Don't want to lose page rank, what's the best way to restructure a url other than a 301 redirect?
-
Currently in the process of redesigning a site. What i want to know, is what is the best way for me to restructure the url w/out it losing its value (page rank) other than a 301 redirect?
-
thanks a lot everyone for the help. Just wanted to make sure there wasn't some other way of going about this.
-
lol... right...
Just saying that if anybody comes into my office and talks about changing the URLs on my site I will be reaching for my gun.... there is a really good chance that they will be shot.
-
I guess the main question is, but what if you have to? Best way if you have to change structure.
-
Lots of people who redesign sites change the URLs. That is usually a huge mistake.
Is there a genuine need to change URLs? If not then don't do it.
If their is a genuine need then weigh that against the fact that some link value will be lost through the 301 redirect.
We rarely rarely rarely change URLs here.
Any designer who says he wants to change my URLs will be in for a fight that he will probably lose.
-
Why don't you want to use a 301? If you are truly restructuring a site, then you will need to use 301s.
There are a couple of posts about this topic.
http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/44720/site-restructure-urls-301s-inbound-links-already-301d
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/301-redirect-or-relcanonical-which-one-should-you-use
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
-
Best way to set up URL structure for reviews off of PDP pages.
We are adding existing customer reviews to Product Detail Pages pages. There are about 300 reviews per product so we're going to have to paginate reviews off of the PDP page. I'm wondering what the best url structure for reviews pages is to get the most seo benefit. For example, would it be something like this? site.com/category/product/reviews/page-1 or something that used parameters, such as: site.com/reviews?product=a Also, what is the best way to show that the internal link on the PDP page to "All Reviews" is a higher priority link than the other links on the page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | katseo10 -
We are switching our CMS local pages from a subdomain approach to a subfolder approach. What's the best way to handle this? Should we redirect every local subdomain page to its new subfolder page?
We are looking to create a new subfolder approach within our website versus our current subdomain approach. How should we go about handling this politely as to not lose everything we've worked on up to this point using the subdomain approach? Do we need to redirect every subdomain URL to the new subfolder page? Our current local pages subdomain set up: stores.websitename.com How we plan on adding our new local subfolder set-up: websitename.com/stores/state/city/storelocation Any and all help is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO.CIC0 -
Add noindex,nofollow prior to removing pages resulting in 404's
We're working with another site that unfortunately due to how their website has been programmed creates a bit of a mess. Whenever an employee removes a page from their site through their homegrown 'content management system', rather than 301'ing to another location on their site, the page is deleted and results in a 404. The interim question until they implement a better solution in managing their website is: Should they first add noindex,nofollow to the pages that are scheduled to be removed. Then once they are removed, they become 404's? Of note, it is possible that some of these pages will be used again in the future, and I would imagine they could submit them to Google through Webmaster Tools and adding the pages to their sitemap.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
301 Redirect To Another 301 Redirect
Hi, We have a client with an old domain that they want to redirect to their primary domain. They also have a few older domains pointing to the old domain. Do you recommend leaving them as redirects that point to the old domain? This will create a redirect to a redirect situation. Or, is it better to go ahead and redirect those older domains to the primary one's, removing one layer of redirect? Thank you! Jessie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JessieT0 -
Why won't my sub-domain blog rank for my brand name in Google?
For six months or so, my team and I have been trying to get our blog to rank on page one in Google for the term "Instabill." The URL, http://blog.instabill.com, is a sub-domain of our company website and they both use the same IP address. Three pages on our www.Instabill.com site rank in the top three spots when searching our brand name in Google. However, our blog ranks 100+. For our blog, we are currently using b2evolution and nginx. We have tried adding static content on the home page, static content in the sidebar, static content on an About Instabill page, and optimizing blog posts for the keyword Instabill, but nothing seems to work. We appreciate any advice you can provide to us. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Instabill
Meghan0 -
Home page url 301 redirect suggestion
Hello, In our site we have already done 301 redirect from http:// to http://www. However, the home page links are still coming in 2 ways http://www.mycarhelpline.com/ http://www.mycarhelpline.com/index.php?option=com_newcar&view=search&Itemid=2 Need suggestion We have already use rel canonical is another 301 redirect to be used for maintaining the home page pr from seo point of view. Does google still takes both urls as separate url and finds duplicate content
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Multiple URL's exist for the same page, canonicaliazation issue?
All of the following URL's take me to the same page on my site: 1. www.mysite.com/category1/subcategory.aspx 2. www.mysite.com/subcategory.aspx 3. www.mysite.com/category1/category1/category1/subcategory.aspx All of those pages are canonicalized to #1, so is that okay? I was told the following my a company trying to make our sitemap: "the site's platform dynamically creates URLs that resolve as 200 and should be 404. This is a huge spider trap for any search engine and will make them wary of crawling the site." What would I need to do to fix this? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pbhatt0 -
Include Cross Domain Canonical URL's in Sitemap - Yes or No?
I have several sites that have cross domain canonical tags setup on similar pages. I am unsure if these pages that are canonicalized to a different domain should be included in the sitemap. My first thought is no, because I should only include pages in the sitemap that I want indexed. On the other hand, if I include ALL pages on my site in the sitemap, once Google gets to a page that has a cross domain canonical tag, I'm assuming it will just note that and determine if the canonicalized page is the better version. I have yet to see any errors in GWT about this. I have seen errors where I included a 301 redirect in my sitemap file. I suspect its ok, but to me, it seems that Google would rather not find these URL's in a sitemap, have to crawl them time and time again to determine if they are the best page, even though I'm indicating that this page has a similar page that I'd rather have indexed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WEB-IRS0