Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Best way to change URL for already ranking pages
-
Hello.
I have a lot of pages that I'm optimising. The ones I'm focusing on right now is already ranking, but the URLs could be better (they don't include the keywords right now). However I'm worried that if I change the URLs they will drop in rankings or have to start over. I would of course set up 301 redirect, but is there more I need to do?
What is the best way to change URL for already ranking pages?
-
My case it not quite that an incorrect page is ranking. It is the right ones, but I want to change the URL for these pages to optimise that part also, since the keywords are not included in the URLs right now.
-
Hi
I don’t think this will affect your ranking, I am sure you are familiar with the process.No matter what, changing your domain name will affect your search engine rankings, largely because each search engine responds differently to such changes, but you can substantially limit the damage done. Google has taken the lead as usual in dealing with URLs that change and will quickly index the new file with virtually no interruption if you follow some fairly straightforward procedures. AllTheWeb quickly followed suit. Unfortunately, the procedures described below do not work in the same way on the other major search engines.
The critical element in successful url redirecting or domain forwarding is taking the time to make sure that ALL links to your old page from directories and other websites are updated. That step must be done. Unfortunately, it is the most difficult step, as many links may be on sites that are neglected or even abandoned.
Google has published guidelines on changing your URLs. See, Google Information for Webmasters : "Once your new site is live, you may wish to place a permanent redirect (using a '301' code in HTTP headers) on your old site to inform visitors and search engines that your site has moved."
hope this helps ..:) -
Hi GoMentor,
Rand did a whiteboard friday on this topic: https://moz.com/blog/wrong-page-ranks-for-keywords-whiteboard-friday
Hope it helps,
Tom
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
-
Reusing an already 301 redirected URL for a very important keyword
I have a question about reusing an already 301 redirected URL Till now I never reused an URLs that has been already redirected with a 301 redirect. However, I just started working on a website where in past they created a lot of 301 redirects without thinking about the future, and now certain URLs, that are currently redirected with a 301, would be very useful (exact match) and needed (for some of the most important keywords for this specific business), to maintain an optimal, homogeneous and "beautiful" URL structure. Has any of you ever reused a URL that was previously redirected with a 301 redirect? If yes what are your experiences with it? Can content on the reused URL (that was previously 301 redirected and than the redirect removed) normally rank if the page is reestablished and the redirect is removed (and you do great content, on page, internal linking, backlinking, .... ) or is such an URL risky / not recommended / "burned" forever and not recommended to be reused again... especially for very important keywords since it present the exact match ?! Thank you very much for all your help! Regards
Technical SEO | | moz46y0 -
What's the best way to test Angular JS heavy page for SEO?
Hi Moz community, Our tech team has recently decided to try switching our product pages to be JavaScript dependent, this includes links, product descriptions and things like breadcrumbs in JS. Given my concerns, they will create a proof of concept with a few product pages in a QA environment so I can test the SEO implications of these changes. They are planning to use Angular 5 client side rendering without any prerendering. I suggested universal but they said the lift was too great, so we're testing to see if this works. I've read a lot of the articles in this guide to all things SEO and JS and am fairly confident in understanding when a site uses JS and how to troubleshoot to make sure everything is getting crawled and indexed. https://sitebulb.com/resources/guides/javascript-seo-resources/ However, I am not sure I'll be able to test the QA pages since they aren't indexable and lives behind a login. I will be able to crawl the page using Screaming Frog but that's generally regarded as what a crawler should be able to crawl and not really what Googlebot will actually be able to crawl and index. Any thoughts on this, is this concern valid? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Topic Cluster: URL Best Practices
I'm trying to be mature and employ the Topic Cluster strategy to my content. In doing so I realized there are a few URL options. Some more difficult to execute than others. -Is it important to call out the Pillar Topic in your subtopic URL?
Technical SEO | | dkellyagile
-Does the Pillar Topic need to have its own landing page? (As opposed to just being part of the blog.) Here's an Example: My Pillar is: Inbound vs. Outbound
My subtopic is: Marketing Platforms Here are the URL options I can think of... Option 1: https://pipelineinbound.com/blog/inbound-vs-outbound-marketing-platforms/ Option 2: https://pipelineinbound.com/blog/which-marketing-platforms/ Option 3: https://pipelineinbound.com/blog/marketing-platforms-inbound-vs-outbound/ Option 4 (Hardest): https://pipelineinbound.com/inbound-vs-outbound/marketing-platforms/ Are there some fundamental best practices for URL structure and Link Building as it pertains to Topic Clusters? Thanks!0 -
Blog Page Titles - Page 1, Page 2 etc.
Hi All, I have a couple of crawl errors coming up in MOZ that I am trying to fix. They are duplicate page title issues with my blog area. For example we have a URL of www.ourwebsite.com/blog/page/1 and as we have quite a few blog posts they get put onto another page, example www.ourwebsite.com/blog/page/2 both of these urls have the same heading, title, meta description etc. I was just wondering if this was an actual SEO problem or not and if there is a way to fix it. I am using Wordpress for reference but I can't see anywhere to access the settings of these pages. Thanks
Technical SEO | | O2C0 -
Changing images on site without losing ranking
A number of images on my site rank very well under google image search but need to be replaced with updated versions. If I keep the file name and pixel dimensions identical will switching the image effect my rankings? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Justin450 -
What is the best way to find missing alt tags on my site (site wide - not page by page)?
I am looking to find all the missing alt tags on my site at once. I have a FF extension that use to do it page by page, but my site is huge and that will take forever. Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions1 -
Is it possible to change a sitelink title by off page SEO?
Hi all, I checked a website of my company: sitelinks in SERP are with the correct url, but one of the sitelinks’ title is completely irrelevant. Is it possible that it was changed from "outside"? Or maybe it's a bug? Thank you, Imre
Technical SEO | | DDL0 -
How best to redirect URL from expired classified ads?
We have problem because our content are classifieds. Every ad expired after one or two mounts and then ad becomes inactive and we keep his page for one mount latter like a same page but we ad a notice that ad is inactive. After that we delete the ad and his page but need to redirect that URL to search results page which contains similar ads because we don't want to lose the traffic form that pages. How is the best way to redirect ad URL? Our thinking was to redirect internal without 301 redirection because the httacces file will be very big after a while and we are thinking to try a canonicalization because we don't want engine to think that we have to much duplicate content.
Technical SEO | | Donaab0