Shortened page titles and changed urls to match, will this effect my page rankings?
-
In my recent crawl, I was given a bunch of 200 errors for having titles too long, i rewrote the titles and changed the URLs to match (using wordpress). I was then informed by my boss that changing the URLs like I did (www.website.com/abc ->www.website.com/xyz) may have changed our page rank for those pages and if so i should revert them to the old urls.
There are about 14 titles in total that I made these changes to. Would it be quicker to change the URL's to their old names, or better for me to use 301 redirects to point the old urls to the new ones?
Will either renaming the urls of the new titled blogs with their old titles or using 301 redirects have better SEO results?
Does wordpress automatically make these redirects for me? When I click a link of the old urls I kept saved in a document it still goes to the page.
-
Also, for the future, I recommend using two plugins for WordPress:
- Redirection by John Godley: This plugin lets you set up redirects within the WP dashboard, which means you can keep track of what's being redirected where within your WP administration.
- Yoast SEO by Team Yoast: This plugin lets you add and edit a lot of different SEO-related items, gives you tips regarding keywords you want to focus on, and a lot more. It's incredibly useful.
To be clear, I don't work for or with either of these developers/teams, but they're great plugins that sound as though they'd be especially helpful for you.
-
If I understood what you're saying, it seems as though you may have mistaken page title and URL for the same thing. You can alter a page title without affecting the URL and vice versa. For example, in Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), the blue text shown for each result is the page title, while the URL is in green text.
Now, with that said, page titles shouldn't exceed about 150 characters. This is because after this point, the title will be truncated and the entire title will, therefore, not be shown (only part of it will).
Regarding switching the URLs back to their originals, I'd recommend simply changing them back to what they were rather than redirecting them. Either way, it sounds like this whole endeavor has hurt your SEO, and either method may have implications. When you do this, any URL that is not hardcoded should be fixed by WordPress automatically. What this means is, while links populated internally (ex: in menus, navigation, footer) should be changed by WordPress without you having to do anything - though I'd strongly suggest you double-check these manually. However, the hardcoded links (ex: links in body text, images, some widgets) might not be resolved by WordPress automatically. These you will probably need to tend to on your own. Meaning, if in the second paragraph of blog article A, you link to blog article B: you'll probably need to edit the page for blog article A and replace the old URL with the new.
If you need any clarifications or further help, please ask! And sorry if I mistook anything you'd said.
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
-
Will SEO Blogs Divert Traffic from Main Web pages using same keywords?
Our company has drafted several SEO blogs using certain keywords. If we post these SEO blogs to our website and social media channels , and the blog keywords are also used on our main website pages, will the blogs divert or dilute traffic to our main web pages? Thank you for your expertise and insights in advance.
Content Development | | Johnenchroma0 -
What is the easiest and most scalable way to add links from one page to a related page entry?
We have a Spanish language reference site, and want to link related entries to each other. For example, the entry for "home" can link to the page with the entry for "home away from home." What is the best and most efficient way to do this at scale?
Content Development | | CuriosityMedia0 -
Renaming web pages vs new web site
I am struggling with renaming a lot of my web pages because I used short form acronyms vs long form keyword page names and now my pages aren't ranking where they should be and used to be. I am weighing a whole new web site or just a massive update with new page names. I also have an old domain that 301's to the new url but the old one outranks the new one. If you search google for cheap tubes the first domain you see is www.cheaptubesinc.com (the 301'd version) when the real url is www.cheaptubes.com. I know I am getting a duplicate content penalty and when moz crawls my site they see 2X the page that I really have. I tried fixing this with canonical tags but it only helped 5 pages according the moz crawls since doing them. Since last July 4th my business has been declining and I know there was an SEO algorithm update last July 4th. I think either method of renaming the web pages with better SEO for instance cheaptubes.com/single-wall-carbon-nanotubes.htm vs cheaptubes.com/swnts.htm as it is currently. In either case, it is still an HTML 2 website done on frontpage and the question I keep asking myself is if I should just scrap the whole site and start over with a more modern format. Should I try to get a new site together with good SEO and publish it quickly vs rename and 301 a bunch of pages? What about the old site? Do I need to track the old page names and 301 them to the new ones? Any help is appreciates Mike
Content Development | | cheaptubes0 -
Is it black hat to include your city name in a blog title to hopefully help local search resultts
I frequently blog and want to increase my ranking in local search in my area-Boston-blogging about Plastic Surgery. If I write a post about tummy tuck will I be penalized by Google search if I use a title like
Content Development | | wianno168
Tummy Tuck After Weight Loss Boston or Boston Tummy Tuck After Weight Loss0 -
2 URLs pointing to exactly the same content
Hi guys As far as I know if you have 2 websites with exactly the same (100%) content with 2 URLs which are not pointing to any other URL should attract penalisation from google, right? well, there is such a case and it was online for long time but the bad guys are in top of organic search and it does not seem to bother google at all! I don't want to list them here; it is extremely annoying and frustrating as I worked hard to get in higher search but seeing this thing is extremely frustrating! any advice on this? thanks
Content Development | | photoion0 -
Does using Articlebase articles on your site push your rank down?
Hello All, I launched a website (www.hrpayrollsystems.net) last year. I'm very new to the SEO world so I'm still seeing what works and what doesn't. We recently republished some articles from articlebase.com that I think may have hurt us in SEO. Does Google see our site as having duplicate content and then penalize us? Our top keyword isn't even ranking anymore when I put it in the sites that tell you where you show up. Help!
Content Development | | HRISGuy0 -
Is it advisable to have unique pages for different cities/states though there wouldnt be any actual differentiation in the actual content.
Is it advisable to have unique pages for different cities/states though there wouldnt be any actual differentiation in the content. For example should we have separate pages for "hammers in california" & "hammers in new york". The product is same and content more or less the same. The search volume for individual queries is low but collectively makes a large number. The unique title tag automatically will generate traffic. So does it make sense to make 50 such pages. Else is there any way to uniquely target 50 such queries/month/city
Content Development | | DYo0 -
Is it worth to change a blog from a subdomain to subfolder?
We have a blog in a subdomain since some years and we are thinking about moving it to a subfolder, to see if we can boost the main domain (incoming links + fresh content). Could be worth it?
Content Development | | Montse0