution is acceptable though.
Update - Also remember to update any internal/nav links you may have and any external links that you have any control over.
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
-
Our urls for adwords are slightly different from current urls presented on site (weused htaccess to help create shorter urls). How important is it that the adwords url match the sitemap url for keywords on those pages?
Hello, We have dynamic urls that we have made into short urls through htaccess and code manipulation. Some of our adwords urls are different from our page urls - for example a) Latest version of page www.abc.com/x-y-z.html b) Previous version of url www.abc.com/x+y+z.html c) raw original version www.abc.com/yyy/zzz?category=X&Product-code=Y etc etc. Would my ranking for keywords on the page improve if I diligently made all of them the same? They all go to the same page even now, and no 404 errors or anything. Thanks Sam
On-Page Optimization | | samgold0 -
How is this page ranking?
Hi. A client of mine is being outranked by a competitor whose landing page does not include the keyword within their page content AT ALL. Nor does their URL. Nor do any image alts. And their page title features the keyword in the middle of it, not at the start. Their link profile is not great with directories and the like. They are not socially active.. I am confused! I thought content on a page absolutely had to include the keyword to get ranked for it. Here's the page: www.springsoft.ie, keyword is "water softeners" Any thoughts I would appreciate. Many thanks.Christoffa
On-Page Optimization | | Christoffa0 -
404 errors on page urls that don't even exist
The Seomoz crawler found 404error of pages dont even exist. Ho can that be possible?? Pages like: URL: http://www.yoxo.it/catalog/seo_sitemap/category/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/falli/
On-Page Optimization | | yoxo0 -
301 redirects from several sub-pages to one sub-page
Hi! I have 14 sub-pages i deleted earlier today. But ofcourse Google can still find them, and gives everyone that gives them a go a 404 error. I have come to the understading that this wil hurt the rest of my site, at least as long as Google have them indexed. These sub-pages lies in 3 different folders, and i want to redirect them to a sub-page in a folder number 4. I have already an htaccess file, but i just simply cant get it to work! It is the same file as i use for redirecting trafic from mydomain.no to www.mydomain.no, and i have tried every kind of variation i can think of with the sub-pages. Has anyone perhaps had the same problem before, or for any other reason has the solution, and can help me with how to compose the htaccess file? 🙂 You have to excuse me if i'm using the wrong terms, missing something i should have seen under water while wearing a blindfold, or i am misspelling anything. I am neither very experienced with anything surrounding seo or anything else that has with internet to do, nor am i from an englishspeaking country. Hope someone here can light up my path 🙂 Thats at least something you can say in norwegian...
On-Page Optimization | | MarieA1 -
URL for location pages
Hello all We would like to create clean, easy URLs for our large list of Location pages. If there are a few URLs for each of the pages, am I right when I'm saying we would like this to be the canonical? Right now we would like the URL to be: For example
On-Page Optimization | | Ferguson
Domain.com/locations/Columbus I have found some instances where there might be 2,3 or more locations in the same city,zip. My conclusion for these would be: adding their Branch id's on to the URL
Domain.com/locations/Columbus/0304 Is this an okay approach? We are unsure if the URL should have city,State,zip for SEO purposes?
The pages will have all of this info in it's content
BUT what would be best for SEO and ranking for a given location? Thank you for any info!0 -
Should one page with markers or six separate pages?
Hi - I'm working on a site that was set up with 6 bios on one page, with markers jumping to each person's name. I was thinking about separating those into 6 different pages, but not sure if that's the right thing to do. Advice about keeping the bios on one page vs splitting them up? (Am I more likely to rank for those peoples' names if I have a unique page, or is the one page url with each different marker in it, just as good?) Ranking well for those names isn't a huge goal of the site, but it would be nice to make the choice that would help with that rank. Thanks for your input Emma
On-Page Optimization | | emmas0 -
Best URL Structure For Products That Are The Same
I know that the url structure is very important for seo preferably using the keyword. But is it okay to have the same url with the product number at the end ? Each of our products have a name with a product number. Or will this cause to many similar urls? or if the folder is the name of the product that needs to be optimized, can the page just be called the product number? Example: Say you have a 20 different product lines and they are all catagorized in the appropriate folders, and need to be optimized for the actual product name. XXX (folder name ) WWW-PR-123 WWW-PR-1234 WWW-PR-12345 WWW-PR-123456 what would be the best url structure? Can they have the same begining? The product name? something like: www.example.com/xxx/www-pr-123.php www.example.com/xxx/www-pr-1234.php or www.example.com/xxx/pr-123.php www.example.com/xxx/pr-1234.php
On-Page Optimization | | hfranz0 -
Woah, my A-grade optimized pages that were on the first page have all vanished outside the top 50 in Google... is this Panda?
Yep as mentioned, I had some pages hit the top ten pretty quickly after ensuring they were A-grade for pretty uncompetitive keywords however, today, all bar 2 have just vanished from the top 50! All were ranking in Google.co.uk and I know we were predicting the Panda update to hit soon but WOW! My client is understandably a little upset, what on earch do I tell him and what should I do about it? Cheers! jT
On-Page Optimization | | Switch_Digital0