URL Duplicate Content Issues (Website Transition)

[Hyrule]

Hey guys,

I just transitioned my website and I have a question. I have built up all the link juice around my old url styles. To give you some clarity:

My old CMS rendered links like this: www.example.com/sweatbands

My new CMS renders links like this: www.example.com/sweatbands/

My new CMS's auto-sitemap also generates them with the slash on the end. Also throughout the website the CMS links to them with the slash at the end and i link to them without the slash (because it's what i am used to). I have the canonical without the slash.

Should I just 301 to the version with the slash before google crawls again? I'm worried that i'll lose all the trust and ranking i built up to the one without the slash. I rank very high for certain keywords and some pages house a large portion of our traffic. What a mess! Help! 

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Paul, did you find a good way to automatically do the trailing slash redirect?

[jsturgeon]

Paul--you may be able to automate this using the rewrite module or just a few lines of PHP.  Check out the SEOmoz "how to" for 301 redirects. Scroll down to the "SEO Best Practices".

The article advises that the fastest way to make the switch is to use the PHP header function. If you aren't using PHP (like wordpress or Joomla) than look at the instructions for editing the .htaccess file.

It's a little dense, but hopefully this can save you hours of manually typing in the new URLs in a text doc

[Hyrule]

thank you - Apache.

[jsturgeon]

Paul--there are some automated options to avoid rewriting the lines by hand. What kind of server are you running? Windows? Linux? Let me know and I'll try to throw a script your way.

[Hyrule]

Josh, Thank you. I was going in that direction but just wasn't sure. I'm gunna have to add a lot of slashes here in a minute. Anyone else have any input?

[jsturgeon]

Paul,

I understand your situation seems messy! Good news though--this should be a relatively simple fix.

A 301 redirect by definition preserves all your link juice. IMO, you should 301 all of the "no slash" pages to the ones with slashes. This will keep your site consistent as you continue to produce content under the new CMS.

As for canonical: technically it won't make a difference, but as a best practice, I would change the canonical page to the one with the slash. This avoids calling attention to a page that will ultimately redirect. Since the new "slash" page is going to inherit all of the "no slash" link juice (via 301), it is appropriate to label it as "canonical".

Even if you were to see a slight fluctuation in your ranking, don't be alarmed--nothing will have changed in the eyes of the search engine.

In short: 301 to your heart's content and keep producing good content.