Best practice for eCommerce site migration, should I 301 redirect or match URLs on new site
-
Hi Guys,
I have been struggling with this one for quite some time. I am no SEO expert like many of you, rather just a small business owner trying to do the right thing, so forgive me if I say something that makes no sense
I am moving our eCommerce store from one platform to another, in the process the store is getting a massive face lift. The part I am struggling with is whether I should keep my existing URL structure in place or use 301 redirects to create a cleaner looking URLs. Currently the URLs are a little long and I would love to move to a /category/product_name type format.
Of course the goal is not to lose ranking in the process, I rank pretty well for several competitive phrases and do not want to create a negative impact.
How would you guys handle this?
Thanks,
Dinesh
-
If you do everything by the "books" then you should not see a huge swing, I just did this with a few sites, but I took some pre and post social precautions which I believe actually helped me in both these, but of course I cannot say that for sure, as overall in both very recent examples I moved to better servers, better code structure, nav structure and other items - So I would still caution and say it is always a possibility to loose some rankings, but it really depends on your end game and end goals.
-
Hi Shane,
I guess I should clarify. I am not a SEO by trade but have been working with SEO since we launched this site back in 2010 and have learned on the job.
Understood about the re-design trust me I am working to keep all the elements as close to the same as possible (Meta Tags, Rel's, Descriptions, ALTS etc...)
I can do the 301 Redirect (from a technical perspective) I was curious to the impact it would have on search. I read a Rand post on when he moved to moz.com with 301's in place it had a negative impact on SERP, he recovered but that could be because of his authority you know?
-
That is tough, it is hard for me to say 301 cause of course you could loose rankings, but you could loose rankings in a re-design in general if precautions are not taken.
If you were an SEO, I would most definitely say 301 because you could work with any negative effects and chalk them up to "growing pains" but with little SEO knowledge I am afraid you could make a detrimental change that seems insignificant.
I am not trying to scare you into not doing it, I would ALWAYS suggest moving to a cleaner URL structure for MANY reasons not just applicable to search engines.
But this is a tough one, as there is risk, but of course not a HUGE amount of risk, but risk none the less......
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
-
Changing URL structure of site, including AMP - redirect AMP too?
So, I'm changing all the URLs of a site, including all its AMP URLs, I'll be redirecting all the normal URLs, but do I need to also redirect all the AMP pages?
Technical SEO | | alksfjasldfu934341 -
Missing 301 redirects
I just had a developer friend call me in a panic, because they had gone live with a new site and found out (the hard way) that they had missed some pages on their 301 redirects. So the pages are appearing in Google but serving 404s. Ouch! So their question was: other than running a report for 404 errors in something like Screaming Frog, is there a way to hunt down ONLY pages serving 404s, then export to CSV so they can be redirected? Anyone got any tricks up their sleeve?
Technical SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
Best & easiest way to 301 redirect on IIS
Hi all, What is the best and easiest way to 301 redirect URLs on IIS server? I got access to the FTP and WordPress back office, but no access to the server admin. Is there an easy way to create 301 redirect without having to always annoy the tech in charge of the server? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | 2MSens0 -
URL redirect question
Hi all, Just wondering whether anybody has experience of CMSs that do a double redirect and what affect that has on rankings. here's the example /page.htm is 301 redirected to /page.html which is 301 redirected to /page As Google has stated that 301 redirects pass on benefits to the new page, would a double redirect do the same? Looking forward to hearing your views.
Technical SEO | | A_Q0 -
301 redirect .htaccess
Hi guys I am working on some 301 redirects on an apache webserver and I'd like a bit of assistance in trying to get a specific type result: I want all addresses from domaina.com to be redirected to domainb.com in the same structure so domaina.com/folder/file will go to domainb.com/folder/file expect for 2 folders.
Technical SEO | | seobackbone
ie: DomainA.com --> DomainB.com
except domainA.com/folder1
and domainB.com/folder2 Can someone let me know how I can pull this off?0 -
301 Redirect Help
How would you 301 redirect and entire folder to a specific file within the same domain? Scenario www.domain.com/folder to www.domain.com/file.html Thanks for your Input...
Technical SEO | | dhidalgo11 -
301-redirect
Hi My website is fairly new and i wasnt aware of the difference btw 'website.com' and 'www.website.com' when i started up. It doesnt matter which one i use as long as i am consistent right ? Most of my ingoing links are to mainpage on 'website.com'. I have som ingoing links to 'www.website.com' but also some to 'www.website.com/brandname'. is it enough to 301-redir 'www.website.com' to 'website.com' or does it need to be done on several levels ? I need to have someone do the redirect for me - how can i check its working when its done ? Dan Lærum
Technical SEO | | danlae0 -
301 Redirect?
Sometimes I want to redirect pages on my site. Like a search result: http://www.inthelighturns.com/memorials/catalogsearch/result/?q=hearts to a page designed for what they're searching for: http://www.inthelighturns.com/hearts.html There's no real worry about transferring page rank and this may not be a permanent redirect. Just a "I want this page to show this page for some time" kind of redirect. What's the best solution? Thanks Tyler
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0