Change in url structure - added category page
-
I have recently started an e-commerce website and have now changed the url structure and added another level to my category pages.
So where it before was www.website.com/shirts it is now www.website.com/clothes/shirts. So I added the clothes category (just an example) before the shirt category and am now finding that the old url is still found in the search index and is still live on my site. How could this be?
I use wordpress and simply change the urls in the backend. The products are still under www.website.com/product/blue-shirt-123 so they won't be affected but I suppose it now means I have duplicate category pages?
So my question is: Should I 301 the the old category page (www.website.com/shirts)to the new url (www.website.com/clothes/shirts). And how can the old url still be live on my site?
If this was a bit unclear, please let me know.
Appreciate your replies!
-
Hey There
What Barry says is true - you can throw anything in there and it will load, as long as the category is at the end.
But yes, for certain, in your case I would 301 redirect /shirts to /clothes/shirts (and all other categories). Crawl the site with Screaming Frog and keep an eye on 404 errors in Webmaster Tools for anything you might have missed.
I don't think there's any issue in regards to duplicate content.
-Dan
-
Ok, I see that now, thanks. Does this also mean I do not have a duplicate pages (duplicate content) issue then?
-
You can literally put anything in the category part of the URL and it will resolve.
Try www.website.com/fhqwhgads/shirts and it will still resolve, heck throw another directory in there and it will still work www.website.com/fhqwhgads/zomg/shirts
As for why it does that, I'm probably not the best person to explain, but WP effectively just looks for the end of the URL, which is sometimes why naming pages and posts the same can cause problems.
I'm not sure what would happen if you 301'd /shirts to /clothes/shirts as it may just be looking at the last part anyway (could quickly try).
I'd consider adding a canonical tag instead.
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
-
URL structure change for pages without traffic: 301 redirect or not ?
Hi, I am just starting with MOZ PRO and trying to handle the high priority issues, starting with pages with 4XX Client Error. I am wondering what we should do with pages with no traffic and no external links. For instance: So time ago we change the URL structure of our blog to a flatter one, and so eg we moved a page: from: domain-name/dla-rodzicow/poradniki/poradniki-po-markach/vilac/vilac-zabawki-z-dusza to: domain-name/dla-rodzicow/poradniki/marka-vilac/vilac-zabawki-z-dusza/ Still not very flat but this is not the point. MOZ PRO shows we are having internal links to the old url. According to MOZ PRO, we don't have external links. According to Analytics we have no traffic on the old page. So now we changed the internal link, and I am wondering whether we should 301 redirect the old page to the new one, or whether a sitemap update is enough for this kind of pages ? Thanks in advance for your help.
Technical SEO | | isabelledylag0 -
Adding directories to robots nofollow cause pages to have Blocked Resources
In order to eliminate duplicate/missing title tag errors for a directory (and sub-directories) under www that contain our third-party chat scripts, I added the parent directory to the robots disallow list. We are now receiving a blocked resource error (in Webmaster Tools) on all of the pages that have a link to a javascript (for live chat) in the parent directory. My host is suggesting that the warning is only a notice and we can leave things as is without worrying about the page being de-ranked/penalized. I am wondering if this is true or if we should remove the one directory that contains the js from the robots file and find another way to resolve the duplicate title tags?
Technical SEO | | miamiman1000 -
URL Structure
I'm going through the process of redesigning our website, and the URL structure was brought up. We currently have our URLs structured as domain.com/keyword. It seems that some people think setting your URLs up to look like: domain.com/directory/keyword makes more sense from a user's perspective, and from a search engine's perspective. With our directories labeled as services, solutions, clients - I see no value in adding directories as it dilutes the keyword and brings the keyword further away from the domain. Are there situations where adding a directory before the page in the URL makes sense? If anyone has data showing the difference between the two that'd be great! Thanks, Brian
Technical SEO | | PrasoonGoel0 -
Are you allowed to point different urls to same page
hi, i have some urls that i am either going to put on hold or thinking about pointing to one of my sites. what it is, i am looking at re-designing the pages but not until next year, so i thought i would point some of the urls to a site that i am happy with to different pages, but not sure if i am allowed this or not so for example, if i have a site on cars, and one of the url is www.rovercars.co.uk i was thinking about pointing it to the page that is about rover cars. can anyone let me know if this is allowed or not please
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Is adding reviews to your site using schema structured data markup considered duplicating content?
A client of mine whats to add reviews from other sites such as Judys Book and Yahoo to their site. (Yes the actual content of what was posted in the review. They are proud of what their clients are saying). I am not sure if using schema mark up and including the review body on the clients web site was safe or would it be considered duplicate content? Is there a "good practice" for this? Any assistance or suggestions are welcomed. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | mgordon0 -
Mobile Site Domain/URL Structure
We are currently building a mobile optimised version of our main website and I had some questions with regard to SEO. 1. Is it best to structure the domain as: m.yourdomain.com yourdomain/m 2. It is correct to place rel="cannonical" on the mobile pages and to have only the main site indexed? Thanks in advance and links or books on mobile seo you can direct me to that would be greatly appreciated. Phil
Technical SEO | | Phily0 -
2 links on home page to each category page ..... is page rank being watered down?
I am working on a site that has a home page containing 2 links to each category page. One of the links is a text link and one link is an image link. I think I'm right in thinking that Google will only pay attention to the anchor text/alt text of the first link that it spiders with the anchor text/alt text of the second being ignored. This is not my question however. My question is about the page rank that is passed to each category page..... Because of the double links on the home page, my reckoning is that PR is being divided up twice as many times as necessary. Am I also right in thinking that if Google ignore the 2nd identical link on a page only one lot of this divided up PR will be passed to each category page rather than 2 lots ..... hence horribly watering down the 'link juice' that is being passed to each category page?? Please help me win this argument with a developer and improve the ranking potential of the category pages on the site 🙂
Technical SEO | | QubaSEO0 -
How to proceed with domain switch AND url change
Hi, in a few weeks we'll do a major change on our website. This involves over 1.5 million pages indexed in Google driving substantial amount of our traffic. Basically we have 2 types of changes: subdomain switches to domain:
Technical SEO | | TruvoDirectories
ex. product.company.com will become www.product.com
for this we know how to manage DNS and Apache rules different url patterns, basically replacing ugly urls by pretty urls
for this we have advanced 301-mapping rules set up Here is the question - what is best way to proceed with these 2 changes in order to preserve rankings and organic traffic: Do both changes simultaneously? First do url changes, than the domain switch Can you please share your thoughts?0