Which URL to use for my campaign?

[mstanwyck]

My outdated CMS redirects from a clean url root domain to an ugly url. Should I use the ugly one to start a my campaign?

So when you type in www.site.com it redirects to

www.site.com/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4/Home.htm

Should I use the url it redirects to when starting a campaign?

[mstanwyck]

Thanks. Should I set it up as a Subdomain, root domain, or folder? Using your suggestion, they all return some kinfd of error.

For example using the homepage url http://www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4/Home.htm I get the following results:

subdomain:

You've decided to set up a subdomain campaign, but entered the subfolder path:
www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4.

Don't worry, we'll switch that for you and crawl everything on your subdomain: www.pcf.org.

If you meant to set this up to only crawl pages in the subfolder /site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4, click "Go back and Change" and choose the subfolder option in step 1.

root domain:

You've decided to set up a root domain campaign, but entered the subfolder path:
www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4.

Don't worry, we'll switch that for you and crawl everything in the subfolder /site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4.

subfolder:

It looks like you submitted a URL that relates to an individual file:
www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4/Home.htm
rather than a folder:
www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4.

Don’t worry, we’ll switch that for you and crawl everything in that folder instead. If you meant to set this up for a different folder, click ”Go back and change” and enter a different path.

To complicate things further, as you move through the site, the only part of the URL that starys consistent 100% of the time is: http://www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/

Depending on where you are on the site, it appends the url. For example:

One page is

http://www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.6185669/k.9792/Sherry_Galloway.htm

while another is

http://www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5800843/k.94DE/Everyday_Heroes.htm

[SamWeber]

Thanks for the question George!

Generally you'll want to set up a campaign with the final URL of the domain you want to track.  This would prevent Roger from potentially getting stuck in any redirect.  Using your example, this would be the:

www.site.com/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4/Home.htm

You can check out the URL beforehand though, using the crawl test tool (http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/crawl-test).  It'll take a bout 2 hours to complete, but your see whether or not Roger will be able to handle your particular redirect.  Have a great day!

Sam
Moz Helpster