Is it worth keeping .html even if 301'ing
-
We're going from static to a wordpress based ecommerce site.
While we can append .html to urls the directory structure will change so that
www.oursite.com/productname.html goes to www.oursite.com/product/productname.html
My question is: Is it worth the trouble (from an seo perspective) of using a plugin to append new urls with .html when we're going to have to use 301 redirects anyway?
If not should the urls have a trailing slash?
-
Since you're doing redirects already, I'd get rid of the .html. They're not user friendly, and you're already doing a redirect anyways so why not. Seeing them on URLs looks old to me, most sites don't have them anymore.
Trailing slashes I don't have a strong opinion on. If these pages will never have pages after them, then I'd opt for no trailing slash, just because I think most sites do that now.
-
I really wouldn't worry about it if I were you. You are choosing to set up an e-commerce site on the most hacked platform in the world.
-
Yes, we're familiar with that plugin and we've decided it's to risky in an ecomerce setting.
-
Hey, I googled it and found it. This is it http://wordpress.org/plugins/seo-ultimate/ Look down at the permalink tweaker, that is what I was talking about.
-
Actually you can take those off in wordpress. You just have to be careful about collisions. A collision being say a page that has the same name as a product. I use one of the SEO plugins to take the category names off of my site. I know it is not the yoast plugin, but it is the other popular one.
Sorry, I would log in and tell you what it is, but I am on a mobile device and someone has actually been trying to crack my site for the last few days, so I deleted my wp-login page. So the site cannot be logged into currently. When I get back around my desktop I will give you the name of the SEO module I use to do it.
-
The problem is we can't preserve site structure. Keeping file names the same is not a problem but all new product URLs will have ..../product/.... added.
My question is that as we're forced to use a 301 here anyway, is it worth keeping the .html.
-
I have seen lots of discussion about 301 passing "link juice" and page authority, and what not. If you can mimic the exact structure you have now, then it won't be an issue of whether things will pass. Also, there is a down time in SE's when you change a whole sites urls. You can skip that too if you leave them the same.
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 -
Making html table as 'seofriendly' as possible
Hi, On my website I have a table with a list of products, on every row I have a different product and a different property on each column. The table is made with css so the html code is clean. The problem is (I guess) that google doesn't 'understand' what its inside on the table. So if I do a google search that page appears on the page 87, there is any way to improve my SEO without changing the table? Or to improve my SEO I must change the format of my content? In resume, I want to improve the SEO page of a page that contains information organized inside a table. I don't know if there is a specific answer to this question. Any help is welcome. Regards
Web Design | | jcobo0 -
Sitemap Question (aspx, XML, HTML)
Hey everyone! My company uses a tool called SEOQuake. We are trying to hit all of their "checkmarks" when we run a diagnosis for them. One of the only things we can not figure out how to pass is their section for Site Compliance ---> XML Sitemaps. Our client's websites that we have built are all using .aspx URL structures, and when I view them, it clearly states that it is an XML file. It has this text written at the top of the .aspx page: "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below." Does anyone know what is happening here?
Web Design | | TaylorRHawkins
Thank you!1 -
New Google SERPS design - What's Changed?
Has anyone noticed any fall out from the recent redesign of SERP pages by Google? I noticed that there appears to be one less organic result "above the fold" now, so if you were possibly in third or fourth position maybe slight dip in traffic? Any noticeable shift in click through rate with the new bigger font? Also, has anyone noticed if the new design has caused any shift in best practices for on-page meta data like Title tag and description tag counts? I know the Title tag was previously driven by the pixel width of the title in Google SERPS, just curious if that has changed with this redesign.
Web Design | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
What happens if I 301 Redirect my homepage to a different page on site
If i were to 301 redirect the index page of my website to a page in a different subdirectory of my site would that adversely affect SEO? Does your home page need to be in the root of your site? I'm asking because a developer has told me that it would be best to do that since he needs to install OpenCart on the root of our domain...
Web Design | | SheffieldMarketing0 -
HTML vs WordPress
Which website gets better SEO results? I was told that HTML is crawled better than WordPress. Which is a more expensive website to design? What are the pros and cons of each?
Web Design | | CapitolShine0 -
Footer backlinks for sites I've developed
I link back to my website via my company name on the footers of sites I develop. Lately I've been changing this to my keyword and mixing and matching. This has been done for new sites I create and old sites I've not seen any benefit so far after a couple of months. Most my clients are hosted on the same server as my main site that it links back to. 1. Is this a bad idea to link back on the same IP?
Web Design | | sanchez1960
2. Is footer backlinks to the main developer going to annoy Google?
3. Should I change my main site's server, will it help? All my competitors seem to do it and as far as I can tell they seem to get better results than I do. Because I'm now changing them the reason I see no benefit? Thanks0 -
What's the best was to structure Product page information on my site?
Hi - I run a hobby related niche new / article / resource site (http://tinyurl.com/4eavaj4). One of the most critical components of the site is our product database. We don't actually sell anything directly - instead we monetize them by displaying relevant affiliate product feeds and price comparisons. However since the Panda update was implemented in February my traffic (particularly my long tail, product related traffic) has dropped off considerably. I had about a 20% drop in overall traffic, but have made up some of the ground in the past week. However I want to know once and for all how I should structure my product related information as I have a ton of great content that is ready to be published in this section but want to be sure I structure it the best possible way from a SEO standpoint. Here are a few different options I've come up with for displaying information about products on my site. For the purpose of these examples I am going to refer to all of the information that makes up my product pages collectively as "product profiles". Please let me know which is the best SEO wise (or if you have a better way of doing it let me know): - Option 1 - Current Method - Divide Content Sections into different pages / urls Example: http://tinyurl.com/4tpdlbl This is how the majority of my product profiles are currently structured. I did this to improve load times and to keep the total number of links per page down. In addition to the core product profile subpages: "Product Details","Compare Prices", **"**Product Review", "Hot Auctions", and "Checklists", I have the Checklists area further segmented by subset, each of which is on its own page that is only accessible through the main Checklists tab of the profile. - Option 2 - Everything on one url / page the old fashioned way, with everything available by scrolling vertically. This would make the page go on forever though. - Option 3 - Everything on one url / page, but visually segmented using css / javascript tabs. Example: http://tinyurl.com/4kqhauh I looked at the source code and all the page text is there, so it looks like it would be spider-able but you tell me. Or would another method of tabbing be better? My site is wordpress based so the functionality comes from a plugin. - Option 4 - Use post tabs that are technically all on the same page, but make each individual tab be accessible through its own suburl, all of which share the same core canonical url. Example: http://tinyurl.com/4bs9pjs Clicking on any of the individual tabs will result in something like ?postTabs=2 being appended to the core url. Example: http://tinyurl.com/4gvgufc Any input would be greatly appreciated asap! Thanks Mike
Web Design | | MikeATL0