Permalink question
-
For 5 years I have used the permalink custom structure: /%postname% without the end backslash. I didn't think the difference was that big of a deal, yet last month I was curious of what benefits would happen if I made the change. To my surprise my rankings took a slight dive, but recovered stronger than before. As the URL itself doesn't require a redirect the posts and pages loaded the same with or wothout the "/"
But now in Open Site Explorer, all my URL's have no page Authority. All the links i built were pointing to links without the backslash: example.com/post-name
Questions:
- Did Google figure out the change, hence the dip in rankings and strong return?
- Will keeping /%postname%/ even though many links are pointing to a non backslash URL comeback to haunt me?
- Is there anything I can do to help lead Google to better see the changes I've made?
thx
-
Placing something like this in your .htaccess file will redirect every page on your site without a "/" to one with a "/" without having to specify over 3k URLs individually.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$
RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://example.com/$1/ [L,R=301] -
There is over 3K articles on this site. I have done a 301 direct on the pages that are ranked but how do you 301 all urls? It can't be done can it?
-
Have you considered putting a 301 redirect in place so that the none trailing slash URLs that have links pointing to them redirect to the trailing slash version as that is now your preferred format? It will help reduce duplicate content and cut the potential of wasting link juice if some links point to one version and some to the other. You also need to make sure that your navigation structure is updated to point to the trailing slash version rather than being redirected to it.
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
-
How to be included in related questions (People also ask) in Google SERP?
Just wondered if anyone knows how to be included in SERP if it comes to related questions (People also ask). Do you have to fill some requirements or is it featured snippets kind of thing.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Optimal_Strategies1 -
Homepage organization schema question: logo lives on amazon server, can I call that out on the structured data?
Basically, the homepage organization schema has called out the logo, but it lives on the amazon server. We're having issues with Google rendering the correct logo on the knowledge graph. The URL for the amazon asset looks something like this: <brandname>-assets.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/<logo>.png</logo></brandname> Calling that out on the organization structured data for the logo is okay right?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imjonny1230 -
Structured Data Questions
I am showing 2 items with errors. These products have both been removed from the site, and will trigger a 404 Page Not Found. I am still seeing the page URLs in Webmaster Central > Search Appearance > Structured Data. They are shown as items with errors, the errors being that they are missing price too. Should I 301 redirect these on an htaccess file, or should I remove the page url in some other way from Google? Also, I have a site with over 50,000 products and 2,000 category level pages. In Structured Data, there are only 2,848 items. Does it seem like Google is collecting very little data compared to how many urls I have on my site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djlittman0 -
Google Places Question: Two Businesses, Same Address
I am working with a client who runs a personal training business. He shares a fitness studio with another personal trainer to minimise costs. My issue is that the other guy has 'taken' the Google Places listing address as his business, rather than my client's. The gym itself is not a business, it is simply a shared workspace by two personal trainers - in the same way as a shared office space might be the address of several businesses. This presents a bit of a problem with Google Places verification. Is it best to: 'Alter' the address slightly so it appears to be a separate premises (e.g. 51 Something Street --> 51A Something Street) then use that address in all my citations Leave the address itself the same, but rely on the fact that there are separate domains, phone numbers and business names Any thoughts on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Pretty-Klicks1 -
How To Internationalize - Big Question
Hi all, Here is a big question. We have a long-established good content website with a .co.uk domain. The site is UK focussed. However, we are planning a new feature which will be UK and worldwide. So do we: 1. Keep it all on our .co.uk ? 2. Put the non-UK parts on a .com domain ? We don't have any content as such for a separate domain, and are not planning any. But, we are not sure if for example US users would be unimpressed with a UK domain. We could fudge it with "co.uk/us" etc. (Notice how we have not mentioned Google. Fed-up chasing big G the whole time. We just want to concentrate on our users and the service we provide to them. But G remains the elephant crapping in the corner of the room.) Also, we are asking this question before we let our developers and designers get to work. Basically we value Moz community opinions over and above theirs. Realise this is a big question, but you have big brains. Please chip in.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dexm100 -
What to do when unique content is out of the question?
SEO companies/people are always stating that unique, quality content is one of the best things for SEO... But what happens when you can't do that? I've got a movie trailer blog and of late a lot of movie agencies are now asking us to use the text description they give us along with the movie trailer. This means that some pages are going to have NO unique content. What do you do in a situation like this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichardTaylor0 -
Worldwide Stores - Duplicate Content Question
Hello, We recently added new store views for our primary domain for different countries. Our primary url: www.store.com Different Countries URLS: www.store.com/au www.store.com/uk www.store.com/nz www.store.com/es And so forth and so on. This resulted in an almost immediate rankings drop for several keywords which we feel is a result of duplicate content creation. We've thousands of pages on our primary site. We've assigned a "no follow" tags to all store views for now, and trying to roll back the changes we did. However, we've seen some stores launching in different countries with same content, but with a country specific extensions like .co.uk, .co.nz., .com.au. At this point, it appears we have three choices: 1. Remove/Change duplicate content in country specific urls/store views. 2. Launch using .co.uk, .com.au with duplicate content for now. 3. Launch using .co.uk, .com.au etc with fresh content for all stores. Please keep in mind, option 1, and 3 can get very expensive keeping hundreds of products in untested territories. Ideally, we would like test first and then scale. However, we'd like to avoid any duplicate penalties on our main domain. Thanks for your help and answers on the same.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | globaleyeglasses0 -
Multiple Keyword Research Questions, Help
Hello , I've been trying for several days to understand how keyword research works for a multi purpose website,I've read guides, articles even some chapters from the book" The Art of Seo" by O'Reilly and still no luck. It seems i can't wrap my head around keyword research,lets say I have a social gaming community website and I'm trying to rank it first on some low competition keywords + some long tail keywords.The website has functions like leaderboards, profiles,events, competitions,etc so it's not actually a news related website but it will have a blog. My website being on the games niche It would imply that I should target words that contain the word "Games" but this word generates millions of searches globally so ranking first its nearly impossible if the website is brand new. This made me pursue generic keywords formed with 2 / 3 words like fresh games, new games, mmorpg games, fps games,etc which still generate lets say 30.000 searches globally each. Due to the different areas of the website like latest game events,latest games competitions,etc I'm confused If i should pursue website specific keywords like latest games events, fresh games events, latest games competitions, upcoming games competitions but these too generate 30.000 global searches each,so... 0.should i use generic keywords or keywords that include site features? So let's say I decide to pursue generic "games" keywords,due to a high competition based on the keyword I decide to go a layer deeper and for the keyword "fresh games" I obtain keywords like** "fresh games 2011,top fresh games 2011, upcoming fresh games** " and thus building a list of 30 keywords that contain " fresh games".If i do this for the rest of the keywords: ** new games, mmorpg games, fps games,etc** I end up with a list of 10.000 keywords or more since each keyword generates other keywords. Is this the correct approach ? since generating 10.000 keywords sounds a lot and I'm getting the feeling that It's not how it supposed to be done,like were would I insert 10.000 keywords? So how do I know which keywords to pick and aim in order to try to get no.1 ranking? and why those? How many keywords should I use? and where should i put them? since it's not a news website so writing a lot of articles isn't an option. Should I focus on 2 words keywords with around 10.000-30.000 seaches or 2 words keywords + long tail keywords with less traffic like 100 - 5000? Is there a guide for the Keyword Analysis Tool since if i enter "fresh new games" i get a 39% keyword difficulty,is that hard to rank? and I don't know what all those color mean since some of them have higher numbers then others that are found at the top and how can i get beat a website that has has rank 10. So hopefully with your help & by some miracle I will finally be able to build a keyword list. Thank you !
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | arching0