Should I change by URL's
-
I started with a static website and then moved to Wordpress. At the time I had a few hundred pages and wanted to keep the same URL structure so I use a plugin that adds .html to every page.
Should I change the structure to a more common URL structure and do 301 directs from the .html page to the regular page?
-
It would be good to keep the existing url structure if you rank well.
Word of caution while using plugins : If you are using pages on wordpress .html extension at the end should be ok but if you are using the blog element and categorising and tagging content . It would be a good idea to check if the category pages and tag pages look ok. At times they might end in a / ( depending on how its setup ) and if you force to add .html at the end it might look odd
EG :
-
As its still marked unanswered I do hope Jill has resolved her query.
We recently moved a 300+ page static site to Wordpress - not using a plugin to add .html to the end but instead - we created a list of 301 redirects in htaccess to redirect the old links to the new ones - once Google had done its magic and updated after a few weeks we saw no drop in traffic or SERPS.
-
do the pages have any external links pointing to them? if not then you will not lose any link juice if you change. If you 301 you will lose a bit of link juice from any existing links
but IMO I would have stuck with the static site where you have full control over the html
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
-
Should I noindex my blog's tag, category, and author pages
Hi there, Is it a good idea to no index tag, category, and author pages on blogs? The tag pages sometimes have duplicate content. And the category and author pages aren't really optimized for any search term. Just curious what others think. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Rignite0 -
How should I close my forum in a way that's best for SEO?
Hi Guys, I have a forum on a subdomain and it is no longer used. (like forum.mywebsite.com) It kind of feels like a dead limb and I don't know what's best to do for SEO. Should I just leave it as it is and let it stagnate? There is a link in the nav menu to the main domain so users have a chance to find the main domain. Or should I remove it and just redirect the whole subdomain to the main domain? I don't know if redirects would work as I doubt most of the threads would match our articles, plus there are 700 of them. The main domain is PR3 and so is the forum subdomain. Please help!
Technical SEO | | HCHQ0 -
Does a GTLD extension 'count' as part of the target keyword?
Hopefully someone can shed some light on this for me. Reading about GTLDs, I came across this quote from TSO Host: 'What we don’t know is whether an extension can double up as a keyword, which is picked up by Google and treated identically to the rest of a domain name. I.e. - would ‘bristolguitars.music’ have more ranking potential than ‘bristolguitars.com’ as ‘music’ is a relevant search word?' Source: https://www.tsohost.com/blog/how-do-new-gtlds-affect-seo Does anyone know if a GTLD extension does double up as a keyword? For example, if Nike buys 'Nike.shoes', does this double as the keyword 'Nike shoes', or is Google and other search engines just looking at the domain name _before _the GTLD extension? I'm looking at .photography for examples (not my niche) and seeing folks are having mixed results ranking for 'Keyword + Photography', so would be keen to hear your thoughts.
Technical SEO | | ecommercebc0 -
Lots of Pages Dropped Out of Google's Index?
Until yesterday, my website had about 1200 pages indexed in Google. I did lots of changes: removed low quality content, rewrote passable content to make it better, wrote high quality content, got lots of likes and shares on social networks, etc. Now this morning I see that out of 1252 pages submitted, only 691 are indexed. Is that a temporary situation related to the recent updates? Anyone seeing this? What should I interpret about this?
Technical SEO | | sbrault740 -
Unused url 'A' contains frameset - can it damage the other site B?
Client has an old unused site 'A' which I've discovered during my backlink research. It contains this source code below which frames the client's 'proper' site B inside the old unused url A in the browser address. Quick question - will google penalise the website B which is the one I'm optimising? Should the client be using a redirect instead? <frameset <span class="webkit-html-attribute-name">border='0' frameborder='0' framespacing='0'></frameset <span> <frame src="http: www.clientwebsite.co.ukb" frameborder="0" noresize="noresize" scrolling="yes"></frame src="http:> Please go to http://www.clientwebsite.co.ukB <noframes></noframes> Thanks, Lu.
Technical SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
Google using descriptions from other websites instead of site's own meta description
In the last month or so, Google has started displaying a description under links to my home page in its search results that doesn't actually come from my site. I have a meta description tag in place and for a very limited set of keywords, that description is displayed, but for the majority of results, it's displaying a description that appears on Alexa.com and a handful of other sites that seem to have copied Alexa's listing, e.g. similarsites.com. The problem is, the description from these other sites isn't particularly descriptive and mentions a service that we no longer provide. So my questions are: Why is Google doing this? Surely that's broken behaviour. How do I fix it?
Technical SEO | | antdesign0 -
Has Google stopped rendering author snippets on SERP pages if the author's G+ page is not actively updated?
Working with a site that has multiple authors and author microformat enabled. The image is rendering for some authors on SERP page and not for others. Difference seems to be having an updated G+ page and not having a constantly updating G+ page. any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | irvingw0 -
Why is this url showing as "not crawled" on opensiteexplorer, but still showing up in Google's index?
The below url is showing up as "not crawled" on opensitexplorer.com, but when you google the title tag "Joel Roberts, Our Family Doctors - Doctor in Clearwater, FL" it is showing up in the Google index. Can you explain why this is happening? Thank you http://doctor.webmd.com/physician_finder/profile.aspx?sponsor=core&pid=14ef09dd-e216-4369-99d3-460aa3c4f1ce
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0