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
-
Site Migration Question - Do I Need to Preserve Links in Main Menu to Preserve Traffic or Can I Simply Link to on Each Page?
Hi There We are currently redesigning the following site https://tinyurl.com/y37ndjpn The local pages links in the main menu do provide organic search traffic. In order to preserve this traffic, would be wise to preserve these links in the main menu? Or could we have a secondary menu list (perhaps in the header or footer), featured on every page, which links to these pages? Many Thanks In Advance for Responses
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ruislip180 -
Magento 1.9 SEO. I have product pages with identical On Page SEO score in the 90's. Some pull up Google page 1 some won't pull up at all. I am searching for the exact title on that page.
I have a website built on Magento 1.9. There are approximately 290,000 part numbers on the site. I am sampling Google SERP results. About 20% of the keywords show up on page 1 position 5 thru 10. 80% don't show up at all. When I do a MOZ page score I get high 80's to 90's. A page score of 89 on one part # may show up on page one, An identical page score on a different part # can't be found on Google. I am searching for the exact part # in the page title. Any thoughts on what may be going on? This seems to me like a Magento SEO issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CTOPDS0 -
Possible to Improve Domain Authority By Improving Content on Low Page Rank Pages?
My sites domain authority is only 23. The home page has a page authority of 32. My site consists of about 400 pages. The topic of the site is commercial real estate (I am a real estate broker). A number of the sites we compete against have a domain authority of 30-40. Would our overall domain authority improved if we re-wrote the content for several hundred of pages that had the lowest page authority (say 12-15)? Is the overall domain authority derived by an average of the page authority of each page on a domain? Alternatively could we increase domain authority by setting the pages with the lowest page authority to "no index". By the way our domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Should my back links go to home page or internal pages
Right now we rank on page 2 for many KWs, so should i now focus my attention on getting links to my home page to build domain authority or continue to direct links to the internal pages for specific KWs? I am about to write some articles for several good ranking sites and want to know whether to link my company name (same as domain name) or KW to the home page or use individual KWs to the internal pages - I am only allowed one link per article to my site. Thanks Ash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshShep10 -
Product Descriptions for a product with many designs
I'm a newbie with SEO and I have a question regarding product descriptions. Let's say I am selling 100 dog id tags. The tags are all made of same materials, same size, just different designs. Now for the product description, do I need to write a different set of description for all 100 tags? This is an example of a short product description(there's more) for all the pet tags: Personalized with 4 lines of information and 20 characters in each line. Lifetime guarantee - If your pet ID tag ever becomes illegible, we will replace it free of charge. Solid one-piece construction - No glued or ""sandwiched"" materials to wear out or fall apart. Split ring for collar attachement included with EVERY tag. Countless uses - School backpacks, luggage, fashion accessories, and many more! All of the above information pertains to all the pet tags. Can all my product descriptions contain that information, or will I need to modify this 100 times for each individual pet tag? I read up a lot on duplicate content so I am slightly confused. Will this hurt my SEO? Thanks, Keith
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ktw0160 -
End of March we migrated our site over to HubSpot. We went from page 3 on Google to non existent. Still found on page 2 of Yahoo and Bing. Beyond frustrated...HELP PLEASE "www.vortexpartswashers.com"
End of March we migrated our site over to HubSpot. We went from page 3 on Google to non existent. Still found on page 2 of Yahoo and Bing under same keywords " parts washers" Beyond frustrated...HELP PLEASE "www.vortexpartswashers.com"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mhart0 -
Did adding product videos cause my products to lose #1 position?
I work on an e-commerce site and for many of the products we sell, we rank #1 for "product name + item number" related searches. We decided to add product videos to some of our products in the hopes of getting an additional listing in the SERP's (regular listing + video listing in universal video results) Instead.. What we've noticed is that sometimes we are not getting 2 listings but just a regular listing with a video thumbnail that ranks somewhere on the middle of the first page. The video thumbnail is great.. but I'd rather the #1 position. I don't think Google likes to show video results as the #1 position for obvious product searches. What do you think? Did we lose our #1 position because of adding the videos to our product pages? Any advice or similar experiences? ~~ Additional information: On some of those queries, Google had decided to ignore our video and we have maintained our #1 ranking. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebstaurantStore.com0 -
Why do branded manufacturer websites have multiple pages for their products?
My favorite golf ball is the Srixon Tour Yellow ball. Srixon has a product detail page here (www.srixon.com) AND there's also a product detail page here at shop.srixon.com. Is there any sort of SEO penalty here because there's some duplication? Does the fact the store is a separate subdomain make this more allowable? Many branded manufacturer websites work this way but it just doesn't make sense to me to have two product pages that you have to manage content when you can have just 1 with a call to action. I also work for a branded manufacturer and am considering rebuilding our website from the ground up with the online store and the main/marketing website blended into one to eliminate this duplication. We have this same duplicated marketing/store setup as well. any feedback is greatly appreciated. Confused.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Timmmmy0