Crazy long weird URLs... help
-
I have a HTML website, mysite1.com, and I placed a link on the home page to another one of my sites, mysite2.com
Today I checked the links to mysite2.com in Majestic and noticed 24 links coming from the mysite1.com instead of just one link.
The URLs from mysite1.com that are showing in Majestic are like this
mysite1.com,was inherited from a friend and I believe that it was originally built in Frontpage.
Can you tell me how I can get rid of these multiple links as I only want 1 showing from the home page
Thanks in advance
-
I would need to see this to give you any real feedback on it John but general rule of thumb is if Google looked at these links, would they see and understand the reasoning for the links to be there?
Andy
-
I see what you mean. Well the links from the home page sites are going from sites that are for information purposes only, then link to the service provider recommended by that website.
I wouldn't see anything wrong with this. There are 5 sites linking from the home page to my main site out of 120 backlinks. I presume that this doesnt look bad in Google's eyes
-
I can't really help you with the htaccess stuff John, but regarding links from the homepage to another external site, this has always been a questionable practice. Why would you want to direct someone to another site as soon as they got to your homepage? Google see this in a similar way.
However, if there is a very good reason for the link to appear there and if it formed part of a good sentence with accurate anchor text and wasn't trying to push people there just to get traffic up, then I can see no harm - bit hard to judge without seeing though.
Andy
-
Hi Andy,
Thanks for helping out.
Can you tell me why you think home page links are bad? I actually started a question about this last week but didnt get many replys. Do you think getting home page links a bad thing to do?
Ive done some digging and found that when I go to mysite1.com in majestic and look at Pages, its showing all the long URLs that I found pointing to mysite2.com
So I guess that at some point in its life, these pages have been indexed by Google.
These URLs all start with a ? i.e. mysite1.com/?561796
So I am guessing the best way to solve this is to make all URLs that start with a /? be redirected to the root.
Unfortunetly I have no idea how to write this in the htaccess file
-
First of all, be careful with off-site links from your homepage unless there is a very good reason for it. If there isn't, I would always no-follow it so Google doesn't see an unethical link.
With reagards what you are seeing in Majestic, when you hover over the link, what do you see? Is it just a normal HTML link or has it been completed another way?
Andy
-
Ok I have noticed that any URL with ? at the end shows the home page.
mysite1.com/? will show the home page
mysite1.com/?111 will show the home page
etc etc
So I guess I need to redirect anything with a ? to the home page using a 301.
Can someone tell me what the code will be to do that in the htaccess file?
-
Hi John
PM me if you like, I'll have a look for you. Promise not to repeat the domain name.
-
Hi,
Unfortunately I cant do that on a public forum.
But I can tell you all the URLs look like the one Ive posted, loads of numbers etc.
It isnt a dynamic site so these actual URLs are not live pages.
When you visit these URLs, they are just duplicates of the home page
Hope that helps a little
-
Hi John
Could you provide the address so we can look please. Would be making wild guesses else.
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
-
Which URL should I choose when combining content?
I am combining content from two similar articles into one. URL 1 has a featured snippet and better URL structure, but only 5,000 page views in the last 6 month, and has 39 keywords ranking in the top 10. URL 2 has worse structure, but over 100k page views in the last 6 months, and 236 keywords in the top 10. Basically, I'm wondering if I keep the one with the better URL structure or the one with more traffic. The deleted URL will be redirected to whichever I keep.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | curtis-yakketyyak0 -
Product URL Optimisation
Hi guys, We are currently trying to add new products to our site but we are in a quandary on what type of URL structure to pursue. For example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | michel_8
Product Name: Aspect Exfoliating Cleanser 240ml https://www.example.com.au/aspect-exfoliating-cleanser-240ml (including the size)
VS
https://www.example.com.au/aspect-exfoliating-cleanser 1.) Which is a better URL structure based on SEO 2018 and why?
2.) Is there any merit in removing the size from the URL key with the aim of attracting more traffic? Keen to hear from you guys! Cheers,0 -
Url design for automobile parts
Hi All, Im designing the url and im confused, need your experts advice engine-oil is a category I will display car truck, bike oils only
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim119
Car > in this page I will display engine oils only related to car
Hyundia> in this page I will display engine oils only related to hyundia
i30 > in this page I will display engine oils only related to i30 models
Petrol > in this page I will display engine oils only related to petrol So im planning for www.xyz.com/engine-oil/car/Hyundia/i30/Petrol or should I write like this below xyz.com/c-engine-oil.html
xyz.com/c-car-engine-oil.html
xyz.com/c-hyundia--car-engine-oil.html
xyz.com/c-hyundia-i30-car-engine-oil.html
xyz.com/c-hyundia-i30-Petrol-car-engine-oil.html and also i heard i should keep 3 folders max.. so confused..
i have lot of car parts like engine oil, gear oil, tyres, battery,etc(categories)0 -
Confused: Url Restructure
Hello, We're giving our website a bit of a spring clean in terms of SEO. The site is doing ok, but after the time invested in SEO, content and last year's migration of multiple sites into one, we're not seeing the increase in traffic we had hoped. Our current urls look something like this: /a-cake-company/cup-cakes/strawberry We have the company name as the first level as we with the migration we migrated many companies into one site. What we're considering is testing some pages with a structure like this: /cup-cakes/cup-cake-company-strawberry So we'll lose a level and we'll focus more on the category of the product rather than the brand. What's your thoughts on this? We weren't going to do a mass change yet, just a test, but is this something we should be focusing on? In terms of organisation our current url structure is perfect, but what about from an SEO point of view? In terms of keywords customers are looking for both options. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HB170 -
SEO direction - help needed
Hi, I've been working on a site for about 5 years. We built the traffic up to about 8k visitors/day. Although now it's dropped down over the past 2 years to about 2k visitors a day. New traffic source is mainly from SEO longtail. The whole time we have been working to improve the site. What's the best way to get some help from experts on the right direction to get traffic back up or to at least tell me the site will never work 🙂 Thanks in advance. M
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | relientmark0 -
Hi I know this is cheeky but you are all so helpful on here!
hi, quick question, I've made a new instillation of wordpress at sussexchef.com/dev and I'm about to start building pages, obvoisly I'm going to move it to sussexchef.com when its all looking right. when I choose my page address links/ permalinks thingy, should I use new url names that don't already exist on the old site? or should I keep the old url names so I don't get loads of 404's, but include the "dev/" in the url name? Eg the old address sussexchef.com/home should I use sussexchef.com/dev/home or sussexchef.com/home-sussex-caterers while building the development site? I'm guessing the later my help out in google searches too? But if I use Dev in the url shurly I will have to go through almost 100 pages removing the dev/ and also changing all the links too? This would be days of work!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SussexChef83
So confused! I'd really appreciate your help here. Ben0 -
2 URLS pointing to the same content
Hi, We currently have 2 URL's pointing to the same website (long story why we have it) - A & B. A is our main website but we set up B as a rewrite URL to use for our Pay Per Click campaign. Now because its the same site, but B is just a URL rewrite, Google Webmaster Tools is seeing that we have thousands of links coming in from site B to site A. I want to tell Google to ignore site B url but worried it might affect site A. I can't add a no follow link on site B as its the same content so will also be applicable on Site A. I'm also worried about using Google Disavow as it might impact on site A! Can anyone make any suggestions on what to do, as I would like to hear from anyone with experience with this or can recommend a safe option. Thanks for your time!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Party_Experts0 -
Does having a trailing slash make a url different than the same url without the trailing slash?
Does having a trailing slash make a url different than the same url without the trailing slash? www.example.com/services Or www.example.com/services**/** Does Google consider these to be the same link or does Google treat them as different links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webestate0