Creating new website with possible Url change (301 involved?)
-
Hi,
I am currently getting a web designer to upgrade my website.
I have built lost of links to my internal pages, should I get him to 301 redirect
example.com/about.html (old) to example.com/about (new)
OR
Is there any need for this once the page doesn't change to example.com/about-us?
Thank you in advance
-
I agree, run a new XML sitemap, get it installed into GWMT (Google WebMaster Tools), and verifying you aren't seeing any issue with regards to the site, crawl errors, increased 404's will also help your efforts! Cheers.
-
I'm assuming you are moving from an old static HTML site to something along the lines of a CMS with Drupal or Joomla based on your new URL structure example above.
Absolutely. If you don't 301 the old page URL's to the new locations and URL names - you will eventually lose all the back-link development you have been working on. Those old URL's will eventually return a 404 error in Google WebMaster Tools, and the link value and 'juice' will be lost..
Plan out an Excel spreadsheet and then work to map all the pages from your site to their counterpart NEW URL names. This way you will make sure to get all your pages mapped out.
You would probably also want to crawl your old domain (before the new site goes live) with a tool like 'Screaming Frog' or 'Xenu' which you can download online and is free (best part and great tools to have). This will help you find and extract all the pages in your site into Excel - ensuring you don't miss any in the mapping process.
I would schedule some time after launch, to double check each URL individually (with the old URL's from the Excel DOC from the crawl) when the site goes live, to verify that the proper page level 301's is in place and correctly working.
Hope this helps you out. You should be in good shape, if you follow these steps pre and post launch.
Rob
-
The answer is yes, you always need to properly 301 redirect the old URL's to the new URL's when changing making such a change. This will not only tell Google that the page has moved and pass on any link juice, but it will also prevent users from seeing old pages incase anyone has bookmarked your content.
Dont forget to update your sitemap also
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
-
301 Redirects - Clearing out a 300 Page WordPress Website (HELP)
I'm working on a WordPress website that has around 300 pages (not posts, pages), many of which have very little content and / or content that is super outdated with zero relevancy. The site has been up and running for 10 years and ranks well overall, 1st in many instances for competitive keywords. The company holds yearly events and works with various other companies who exhibit at their events. In their very early years, they created pages on their website for each of these companies, some of which don't even exist anymore. If I had to delete all of the pages that are deprecated there would only be 10 pages of the site left (with blog posts counted separately). Would it be safe to remove these pages and set a 301 redirect to a semi-related page without hurting the website rankings? Any and all advice appreciated!!
Technical SEO | | enimmo19970 -
Console: Change Of Address, 301 Redirects Step Not Working
Hi everyone, We just made a switch to a new domain based on a rebrand, and we are currently directing users who navigate to the homepage of the old site to an interim page on our new site that reads companyname.com/companyname, that then redirects to the actual homepage of the new site, companyname.com. The redirect page's purpose is to tell users about the brand name change before showing them the new site. The challenge is that in the second step of the verification process for the address change, it reads that our domain name request does not correspond because the homepage is directing to this interim page. Is there a way for us to continue to direct people to companyname.com/companyname and have GSC verify that the 301 redirects work properly? Ideally we would not want to direct people from the homepage of the old site to the homepage of the new site. Thank you in advance for your help. Sincerely, Chase VHSpF
Technical SEO | | commcreative0 -
Changing permalinks in new wordpress website using regex in 301s?
Hi there I am working on a website and we would like to change the permalinks from product-category (replacing with Shop) and product to buy. Currently there are nearly 400 products and multiple categories. Although the website has just been indexed wondering if we need to do 301's? if we did would like to use regex to manage so redirect would be as example: mydomain.com/sub-domain/product-category/ redirecting to to mydomain.com/sub-domain/shop/ (I know you do not need to put in the domain but as an example) - could anyone give me the regex for this? Same for products: mydomain.com/sub-domain/product/sample-product redirect to mydomain.com/sub-domain/buy/sample-product thanks in anticipation
Technical SEO | | musthavemarketing0 -
Redirects for new website
Hi Moz community,
Technical SEO | | JSimmons17
I'm a fairly new SEO Specialist with a brand new website. We initially had a very basic holding website until the fully functional website was completed. I have to do some redirects as we have both .html and .php files & we don't want to lose SEO value for specific pages (like the index, news, etc). I also want to redirect from a www url to a non-www url. I am trying to accomplish redirects with the following code: RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mywebsite.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://mywebsite.com/$1 [R=301,L] RedirectMatch 301 /index.html (.*).(php|html) http://mywebsite.com/index.php RedirectMatch 301 /cupcakes-slideshow/glutenfree-slideshow.html (.*).(php|html) http://mywebsite.com/gluten-and-glutenfree.php RedirectMatch 301 /press.html (.*).(php|html) http://mywebsite.com/news-and-reviews.php Please let me know if I am on the right track. Thanks so much in advance!0 -
301 redirect
Hi All, I have just completed a 301 redirect on my site http://www.klinehimalaya.com and I was just starting a new campaign on SEOmoz and I got this message: Roger has detected a problem:
Technical SEO | | gorillakid
We have detected that the domain www.klinehimalaya.com and the domain klinehimalaya.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here. My only other question, is my .htaccess codeing correct and how long will it take to show it is correct in SEOmoz and online? All ".htaccess" code: AddHandler php-stable .php
**_Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] RewriteRule (.*).html$ /$1.php [R=301,L]_** Lastly, I have recently changed all of my files from .html to .php is this going to hurt my SEO and is the code "RewriteRule (.*).html$ /$1.php [R=301,L]" going to fix the issue by redirecting the .html links to the .php pages? Any suggestions or help appreciated. Paul.0 -
Is it worth changing our blog post URL's?
We're considering changing the URL's for our blog posts and dropping the date information. Ex. http://spreecommerce.com/blog/2012/07/27/spree-1-1-3-released/ changes to http://spreecommerce.com/blog/spree-1-1-3-released/ Based on what I've learned here the new URL is better for SEO but since these pages already exist do we risk a minor loss of Google juice with 301 redirects? We have a sitemap for the blog posts so I imagine this wouldn't be too hard for Google to learn the new ones.
Technical SEO | | schof0 -
Wordpress URL weirdness - why is google registering non-pretty URLS?
I've noticed in my stats that google is indexing some non-pretty URLs from my wordpress-based blog.
Technical SEO | | peterdbaron
For instance, this URL is appearing google search: http://www.admissionsquest.com/onboardingschools/index.php?p=439 It should be: http://www.admissionsquest.com/onboardingschools/2009/01/do-american-boarding-schools-face-growing-international-competition.html Last week I added the plugin Redirection in order to consolidate categories & tags. Any chance that this has something to do with it? Recs on how to solve this? Fyi - I've been using pretty URLS with wordpress from the very beginning and this is the first time that I've seen this issue. Thanks in advance for your help!0 -
SEO Benefit/Liability of changing URLs of a 2 year old site
I sell RV Parts online. Our organization is called The ROUTE 66 RV Network, so we brand everything around ROUTE 66. When we launched our store 2 years ago, we launched it with the domain: parts66.com We have a PR of 2, and we have been doing an SEO linkbuilding campaign ever since it has been around. Our primary keyword that we are trying to rank for is RV PARTS We also own the domain: rvparts66.com My question is: Is there a significant benefit to switching our URL to RVPARTS66.COM? Does having our primary keyword a part of our URL give us an SEO benefit? If so, what is the best way to keep any credit we have built for our original domain? We are in the process of a complete site overhaul which will launch in a couple weeks, so if there is ever a time to switch domains, the time is now. Thanks! jc
Technical SEO | | steve-2886180