Consolidating product pages during website migration
-
Hello,
We are an e-commerce & content site undergoing a website migration and redesign in the coming months. We will be getting an entirely new website. Many of our URLs will be changing:
Current URL setup: www.mysite.com/catalog/SKU12345/product-title-here
Future URL setup: www.mysite.com/catalog/product-title-hereSo we're aware we will be using plenty of 301 redirects to achieve this.
Further to this though, we currently have a product page for each configuration of a product - for example, a single-sided bookmark has its own page and URL, and the double-sided version of the same bookmark has its own page and URL. In our site redesign, we are hoping to consolidate each of these instances into one product page where users can select single or double-sided and the price will update accordingly. The bookmark URLs would then go from:
_www.mysite.com/catalog/SKU12345/bookmark-single-sided _(call this URL A for simplicity)www.mysite.com/catalog/SKU67890/bookmark-double-sided (call this URL B)To (after migrating to the new URL structure for the new site, and the now-consolidated single- & double-sided product pages):
www.mysite.com/catalog/bookmark (call this URL C)- What is the best way to make this transition without losing too much of our SEO value? I understand there is nearly always traffic loss with URL changes but I'd like to at least minimize the damage as best I can. We have backlinks and ranks for many product pages so I want to make sure we pass as much of this as we can.
- (And is this at all further complicated by the fact that URL A & B won't exist on the new site, and URL C doesn't exist on the current site? Does this impact the use of the 301 redirects and if so, how?)
- Are we better off to approach this page consolidation after the site migration and treat it as a separate project? This is something that is important to our user experience, and is definitely a change we want to make.
Any advice is appreciated - thank you! I'm a fairly beginner-intermediate SEO so this is all somewhat new but I want to be able to at least convey some understanding to our developer of what we need to do. I was able to find this discussion (https://moz.com/community/q/merging-pages-and-seo) which describes a similar situation and solutions if we were just consolidating the pages but doesn't quite have the complicating factor of the entire site migration happening at the same time.
Thanks so much!
-
Thanks Alex; this is really helpful insight. Lots to think about! Thank you again - I sincerely appreciate it!
-
Well, I guess that's the million dollar question.
It's not as simple that Google will simply replace the SERP with the new page. That will be the apparent behaviour until Google updates the listing, as anyone who clicks the link will be redirected, but Google will quickly "notice" and then reapply the algorithm and decide whether the new page should be in the same place. I wouldn't expect that fact that the old page ranked to directly affect the ranking of the newly redirected page, however, the fact that any links to the old page will be being redirected will have an impact.
As far as new rank, I would expect a similar effect to that of simply updating all the content and not changing the URL, and of course, we don't know what exactly would happen then.
If I had to guess, given what you've said, I would say that very specific searches may rank worse (E.g. "double-sided bookmarks") but that more generic terms might rank better (E.g. "customizable bookmarks")
-
Hi Alex,
Thank you for your detailed response! This is assuring. To answer your question, we are keeping the same domain name but it would be hosted differently and supported differently than it currently is.
Definitely guilty of overthinking these things! Ha.
This is really helpful and re-assuring. Can you provide any insight on how this page consolidation would affect rankings? Say we have our double-sided bookmark product page ranking on the first SERP for the query "customizable bookmarks". With our migration and page consolidation, this product page will be redirected to a new bookmark page. When Google crawls us next and sees we've redirected that page, it'll start displaying the new page in the SERPs in place of the old - in the same rank as the old page? Is that correct? And then that rank might drop if it seems that new page is not meeting searcher's needs in the way the old page was?
Just wanted to see if you had any thoughts on that side of it.
Thanks again Alex - so so much!
Katie
-
When you say migration, are you talking about moving the site to a new domain, or simply to a new platform while maintaining the current domain? To be fair, I don't think it makes too much difference either way, I was just trying to get it clear in my head.
I think you may be over thinking it.
-
_What is the best way to make this transition without losing too much of our SEO value? I understand there is nearly always traffic loss with URL changes but I'd like to at least minimize the damage as best I can. We have backlinks and ranks for many product pages so I want to make sure we pass as much of this as we can. _
I would simply redirect both the old URLs to the new URL with a 301, I don't see any issue with doing this as the new page will have all the relevant content.
-
(And is this at all further complicated by the fact that URL A & B won't exist on the new site, and URL C doesn't exist on the current site? Does this impact the use of the 301 redirects and if so, how?)
No, not really. So long as the new page exists before you create the 301 (or at the same time) there is no issue there. -
Are we better off to approach this page consolidation after the site migration and treat it as a separate project? This is something that is important to our user experience, and is definitely a change we want to make.
I don't think so, I would definitely do it as a single project. Except from a "it's slightly less complicated if we break it into parts" point of view, the only benefit SEO-wise in breaking it into two projects would be from a monitoring angle, i.e. if something were to go wildly wrong with your rankings you would know which part of the transition had the impact and maybe be able to diagnose quicker.
Hope that helps!
Alex
-
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
-
How long will old pages stay in Google's cache index. We have a new site that is two months old but we are seeing old pages even though we used 301 redirects.
Two months ago we launched a new website (same domain) and implemented 301 re-directs for all of the pages. Two months later we are still seeing old pages in Google's cache index. So how long should I tell the client this should take for them all to be removed in search?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Liamis0 -
Putting rel=canonical tags on blogpost pointing to product pages
I came across an article mentioning this as a strategy for getting product pages (which are tough to get links for) some link equity. See #21: content flipping: https://www.matthewbarby.com/customer-acquisition-strategies Has anyone done this? Seems like this isn't what the tag is meant for, and Google may see this as deceptive? Any thoughts? Jim
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jim_shook0 -
Migrating to WooCommerce, similar product descriptions but with different urls, cant use variations.
Hi! Ime quite new to SEO and to woocommerce so please help out with this one.. We are migrating from Ithemes Exchange over to WooCommerce and i have come up with some issues. We are selling adhesives and some of the products have the same name and description, the only thing that seperates them are sometimes the widht, or the length on the roll.. As we have it now we have a separate product page for each widht and length. For example here http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-2-100/ and here http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-2-150/ The above product pages are for a product called Fentrim 2. its availiable in widhts from 75 to 300mm.. so, its six diffent products pages with more or less the same description. I get that this will create duplicate content, couse the description on the pages are similar.. We cant use variations in woocommerce, couse this cant be set up to exactly match our shipping needs, so, we need them on separate pages.. Soo, my plan is to set a new product page for Fentrim 2, ex http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-2 and then set that url as canonical url for the variations of the product.. Am i on the right track? Gratefull for any help on this one! / Jonas
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knubbz1 -
Is it a bad idea to use our meta description as a short description of a product on that product page?
Does this count as duplicating content even though the meta description has no effect on search results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | USAMM0 -
Is it OK to Delete a Page and Move Content to a Another Page without 301 re-direct
I have a page "A" that I want to completely delete and move the written content from A" to page "B". Since I am deleting "A" (not keeping page) is it OK to upload the content from "A" to page "B" and search engines will give "B" credit for the unique content? Or, since the content has already once been indexed on "A", "B" may struggle to get full credit for this new unique content, even though page "A" is deleted?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Can too many "noindex" pages compared to "index" pages be a problem?
Hello, I have a question for you: our website virtualsheetmusic.com includes thousands of product pages, and due to Panda penalties in the past, we have no-indexed most of the product pages hoping in a sort of recovery (not yet seen though!). So, currently we have about 4,000 "index" page compared to about 80,000 "noindex" pages. Now, we plan to add additional 100,000 new product pages from a new publisher to offer our customers more music choice, and these new pages will still be marked as "noindex, follow". At the end of the integration process, we will end up having something like 180,000 "noindex, follow" pages compared to about 4,000 "index, follow" pages. Here is my question: can this huge discrepancy between 180,000 "noindex" pages and 4,000 "index" pages be a problem? Can this kind of scenario have or cause any negative effect on our current natural SEs profile? or is this something that doesn't actually matter? Any thoughts on this issue are very welcome. Thank you! Fabrizio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Website layout for a new website [Over 50 Pages & targeting Long Tail Keywords]
Hey everyone, We are designing a new website with over 50 pages and I have a question regarding the layout. Should I target my long tail keywords via blog pages? It will be easier to manage and list and link out to similar articles related to my long tail keywords using a word press blog. For this example - lets suppose the website is www.orange.com and we sells 'Oranges' Am I going about this in the right way? Main Section: Main Section 1 : Home Page - Keyword Targeted - Orange Main Section 2 : Important Conversion page - 'Buy oranges' Long Tail Keyword (LTK) 1: www.orange.com/blog/LTK1 Subsection(SS): www.orange.com/blog/LTK1/SS1 www.orange.com/blog/LTK1/SS1a www.orange.com/blog/LTK1/SS1b Long Tail Keyword (LTK) 2: www.orange.com/blog/LTK2 Long Tail Keyword (LTK) 3: www.orange.com/blog/LTK3 Subsection(SS): www.orange.com/blog/LTK1/SS3 www.orange.com/blog/LTK1/SS3a www.orange.com/blog/LTK1/SS3b All these long tail pages and sub sections under them are built specifically for hosting content that targets these specific long tail keywords. Most of my traffic will come initially via the sub section pages - and it is important for me to rank well for these terms initially. _E.g. if someone searches for the keyword 'SS3b' on Google - my corresponding page www.orange.com/blog/LTK1/SS3b should rank well on the results page. _ For ranking purposes - will using this blog/category structure hurt or benefit me? Instead do you think I should build static pages? Also, we are targeting more than 50 long tail keywords - and building quality content for each of these keywords - and I assume that we will be doing this continuously. So in the long term term which is more beneficial? Do you have any suggestions on if I am going about this the right way? Apologies for using these random terms - oranges, LKT, SS etc in this example. However, I hope that the question is clear. Looking forward to some interesting answers on this! Please feel free to share your thoughts.. Thank you! Natasha
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Natashadogres0 -
On Page question
HI folks, I have a warning that I have missing meta tag descriptions on two pages. 1) http://bluetea.com.au/wp-login.php 2) http://bluetea.com.au/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword Is this something I should just ignore? Or is there a best practice I should be implementing? Thank you for your time
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PHDAustralia680