.htaccess and SEO
-
Hey Everyone,
New to SEOMOZ and I have an important question:
We launched a new version of our site about 6 months ago and had a TON of redirects in our HTCaccess file due to a change in our permalink structure (over 2000 easily).
Anyways, recently we went back in and took 2000+ lines of individual htaccess redirects and consolidated them into a RegularExpression for the ones where we could find a pattern for and the others (30 or so) are just the actual redirect link.
Since doing that, it appears our search engine traffic has dropped a bit. It's not crazy, but it's definitely noticeable. I'm not an SEO expert, so my question is this the reason why? How long will we see this decline before we're back at normal levels? We're seeing a lot less crawl errors since doing this, so I think it's a good thing. But I just wanted to check and see.
The site is http://thetechblock.com if you want to take a look. Any help would be really appreciated.
-
Hi Bayan,
Sorry to hear your search engine traffic has dropped.
It might be helpful if you posted the section of the .htaccess file in question.
Here's some things I would double check:
1. Does the .htaccess file serve a 301 response code for the redirect? (probably, but worth double checking) What I might try is create a file of all your OLD urls and upload them into a crawler like Screaming Frog and test them all out to see if they both redirect to the proper URL and with the correct response code.
2. Did you redirect the 2000 pages to unique URLs, or did you redirect them to a single url (or handful or urls)? If you consolidated your URLs to only a handful, this could effect your rankings.
3. Did the content and other HTML elements stay the same during the redirect? For example, did the title tags stay the same or reasonable close to the original? Big differences could cause the URLs to lose relevance and thus rankings.
4. Less crawl errors = good. I would check the Index Status in Google Webmaster to see if the number of pages discovered/indexed matches up well with the number of URLs on your site.
5. Proper sitemaps submitted? Oftentimes when you change your URL structure it's good to submit 2 sitemaps - one listing all your old URLs and another for the new. This way, search engines will attempt to crawl the old URLs and "process" the redirect. Probably not an issue for you since the change was 6 months ago, however.
6. Finally, I'd keep my eyes open for any other causes that may have caused the drop in traffic, i.e. Algorythm Updates, Site Issues, Backlinks and so on.
That's all I can think of, but there may be more. Let us know if you find anything!
-
Anyone?
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
-
Confused about PageSpeed Insights vs Site Load for SEO Benefit?
I was comparing sites with a friend of mine, and I have a higher PageSpeed Insights score for mobile and desktop than he does, but he his google analytics has his page load speed higher than. So assuming all things equal, some quality of conent, links, etc, is it better to have a site with a higher PageSpeed score or faster site load? To me, it makes more sense for it to be the latter, but if that's true, what's the point of the PageSpeed insights? Thanks for your help! I appreciate it. Ruben
Algorithm Updates | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
How Additional Characters and Numbers in URL affect SEO
Hi fellow SEOmozers, I noticed that a lot of websites have additional characters and words at the end of the URL in addition keyword optimized URL. Mostly for E-Commerce sites For example: www.yoursite.com/category/keyword?id=12345&Keyword--Category--cm_jdkfls_dklj or wwww.yoursite.com/category/keyword#83939=-37292 My question is how does the additional characters or parameters(not necessarily tracking parameters) affect SEO? Does it matter if i have additional keywords in the additional stuff in the URL (1st url example)? If you can provide more information, that would be helpful. Thank you!
Algorithm Updates | | TommyTan0 -
The Impact of Attribute REV in SEO
Hi, I'm looking for information about rev="" attribute in SEO. What do this attribute communicate to search robots? Does it Impacts in the positioning of pages / keywords? Does anyone have information that could help me?
Algorithm Updates | | webg0 -
Why SEO
Hi Guys, it's going to be a long one so thank you from advance for your patience. First i wanted you to i am new to SEO world and this world excites me In the last 30 days, i started to check my companies (i am employee not an owner) website in SEO point of view. What we do: Online grocery shopping and home delivery www.artizone.com I will share with you some of the results: 5482 errors for duplicate page content 8850 errors for duplicate page title 37 title missing or empty some pages had 4+ H1 tags many more HTML errors. page authority 42/100 domain authority 40/100 We have no listing 163 back-links domain to our Dallas & Chicago website and much more another thing i checked was where are we for the keywords that we are interested in: "online grocery shopping Dallas" - position 1 in Google search shop for groceries online Dallas - Position 1 in Google search shop for groceries from home Dallas - Position 1 in Google search And some more and the same for Chicago I Did all the searches in new incognito window My Question - how come we build our website so bad, with no Google+, we have very few back-links(compare to our competitors) and the page and domain rank are so low and still we are in the 2 or 3 highest position in Google search One more question - Why to invest time in fixing all the SEO issues i found? You are all welcome to have a SEO view in my website Thank you vest much Ivgi
Algorithm Updates | | iivgi0 -
Help with local Seo?
Hi, I am really struggling with current predicament i find myself in. I am a small to medium sized business based in Newcastle in the UK and am trying to rank well locally for the keywords that i feel my customers will be searching for locally. I have got to the stage where i am on page 1 of google uk or nearly there but cannot compete against the national companies who have the search terms then just add pages for virtually every city in the country. For example my main product is "Artificial Grass" and my city/town is Newcastle This is where my office is and where my customers are. This is also where my google places page states. Now theres a company that sells Artificial Grass called www.asgoodasgrass.co.uk that are based no where near but use the power of there site to come up in every local search by adding a page "Artificial Grass Newcastle" as well as hundreds of others. They rank 3rd and im 8th. There actual Newcastle page is poor, where as i put everything into my page including pics, video etc. Still no joy. I feel i am always going to rank behind these big boys even though i am the actual local company and have no intention of working others area that are not local to me. By the time i rank behind the above type companies and the likes of yell.com i feel i am never going to be seen and fall back on expensive adwords to help me along. I am a complete newbie at this and would love any help or tips you could give to give me a fighting chance in my area. My site is www.totaldrivewaysne.co.uk incase you want to look as you will have gathered my other primary product is driveways for which also i feel like i have a million competitors! many many thanks for any responses John
Algorithm Updates | | totaldriveways0 -
Content on Wordpress blog inside the main website for SEO
Hi, We have our main website and our blog on blog.practo.com. Now what I see is that we wish to write in content to grow our seo keywords and links. Should we put the blog as www.practo.com/blog and then begin writing all the content or we should put the wordpress blog as www.practo.com/(wordpress blog here) and then begin writing the content. For best practices I suppose we should have content lined up as www.sitename.com/category/article name etc or www.sitename.com/article name etc - am I correct? Our main site consists of few html pages and then we have our software on a different sub domain. What are the best ways to publish content and get it crawled at a faster rate for growth? I would also wish to understand how to measure the number of growth in % to our content we are writing. Only via google analytics or some other tool? Say I wish to see the growth of 10 articles from month of may and compare it to the month of april or march 2012. So what tools could I use to see if we are progressing or not? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | shanky10
