Question Mark In URL??
-
So I am looking at a site for a client, and I think I already have my answer, but wanted to check with you guys.
First off the site is in FLASH and HTML. I told the client to dump the flash site, but she isn't willing right now.
So the URLS are generated like this.
Flash:
http://www.mysite.com/#/page/7ca2/wedding-pricing/
HTML:
http://www.mysite.com/?/page/7ca2/wedding-pricing/
checking the site in Google with a site:mysite, none of the interior pages are indexed at all.
So that is telling me that Google is pretty much ignoring everything past the # or ?.
Is that correct?
My recommendation is to dump the flash site and redo the URLS in a SEo friendly format.
-
I think you would have to turn flash off to see it on a desktop.
But yes, my recommendation is the dump the flash version, keep the HTML version and restructure the URLS. Only then does it make sense to start SEO. (thought you could argue that is SEO)
-
Well maybe a mobile version. But from the desktop I can't seem to get to it. Anyway if the site can be recreated in HTML with the same look and functionality, why does she want the Flash site? Mention the speed factor to her as well... Site takes far too long to load.
-
I thought it was a full flash site also until I pulled it up on my IPAD. There is a full html version there.
-
Jesse's right. AS much as your client doens't want to upgrade and rework the entire site (build an equivalent in HTML or PHP), there isn't much you can do. This is a full FLASH site, locked SWF and Google isn't going to crawl or index any of the content or information.
You could do a few other things to help the business on a local level:
1. Build up all the social profiles and media needed to support Google local search. Social media, Google+, FB and Twitter sould be a good start. Even a LinkedIn profile to support the company and business.
2. Add in a WORDPRESS customization feature to the site, and build up a blog for content marketing and development. Work to create content around each of these categories and redirect users back to the company site. You don't have specific landing page URL's to use and optimize, but it's a cost effective start if they are unwilling to bend on going the route that will benefit them the most.
I've had clients like this and it's the hardest thing to tell them everything they have or are doing is wrong on many levels. It's probably the most sensitive area when dealing with a client you don't want to upset Tough road ahead for sure.
Cheers!
-
You know I may have been partially wrong.. Some of the pages are being indexed and text as well. It's certainly not doing any favors though and the navigation is rough to begin with. I can barely see the pages in the nav bar.. Maybe tell your client that and it could help.
But looking at this shows me that not only does the question mark not matter (to answer your original question) but there is a bit of crawling going on:
-
Well the HTML site is redirecting to the flash site as far as I can tell. And the URLs are all goofed up and silly. Oof. You got your work cut out for you here, especially if the client is unwilling to change as you're describing.
Anyway because there is nothing but a Flash site here, Google is not crawling it and it's not being indexed from what I can tell. I grabbed a couple strings of text and ran a search for them and the site didn't show up. The homepage is indexed, but it will never appear in the desired SERPs as you already well know...
Your client would really hate me because I'd be trying to convince them to change their entire company name. I realize this is a localized business but there are 3 different "sweetlightstudio.com" websites that all look the same to me. Now I know there are cities at the end of each one but I guarantee you a large portion of potential customers get confused and end up on the wrong site and then say "wait I don't live in San Francisco what the heck is this" and leave.
Well good luck with this one! Ha!
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
-
Looking for list Pro's & Con's of removing Folder from URL?
Hi We have a sub-folder ("/shop-by-department/") which is pretty much useless on our site and I'm looking to remove it. But the team want a list of the Pro's & Con's in doing so. So for example I'll be changing www.example.ie/shop-by-department/furniture/beds/product-a to www.example.ie/furniture/beds/product-a I know there will be an intial hit as Google adjusts to the change but think it's definitely the way to go. I was lookng for a complete list of the Pro's & Con's to send onto the team. It'll be going to the traditional marketing (print, radio, etc.) too so can ve top-level points too. Hope you can help! Thanks
Web Design | | Frankie-BTDublin0 -
Infinite Scroll and URL Changing
Hi, So my website is having an issue indexing. Much like other sports sites like ESPN or MLB or a variety of others my site changes the URL as you go down the page. So if you go on a news article and continue scrolling you'll go to another news article. I believe that this is creating errors in Search Console with the article being given an error of being "too long". I don't know how to keep this infinite scroll and url changing which increases my pageviews and eliminate the errors. Can someone help?
Web Design | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
Moving servers which means moving ip address but using the same URL. Would it harm the website's SEO?
Hello everyone, The server (in-house) which we use to host our website is a bit old. We are using CDN77 for our static content. What if I move all our website to the CDN service? meaning I use their storage capability and just have our url point to the IP address they provide. Would that hurt our rankings?
Web Design | | Edgar-Cerecerez0 -
Is it ok to redirect an old URL to new URL with anchor tag?
Ex. OLD URL - http://www.mysite.com/shoes/red/description NEW URL - http://www.mysite.com/shoes/red#desc Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | esiow20130 -
Do you know any tool(s) to check if Google can crawl a URL?
Our site is currently blocking search bots that's why I can't use Google Webmaster Tools' URL fetch tool. In Screamingfrog, there are dynamic pages that can't be found if I crawl the homepage. Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | esiow20130 -
Were our URLs setup correctly?
The person who build our site setup a lot of the pages like: domain/location/city/title tag For example: http://www.kempruge.com/location/tampa/tampa-personal-injury-legal-attorneys/ I know the length is too long and it seems entirely unnecessary to me. Many of the pages I have created since I got here are just domain/title tag (which is almost always city-field of law-attorneys-lawyers). However, when I compare the original pages with the new ones, they both rank similarly. Given what a pain it is to change urls, I'm not sure if it would be worth it to shorten them all or not. However, I would like to know if the way there were setup originally makes sense for some reason I don't understand. Thanks, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
Website Redesign 301 Question
Hey Moz gang, I have a question that I believe I know how I'm going to handle, but just wanted some feedback from the Moz community on best practices. At my company, we're going through a site redesign. At the moment, our site is deeper than it should be with many one-off feature pages. For example, we have a Features page that then links to individual pages for each specific feature. One goal we have set for the redesign is a condensing of the pages in order to make the site more user-friendly, easy to manage and content rich. My question is this. We have a lot of these individual pages that I want to essentially kill and merge into one page. It is okay (best practice) to 301 all of those individual feature specific pages to the single Features page since that is now where all of that content lives?? I want to retain the link juice that those pages have gained over time, but I don't want to get penalized for too many 301's to a single page. Any advice or previous experience would be awesome 🙂 Thanks, Lance
Web Design | | RobinBryant10 -
This is not a question but a comment
My website www.kids-iq-tests.com is mainly focused on articles; however, I have noticed that after adding a few images of celebrities, I have gained a lot of traffic from image searches from Google. My point is that by adding images of popular celebrities to an article, you can gain a substantial amount of traffic. give it a try and see if you can gain traffic from image searches.
Web Design | | dougster620