ECommerce Platform Switch and SEO Loss
-
Hi -
We're switching eCommerce platforms, and naturally we're worried about losing organic search ranking.
From what I've read on the message boards, I understand it's important to try to minimize as many 301 redirects as possible.
Here's my problem: Our Product URLs are like this (ex: http://www.stupid.com/fun/TOLMG.html). On the new platform, URLs cannot contain capital letters.
According to the new eCommerce platform's design team: "Google and other search engines do not see that as a change in URL, they are not case sensitive and will not affect search listings"
How accurate is this? And how come on our current platform, if I use an all lowercase URL, it get a 401? (ex: http://www.stupid.com/fun/tolmg.html) Will we be fine switching our Product URLs to lowercase on the new platform?
One thing also to note: Our Category URLs will remain the same. Are there any other areas of a typical eCommerce store that I should avoid changing URLs if I want to prevent SEO loss?
Thanks!
-Justin
-
301 redirects still pass link juice, just not quite all of it. If the content of the pages remains the same, you should still be fine, you might see a slight slip but not much.
-
Thanks Matt - I didn't even think about pagination!
-
Thanks Daniel - This is SUPER helpful.
So yeah, now it looks like I have to do tons of redirects, possibly to all my products and categories.
So if I potentially had to do 301 redirects to all my Category and Product pages, would I be risking losing my search engine rankings?
-
Hi Justin,
URLs definitely aren't case sensitive from a Google point of view, although depending how the RewriteRule is set up (I'm assuming your web server is Apache) the e-commerce software itself might require a URL to be typed in the correct case.
I'd advise testing this on a subdomain first though (ie. dev.stupid.com)... but remember to block all search engines using robots.txt so you don't get some accidental indexing!
As for other things to think about, one would be pagination. Make sure the new tool deals with that the same as the old one or you'll end up with a load of broken links to your sub-pages. Static pages are also something to check, particularly if you have landing pages or product reviews posted through there.
I'm sure there'll be something I've missed but that'll give you more than enough to be getting on with
- Matt
-
Minimizing 301 redirects is good. Google is not case sensitive except in file names. So seomoz.org is the same to them as SEOMOZ.org or SeOMOz.org. Doesn't matter. Filenames like TOLMG.html are different than tolmg.html.
Try it. Find an image on your website like img.jpg. Now type in the full URL of that image with IMG.jpg instead of img.jpg at the end. Not the same.
So since you use .html as your URL ending, those are specific files with specific names, and they are case sensitive. You will have to redirect every uppercase file name to its lowercase counterpart when the new site is up. Or find a way to allow uppercase .html file names. That's how I understand things here.
-
It is SEO best practices to be consistent with case use, however upper case and Lower case are interchangeable on some server systems, while they are different/unique on others. If the new system allows for you to use upper and lower case interchangeably, you should not see anything but 200's. If that's true, then you should be okay.
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
-
SEO Title Length
Hi Everyone. I have a few pages being flagged with "Title Too Long". However, these are page 2, page 3, page 4, etc of category pages. They obviously have "| Page x of x" at the end of the title. Can these be ignored or is there a more SEO friendly way of handling this issue? Thanks. Michael
Technical SEO | | nomad_blogger0 -
YouTube vs. LimeLight - What are the SEO pros and cons of each platform for on-site video viewing?
Are there any SEO benefits of hosting on-site videos using LimeLight? I know the various benefits of using YouTube but before going forward with a site redesign I want to hear what others have to say. Thanks, Jake
Technical SEO | | JakeMatulewicz1 -
SEO Issues
Hi, We have created a moving cost calculator tools and other moving company can added this tools their website. This is the code: [ <iframe src="http: www.enakliyat.com.tr="" fiyat-hesapla.aspx"="" height="554" width="400" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="border:none;"> ] when the other moving company added this code their websites, tool also works on the site and the tool make the referrals traffic our site.** Is it right using this method?**</iframe src="http:> http://www.enakliyat.com.tr/evden-eve-nakliyat-fiyatlari-hesaplama/ here is the tool
Technical SEO | | iskq0 -
SEO url best practices
We're revamping our site architecture and making several services pages that are accessible from one overarching service page. An example would be as follows: Services Student Services Essay editing Essay revision Author Services Book editing Manuscript critique We'll also be putting breadcrumbs throughout the site for easy navigation, however, is it imperative that we build the URLs that deep? For example, could we simply have www.site.com/essay-editing rather than www.site.com/services/students/essay-editing? I prefer the simplicity of the former, but I feel the latter may be more "search robot friendly" and better for SEO. Any advice on this is much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Kibin0 -
Most common SEO issues with Magento
Which issues does Magento provide out of the box, what should i be aware of? What would you recommend to change/fix as soon as possible?
Technical SEO | | Mickelp0 -
Duplicat content affecting SEO Rankings
We have one main site called buypropertyanywhere, it is a database it holds all the data for all our property websites. One of our most popular sites is housesalesbulgaria, which takes the data from buypropertyanywhere in regards to bulgarian property and display it. The same with housesalesturkey it takes the data in regards to turkish property and display it. We think because buypropertyanywhere and housesalesbulgaria has the same data it has high duplicate content . We think this is affecting the SEO rankings for housesalesbulgaria. Google is looking at housesalesbulgaria as if a copy of buypropertyanywhere. So therefore should we SEO buypropertyanywhere soley and link it to housesalesbulgaria through the articles and content we put on the site. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Technical SEO | | Feily0 -
New Forum: SEO considerations.
We're going to add a new forum to our website. We don't anticipate very large volumes of users. I read somewhere in The Art of SEO that forums should be 'built in bbPress'. I'm very much a programming novice so I'm still trying to get to grip with the basics of forums. I'd be grateful to know the main SEO considerations (however basic) that I should tell my web developer who is building the new forum.
Technical SEO | | JacobFunnell0 -
Iframes & SEO
I've got a client that wants a site with all content in iFrames. They saw another site they liked & asked if we could do it. Of course we can technically. How big a negative hit would they take with SEO? Is there anything we can do to mitigate it, such as redirects, etc? Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | wcksmith0