Should my URLs with or without a slash? And how to avoid multiple redirects?
-
Moz, I am noticing that I need to go back and update my outbound links to your site. There are a lot of them because your content is so great and we love you guys.
Could you explain your logic for making the change?
Example on my Schema Markup Website Audits page:
https://moz.com/blog/state-of-searcher-behavior-revealed/ redirected to: https://moz.com/blog/state-of-searcher-behavior-revealed
-
Hi Jo Cameron,
I appreciate your response. Being the SEO / SEM guru that MOZ is, one anticipates that there is a well-thought reason behind any/all URL changes. Likely it is still so and may be shared in time by someone who knows the "why". URLs are truly the lifeblood of a site. While many have come to "pile up" on 301's, Google's John Mueller has urged webmasters to keep them at a minimum, which I am sure is not news to you.
We dedicate some time weekly to update URLs such as outbound links where the other site has migrated to HTTPS from HTTP, which is happening a lot right now. It can feel like a wild ride with some sites as they as flip, too frequently IMHO, from www to non-www, and then switch up slugs, and/or using the "/" or not at the end. We sure "get" why we all strive to make improvements and always value the learning curve. Often when it is too exhaustive, we just drop providing a backlink to them (not Moz:)).
Thanks for the great article lead, I had previously read it several times and gained by reading it afresh. But again, we are trying to NOT rely so heavily on 301s.
You are right, it isn't our top priority, either.
Thank you, Jeannie
-
Hi Jeannie,
Thanks for reaching out, and thanks for the love!
I'm sorry to say I don't have any information on why this change was made.
As you probably know, in general this redirect behaviour on our site is in place to avoid duplicate URLs. You can read more about this here https://moz.com/community/q/301-redirect-adding-trailing-slash-to-url.
In terms of the link from your site, as we have a 301 the traffic and equity are being passed to the final location.
It may not be worth your time updating all your existing links, I would suggest focusing on new links moving forward :]
I hope this helps, please do let me know if you would like more clarification or have any other queries.
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
-
Need advice: How to replace a high-ranking pdf with a landing page -- without dropping much in rank?
Hi! We have a pdf of a white paper on our site that ranks #1 for a niche term. We are now exploring the idea of building a landing page for this paper with an overview (2-3 paragraphs) and a registration form for interested parties to fill out in order to access the paper. Do you think there'd be any hope of ensuring the new landing page would rank almost as well eventually (top 3)? I'm thinking a key consideration would be preserving the link juice from the existing links that are coming into the pdf, and that 301 redirecting the pdf URL to the new landing page URL could help with that. Am I right? Or would it be better to try to reach out to the linking sites and ask them to update their links (seems daunting). Any advice/opinions on this situation would be appreciated. (If folks think that there would be a significant risk of permanently dropping out of the top 5 by attempting this, we would likely choose to leave the pdf ungated as is.) Thanks!! -John
Link Building | | jomosi0 -
Buying keyword urls for local traffic
Hi, I've been told that there is a real benefit in buying up local domain names and setting up mini adverts to your core website... is this actually true? Seems a strange practice. Example: If I had a car cleaning site called 'MozCarCleaning.co.uk' and the company was based in London. Then I'd buy related domains, 'LondonCarCleaning.co.uk' , 'CarValetLondon.co.uk' and make mini websites which then link to the main site. Alternatively, would it be worth just 301 redirecting directly to the core site? Thanks.
Link Building | | MatthewJamesRiley0 -
Article submission to multiple directories
We know the general consensus among the crowd here is to avoid free article submission directories. But we have to do this as part of our overall deliverables and have hit a roadblock. A couple of our agencies are insisting that we submit one article to multiple sites - which we contend would trigger duplicate content issue and render all links useless. Any feedback on submitting one article to multiple article sites?
Link Building | | eBrandz0 -
Adding keyword to your url
Couldn't find the answer to my question anywhere so I'll give it a try here. If you have a site called www.example.com, and then want to add a keyword to this site, like this: www.example.com/keyword How do you add a keyword to your url like this? Without making the URL with the keyword your "main" URL, meaning you don't have to enter the keyworded URL to get to the homepage (www.example.com), and still rank better on the keyword put in the url. I'm a bit confused on the subject, would love for someone to help me understand! Thanks.
Link Building | | danielpett0 -
SEO in multiple languages
I'm doing SEO for an apartment rental web-site. We have one web-site for each destination. And for some (popular) destinations we have a separate domain for some languages. For instance: http://www.barcelonacheckin.com/en for English and http://www.barcelonacheckin.com/fr for French In another destination we have http://costabrava-ok-apartment.com/en for English and http://www.location-costabrava.fr/ for French. We have good result with the separate domains for languages. But I'm facing two problems: We do not get any progress in the ranks in English in any Web-site There's a lot written about SEO in English and there are many opportunities to build relevant links. But we are out of sources for eg. French. Our SEO routine exists of participating in forums on famous travel web-sites, guest post exchange with our blogs, link exchange and presence in Social media. Can anybody give us some suggestions?
Link Building | | jereprieto0 -
Multiple link building strategy for multiple clients
We deal with about 200 clients for a series of websites. We create a number of articles articles per site per month. A company we used to do link building for the websites it turns out were doing a lot of spinning which has been hard hit by the new penguin update. I'm actually really happy about it as it means we can now do some legitimate SEO on their sites. Any ideas of what the best strategy would be for this amount of sites which we are already creating shareable content for?
Link Building | | acs1110 -
How to Build Links without content?
Apart from Directory submission Local niche specific directory submission Community engagement Niche specific blog commenting Can I know the other ways of Link Building when we don't have content.
Link Building | | Jaymoo0 -
What to do when a Bad URL has to stay?
I am working with a friend on optimizing a site that has a troublesome set of issues. The company has integrated some ERP system that cannot be changed or removed and it is creating goofy URL's. So my question is which URL do I build links to? the www.xxx.com or the crazy URL that it is being redirected to. Site URL: www.nauticalchartsonline.com
Link Building | | Boogily
redirect: http://www.nauticalchartsonline.com/n.c/NauticalChartsOnline.html I would greatly appreciate constructive feedback.. Thanks, Jeannie0
