I am switching shopping cart providers, and I cannot keep the same URL's we've had for the past 10+ years.
-
This applies to our product and category pages. What is the best way to limit the impact of this?
-
Hi Margaret
301 redirects! I have just gone through the same process as you will be. You may find this blog post of use, Its simple and quick.
http://blog.search-mojo.com/2010/10/14/301-redirects-formatting-bulk-redirects-in-4-quick-steps/
Also checkout http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ which will help you also.
-
There is no limit to the number of 301 redirects a site can have. A few hundred pages is relatively small. Just make sure they are implemented properly.
-
Hi Margaret,
Others may disagree perhaps but personally I'd say that 301'ing product to product, category to category is the way to go. From what I remember seeing a while back on the subject, Matt Cutts explained that it would be unwise to have too many 'hops' (e.g. 301 to 301 to 301 to 301...) but with redesigns etc doing a full product > product (page to page) redirect site-wide is fine.
At the end of the day it's best for the user!
re: the structure - with the new structure what is defining the 'keyword' part of the URL in '/productname-p/keyword.htm' ? You may be surprised what is possible in terms of automating (or at least semi-automating) things like bulk 301 redirects - especially if you can get the old URLs into an Excel file and manipulate them
I'd ask your digital agency (or whoever is doing the migration) if they can get their best Excel ninjas to have a chat with you about this.
At the absolute worst case, if there really is no way that this can be semi-automated, I'd say it's a job of a pot of coffee and some time with Excel open! A lot of the time though there is at least some automation that can be done in Excel.
-
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the response, the old structure was pretty flexible it's just "/productname.aspx " or really whatever keywords we wanted, but ending in .aspx.
The new structure is not as flexible, it is - "/productname-p/keyword.htm" and categories are "/categoryname/categoryIDnumber.htm"
So I don't think there's going to be anyway to automate this and we're looking at a few hundred products and a few dozen categories. Is there a downside to having that many 301 redirects?
-
I'd seriously look into 301 redirects.
How many products are we talking about and what is the current URL structure like?
The best way from an SEO, usability and revenue point of view would be to 301 URLS like-for-like - Sending domain.com/productabc.html to the same product on the new URL structure. This may be time consuming if you have 10's of thousands of URLS, but depending on the current structure you may be able to automate this at least a little.
So some questions:
What's the new structure
What's the old structure
How many products/categories/URLs?
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
-
1000's Backlinks from ONE Root Domain - Positive or negative?
One of my website's link is placed over a comment. This website has a "recent comments" section in the footer which is hence appearing on all the websites pages. All tools including - Google Search Console, Majestic and MOZ are showing 45000+ links from that root domain. Questions: Are these links harmful to my rankings? Should I get all those links disavowed? Should I disavow the root domain or leave the link that lies on the home page? What if there are up to 10 links coming from a domain? is that harmful too? Apart from disavowing, is there any other option to get this fixed? If at all this counts as an issue... Thanks in advance!!
Link Building | | Ishrat-Khan0 -
Is there a downside to "closing" a domain and 301'ing to to your main domain?
We have a domain which was optimized for a specific keyword. It does very well for that keyword, but seems like it has in turn caused our primary domain to be penalized (back to page 3) for that same keyword (We think they've figured out the connection). The optimized domain (only one page) has links on it to our primary domain, so I don't want to delete it as that's where our traffic currently comes from. But if I deleted it and 301'ed it to the primary domain is there a downside? Alternatively I could disavow it, but if the search engines know it's the same owner will they hold that against all domains? Or, alternatively again. Should I turn it into a more substantial website? Which could in turn remove it's "spamminess". Any suggestions are welcomed!
Link Building | | absoauto0 -
Does Adding Affiliate ID's to Link Affects it's Value
Hello, I have a question about adding Affiliate ID's to links. I receive a DoFollow link to my website with an affiliate ID in order to track the leads and the traffic that comes from each affiliate link/website. does this link (with the affiliate ID) pass Juice from the affiliate website? (I use canonical link element on my website pages)? how does Google deals with links with affiliate IDs ? is adding Affiliate ID to links reduces it's value?
Link Building | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Is anybody else noticing a dramatic change to their 'links to your site' section in Google Webmaster Tools?
Hey,
Link Building | | ChrisHolgate
Over the last six months or so we've been going through our backlink profile and cleaning up links from poor quality sources. Week by week there have been small changes in our Google Webmaster Tools 'links to your site' section to reflect this. I logged on this morning however and there has been a dramatic shift in the information displayed. Pretty much every bad link has been removed from the list including sites I know for a fact are still linking to us as they didn't communicate at all to our removal requests. Additionally, rather than showing the top 1000 links to our site as it used to, WMT is only showing 73 linking domains. The remaining 73 domains are good natural links from high quality sources. I'm guessing Google are just in the middle of an update and that the remaining linking domains (including the bad ones) will reappear shortly. This isn’t a request for advice or help but I’m just curious as to whether anybody else is seeing anything similar?0 -
New website, small business, niche market --- what's my best link building strategy?
Hi everyone, We are a small company manufacturing a niche product (indoor playground equipment), our new English website (www.funlandiaplaygrounds.com) has just been launched 2 months ago, before that we didn't even have a website in English. As the international sales manager of such a small company, I have to do all the international marketing jobs including SEO, but before this I'm almost a noob on SEO. I've just started the linking building work for our website, after a research on the links of our highest ranked competitors, I have found out that almost ALL of the external links of them come from directories and purchased links, many links are very dubious, please see the open explorer results below: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?page=1&site=www.spiplay.co.uk&sort=page_authority&filter=&source=&target=page&group=1 http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.softplay.com%2F http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links.html?page=1&site=www.china-cheer.com&sort=page_authority&filter=&source=&target=page&group=1 http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aileplay.com%2F http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=internationalplayco.com%2F The search keywords is: indoor playground equipment. According to the latest SEO theory and numerous posts I've read here, links from these directories carry very low value, and solely relying on these links may even cause penalty to the website, but the reality is, all these competitors rank on the top as a result of these "spammy" links. For example this website www.aileplay.com that has the highest PA of 64 and rank on the first page on the search result of indoor playground equipment, has tons of spammy links. That is the situation we are facing now, then my questions is: As a small business in such a niche market, what is our best strategy to rank well in a reasonable time, say 3 months to 6 months? I do not think our competitors are very strong and hard to beat, I believe we will beat them in content creation for sure, but what should we do in link building? should we start to get directory links now, as it obviously works for them? Or should we first create more attractive content, then use these content to get natural links BEFORE we submit for directory, as recommended by most link experts here? If so should we just sit back doing nothing before the link worthy content is created and natural links starts to come in? I highly appreciate any comments! DSG_clan
Link Building | | DSG_clan0 -
Shortened url vs. anchor text
Are there any benefits to linking a shortened url vs. an anchor text when I am link building?Would linking via shortened link such as tinyurl cause problems with SERPS? Also, would it be more beneficial to short link to the homepage or landing page?
Link Building | | Modbargains0 -
I'm interested in knowing link building strategies for regional businesses.
I'm not just interested in sites to target, but also how to manage anchor text when you are targeting phrases that include a keyword + a geo modifier. Thanks!
Link Building | | medtouch0 -
I'm seeing that open site explorer seems to do a good job analysing backlinks
I can see the link text and where they are coming from and i can use that to steer where i want to get links from, and how i want to get links. Am I missing something? Does raven tools or other software have anything more to offer me in managing my back links? I'm not talking about where and how to get them, just in viewing the structure to help fine tune it so as not to appear unnatural to Google. All responses wecomed
Link Building | | joemas990