To change or not to change site URL structure?
-
I am learning my way around SEO, having always used professionals for it in the past on previous businesses i have decided to do it myself and learn more about it.
Now the dilemma i am up against is i recently changed some of my permalinks on quite a few main pages throughout the site.
The site launched in April this year so we're quite new. The problem is since my last change i have not seen any increase...a decrease which in fact hasn't recovered at all.
Having now analysed them in more depth and read up more on the whole subject of SEO, (which is endless) i have put together a complete new strategy; with this increased understanding of what i am doing (but by no means conclusive) i want to complete a full overhaul on all SEO (via Wordpress which i use along with YOAST SEO tools), ensuring i have all my keywords, permalinks and descriptions spot on throughout every page, post and picture.
I spent a lot of time mapping these out, ensuring there is no Focus keyword duplication, and that the site is relatively flat in terms of its layout.
What i am unsure about now is whether changing my permalinks again is a bad thing to do?
Could it permanently damage my rep going forward?
Should i just focus on my content and keywords/descriptions?I am at a loss as i don't want to do irreparable damage to our reputation. The site is still reasonable easy to manage so changing now is the best time to do it, but if changing the URLs is a waste of time then i may just forget that and just work on the keywords, descriptions and content.
Advice is 'oh so welcome'
-
Thanks a bunch. Its really a little daunting when it comes to changing the URL structure.
So changing these is ok as long as i have all the 301 redirects in place. CHECK!
Look at hosting two sitemaps for a week or two before removing the old one. CHECK!One thing I spotted in your responses was that you said:
- retain the ending /
- also the first URL structure i used was adequate.
Just wanted to know why?
Also in regards to this URL change, my on page SEO tools mentions that i should try to use the focus keyword in the URL. Is this a big help now? I know it always was before, so just checking nothing has changed.
Obviously if i go back to using - /Locations/uxbridge/ - that doesnt say a lot about the keyword i want to be recognised for, whereas using - /CBT-course-locations/uxbridge/ - on the other hand does.
The latter however this does keep me pretty much locked to this keyword forever, whereas using the original /locations/uxbridge/ comes down to content right?
Have you any final feedback or guidance on this last point?
I cannot tell you how much it helps to have you guys to bounce off - It gets all a little overwhelming on your own sometimes.Thanks again
C -
Hey,
My personal preference would have been to stick with the original URLs /locations/uxbridge and use the rest of the website and localised SEO to promote these locations pages and associate them with a particular service.
However, if your set on changing the URLs then take Joseph's advice and spend some time getting this right. As he says make sure that your redirects do not chain together and any previous URLs point directly to the new URL.
If you make sure that any changes are covered by suitable redirects then the negative effects to your site will be minimal in terms of links lost and if your research is thorough then you should put yourself in a situation where more traffic is available.
With regards to submitting a new sitemap to WMT - I would recommend this. Doing so will let Google know that you have made changes and prompt them to process your new URLs.
In the past I have uploaded the new sitemap as a brand new sitemap alongside the existing one - this allows them to continue seeing the redirected URLs and realise what they are doing. I'd then advise removing the original sitemap from WMT after around a week to two weeks.
This process has worked well for me in the past.
I hope this helps.
-
I would keep the ending slash there. Not for any reason - just preference. Also, try to keep your URLs short and consistent.
I would say scrape all of your URLs and throw everything into excel have a old and new. Spend some time on this as you don't want to change the URL structure after this.
Sidenote: You don't want to stack 301s. Oldest URL -> Prev URL -> Current URL. Both Oldest and Prev should point to Current.
When you're done submit your updated sitemap to both google and bing webmaster tools.
-
Hi Andrew
Ok so here's an example of the URL's i wish to change.
A more major change would be to the way we showcase locations:
Current URL: motorcycle-training-centre-locations/uxbridge/
Planned revision: CBT-course-locations/uxbridge
The reason for this is CBT course offers higher benefits in regards keyword popularity for our industry. I can then amend all the related focus keywords and descriptive text. Plus motorcycle training centre locations seems too long and the choice of keywords i placed within the URL is probably not the best i could have selected.This URL was changed previously from just: Locations/uxbridge as i wanted to focus more on keywords within the URL structure. Now i am at the point of changing it again...i am just cautious of doing so if it doesn't serve us any favours. Personally i am confident it is a better structure but do not want to do irreparable damage to our rep.
What are your thoughts to this?
All in all there are currently around 40 URL's so its relatively small and manageable.
Also i am using wordpress but the URLs did not automatically redirect...i have however set up manual 301 redirects for previous changes.Also, once changed it begs the question should i submit to Google via webmaster tools or just let Google find us?
Soooo many things to consider
-
Changing the structure of your website URLs can be a pretty large undertaking and if mishandled can easily destroy your website - as you seem to have understood.
It's difficult to provide advice about changing them without seeing an example URL. If you could provide a current URL and an example of what you are considering changing the URL to it would be of help.
However, there are definitely benefits to correcting any issues with URLs and it is one of those issue that is best addressed as soon as possible before your website becomes too large and the job becomes mammoth. I'm assuming that since you are using Wordpress your previous URLs automatically redirect to the new permalink?
I would recommend checking that this is correct and going forward ensue that any URLs that you change have a working 301 redirect from the old URL to the new URL. If you forget the redirects or get them wrong you will effectively duplicate content and run the possibility of causing more issues than you started with.
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
-
Home page keyword in url
I have been looking into SEO for a few weeks now trying to perfect a homepage. Going through various sources on MOZ, and other examples out there on the internet, I keep seeing that you should have your keyword in the URL of the page. The homepage is the page most people want to rank the highest in google searches, however, you cannot put the keyword in the URL as most home page URLs are simply /. Should I actually make the home like this: www.example.com/key-word-example? I would imagine this would not be the normal for many users and would seem like it's not the home page.
On-Page Optimization | | Matthew_smart0 -
Better to hyphenate URL or no?
Sea Glass Jewelry or Sea-Glass-Jewelry My domain name does not have my keyword in it, so I have been using the category as a means to get the keyword in the URL. My site would say www.abcdefghijk.com/sea-glass-jewelry/sterling-starfish-necklace When I run the review, it tells me that I have too many parameters. Is it too long? Should I remove hyphens? Which is better?
On-Page Optimization | | tiffany11030 -
Link Structure
On my site I have a dropdown menu going across the page at the top to all of my categories on each page, I also have a similar structure going down the side going to the same categories, is this acceptable or would Google count this as double the internal links?
On-Page Optimization | | Palmbourne0 -
What precaution should we take to change the default page of the site
For some reason we wanted to change the default page of my site from example.com to example.com/default.aspx. We will be using 301 redirection to get the back link benefits. Do we need to make any changes in webmaster tool and sitemap too??
On-Page Optimization | | CyrilWilson0 -
Altering site structure
I work for a business that operates several sites that were developed a very long time ago. We've been making many different changes over the past 12-18 months to improve these sites in several different ways. One area that we've never discussed or attempted is general site structure. Its pretty obvious that when the business was started they had never heard of information architecture or usability design. To make matters worse, the internal linking strategy appears to have been link everything to everything. Well after being told that it couldn't be done - I'm getting our team to say we must focus on this, if for no other reason that to help consumers figure out how to navigate through our site. Today we essentially have a series of category / information pages. In some cases, we hang more detailed topical content related to a category /informational page in a hub and spoke manner. Although remember what I said about linking everything to everything. In reality there are a series of subtopics that should been designed for every category / informational area. Instead, what happened is in some cases the subtopic is integrated into the hub or category page, in other situations is hung off the page as a spoke page and in others the subtopic isn't even covered. The plan is to standardize - each category will have 'n' subtopics (~10-12, we're still working this out). From a navigational standpoint users will be able to easily navigate both across categories as well as subtopics within a category as well as between categories within adjacent/similar subtopics. This is essentially a grid if that makes sense. The question is this - we have some keywords that do well in SEO and many many more that do not and the trend has not been our friend. We're considering keeping the URLs of the pages associated with strong keywords the same within the nav structure, even though this might mean the URL for a spoke page will be inconsistent with the spoke page name from a different category. I don't see any real danger for pages that either are not associated with any ranking keywords or only very weak keywords. Maybe I'm wrong. What things should we consider in this change? We believe that this standardization should help consumers find the information they are looking for in a much more efficient manner, so page views/visit should go up. Additionally, this prepares us for category and subtopic comparison pages and other added functionality being added in a logical manner. We also think that as we add depth about a subtopic, it will be easier for us to acquire links to our site because the subtopics within a category will appeal to different websites. This is by no means a small project. We have hundreds and hundreds of pages. Do folks think this is a worthwhile endeavor? We've spent a lot of time cleaning up H1 tags, structure of our pages, anchor tags, page load order and speed, image caching, etc. Site structure, URL length and internal link structure are essentially what is left. Once these are done we intend to really get going on better and more organized content on our site. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | Allstar1 -
URL Rewrite
(By Google Traductor) Hello, I wanted to ask about some changes that we are evaluating for the issue of passing the url with variables to be more descriptive, for example: http://www.agroads.com.ar/detalle.asp?clasi=139592 tohttp://www.agroads.com.ar/humedimetro-para-cereales-draminski-gmm-139592.html In this case corresponds to the breakdown of a product if you have long published andcan be well positioned to change the title of this position would be lost unless youmanage it with a 301, as one would manage when you have more than 30000 products and title may change several times? There are tools to manage this? Finally, we must apply this to all listed with their respective filters, recommends doingtheir part with 301 redirects and analyze what funciene well to continue with the rest or implement a complete change? I hope I can bring a little light to implement this. Greetings and thanks! Roberto
On-Page Optimization | | romaro0 -
Cononical URL problem
Hello, In the keywords difficulty tool, one of my client's sites has a different number for links to root domain and links to page even though they're both the home page. How do I tell if I have a cononical URL problem, and what do I do about it if I do? Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Is my H1 and H2 site structure proper?
If I have an h1 tag on the page that describes the purpose of the page, is it a bad idea to make all of the sub-headings h2 tags? A designer mentioned that it was frowned upon to make all of the secondary headings into h2 tags, or to use CSS to selectively style the heading tags.
On-Page Optimization | | dbuckles0