URL structure: 301 redirect or leave as is?
-
Hello,
My website, www.coloringbookfun.com is very old and authoritative, but the URL structure is terrible.
If you check out some of our subcategories such as http://www.coloringbookfun.com/Kung Fu Panda
and individual printables such as http://www.coloringbookfun.com/Kung Fu Panda/imagepages/image2.html
You can see that they aren't optimized. I am curious to know the pros and cons of fixing the URL structure and 301ing them to the new optimized url.
Will 301ing lose authority and backlinks for the sites pages? Does optimizing the url structure outweigh losing the authority/backlinks?
-
Completely agree, it will be a lot of work if you have a high number of pages but definitely worth the effort in the long run!
-
I would recommend optimizing the URL structure and 301ing the old URLs to the new ones. The amount of link equity lost (which is quite minimal) by 301ing the ugly URLs to the new URLs will be outweighed by the benefits of using a better URL structure in the long term.
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
-
What does Google's Spammy Structured Markup Penalty consist of?
Hey everybody,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | klaver
I'm confused about the Spammy Structured Markup Penalty: "This site may not perform as well in Google results because it appears to be in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines." Does this mean the rich elements are simply removed from the snippets? Or will there be an actual drop in rankings? Can someone here tell from experience? Thanks for your help!1 -
Do we lose Backlinks and Domain Authority of URL when we change domain Name?
Have 1 performing domain (Monthly - 4M visitor ) now we want to change domain name ( Brand name like SEOMOZ to Moz ). I have general knowledge about domain changing prevention tips like 301 redirection and other thing. My concern is about backlinks and DA. How can I prevent any lose from SEO Point of view. (backlink lose) Do I need to change all backlink form source or redirection is enough to get all reference traffic from that backlinks?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Why to add a product id in the url
Hello ! shop.com/en/2628-buy-key-origin-the-sims-4-seasons/ Why will people use a product id in the link? Is there any advantage like better ranking or else?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kh-priyam0 -
Duplicate content warning: Same page but different urls???
Hi guys i have a friend of mine who has a site i noticed once tested with moz that there are 80 duplicate content warnings, for instance Page 1 is http://yourdigitalfile.com/signing-documents.html the warning page is http://www.yourdigitalfile.com/signing-documents.html another example Page 1 http://www.yourdigitalfile.com/ same second page http://yourdigitalfile.com i noticed that the whole website is like the nealry every page has another version in a different url?, any ideas why they dev would do this, also the pages that have received the warnings are not redirected to the newer pages you can go to either one??? thanks very much
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ydf0 -
Url suddenlly diappeared from Google search results
Hi, I am facing a big problem wheel Google stop showing a basic url of my site, It was ranked good for more than 35 keywords from 1st to 8st positions, and suddenly I can find it indexed in Google , this is the URL : http://tv1.alarab.com/view-8/مسلسلات-عربية Thnaks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | alarab.net0 -
Unique page URLs and SEO titles
www.heartwavemedia.com / Wordpress / All in One SEO pack I understand Google values unique titles and content but I'm unclear as to the difference between changing the page url slug and the seo title. For example: I have an about page with the url "www.heartwavemedia.com/about" and the SEO title San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | About I've noticed some of my competitors using url structures more like "www.competitor.com/san-francisco-video-production-about" Would it be wise to follow their lead? Will my landing page rank higher if each subsequent page uses similar keyword packed, long tail url? Or is that considered black hat? If advisable, would a url structure that includes "san-francisco-video-production-_____" be seen as being to similar even if it varies by one word at the end? Furthermore, will I be penalized for using similar SEO descriptions ie. "San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | Portfolio" and San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | Contact" or is the difference of one word "portfolio" and "contact" sufficient to read as unique? Finally...am I making any sense? Any and all thoughts appreciated...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | keeot0 -
All pages going through 302 redirect - bad?
So, our web development company did something I don't agree with and I need a second opinion. Most of our pages are statically cached (the CMS creates .html files), which is required because of our traffic volume. To get geotargeting to work, they've set up every page to 302 redirect to a geodetection script, and back to the geotargeted version of the page. Eg: www.example.com/category 302 redirects to www.example.com/geodetect.hp?ip=ip_address. Then that page 302 redirects back to either www.example.com/category, or www.example.com/geo/category for the geo-targeted version. **So all of our pages - thousands - go through a double 302 redirect. It's fairly invisible to the user, and 302 is more appropriate than 301 in this case, but it really worries me. I've done lots of research and can't find anything specifically saying this is bad, but I can't imagine Google being happy with this. ** Thoughts? Is this bad for SEO? Is there a better way (keeping in mind all of our files are statically generated)? Is this perfectly fine?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dholowiski0 -
301 Redirect ASP code
Hi I have a script detailed below, that 301 redirects based upon different queries --- """"<%if (Request("offset") = "") Then%> <% if Request("keywords") = "" AND Request("s") <> "" AND Request("j") <> "" then'Sector and Location NOT NULL%> <% if (Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_X_REQUEST_URI")) <> "/" & LCase(SEOFriend(replaces.Fields.Item("JBCategoryLabel"))) & "-jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation"))) Then Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location", "/" & LCase(SEOFriend(replaces.Fields.Item("JBCategoryLabel"))) & "-jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation"))) Response.End End If %> <%End if%> <% if Request("keywords") = "" AND Request("s") <> "" AND Request("j") = "" then'Sector NOT NULL and Location NULL %> <% if (Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_X_REQUEST_URI")) <> "/" & LCase(SEOFriend(replaces.Fields.Item("JBCategoryLabel"))) & "-jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(SiteDetails.Fields.Item("JBSRegion"))) Then Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location", "/" & LCase(SEOFriend(replaces.Fields.Item("JBCategoryLabel"))) & "-jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(SiteDetails.Fields.Item("JBSRegion"))) Response.End End If %> <%End if%> <% if Request("keywords") = "" AND Request("s") = "" AND Request("j") <> "" then'Sector NULL and Location NOT NULL %> <% if (Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_X_REQUEST_URI")) <> "/jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation"))) Then Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location", "/jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation"))) Response.End End If %> <%End if%> <%End if%>"""" But this still allows for both the www and non www versions of these pages to render in the browser, which is resulting in duplicate content. On my home page I use -- <% If InStr(Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME"),"www") = 0 Then Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location","http://www." & Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_HOST") & "/" Response.End End if %> `Is there a good way to combine these, so that I still get all of the rules of the first script whilst also redirecting any non www versions to the www version? in other words
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TwoPints
domain.com/jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation")))
Eould redirect to
www.domain.com/jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation"))) Thanks in advance`0