Using RewriteRule - SEO Implications
-
Hi There,
My client has a website (www.activeadventures.com) which they relaunched in April 2013. The company sells inbound tourism trips to New Zealand, South America and the Himalayas. Previously, the websites for these destinations were on their own domains (activenewzealand.com, activehimalayas.com, activesouthamerica.com).
With the launch of the new website those domains were all retired (but had 301 redirects put into place to the new site), and moved into sub directories of the activeadventures.com domain (eg: activeadventures.com/new-zealand).
There has been no indication that this strategy has improved organic search results (based on analytics) and in my opinion I believe that having this structure has been detrimental to their results. My opinion is based off the following:
- Visitors to the websites are coming into the site with a specific destination in mind that they want to travel to. Thus... having the destination in the URL I believe provides more immediate relevancy and should result in a higher CTR.
- I also feel that having the sites on their own URL's will provide a more concentrated theme for the destination based search phrases.
The new site is a custom Joomla build and I want to find the easiest way to keep the current Joomla set up AND move the country specific sections of the site back onto their original URL's.
It seems on the face of it that the easiest way to get this done is to use the htaccess file and use "RewriteRule" to push all the relevant pages back onto their original domains. Obviously we will ensure we also cover off pointing the existing 301's from the new site and the old sites to this new structure.
My question is, are their any potential negative SEO implications of using the RewriteRule in the htaccess file to achieve this?
Many thanks in advance.
Kind Regards
Conrad Cranfield -
you need to tell people where you can take them in the section above the fold in your website. I would have a very large text that is clickable stating
We give guided tours to then allow people to click on their destination of choice.
New Zealand,
South America
Himalayas
If you want to get clients that are in the United States for instance, and you use a New Zealand TLD you will be unable to geo-target in Google Webmaster tools therefore it will rank better in New Zealand than the states.
Moosa
is right on the money asking about what you did prior to changing your domain.
Then you converted everything to one site did you use a tool similar to screaming frog let you 301 redirect all the pages perfectly to their new domain?
Did you tell Google you are moving domains in all 3 instances?
Try using screaming frog with this guide http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/screaming-frog-guide
this post as well should be of help to you.
http://moz.com/community/q/how-to-keep-old-url-juice-during-site-switch
&
http://moz.com/blog/achieving-an-seo-friendly-domain-migration-the-infographic
I hope this is of some help,
sincerely,
Thomas
PS if the photograph is too small use this link
-
I don’t see any negative SEO effect with what you have explained here but just to tell you what I have encountered with my client’s website in the past!
When working with .htaccess file try to use it carefully because this can even lead to a big disaster if something gone wrong! (Just sharing my experience).
Also, plan the redirections prior to the switch because without it you might see a big drop in traffic obviously shifting URL will hit you a bit in rankings and traffic but that will be mostly temporary.
Hope this helps!!
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
-
Is Removing Breadcrumbs Detrimental for SEO?
We have full navigational breadcrumbs on our site for the menu and the brand menu. i.e. Home > Clothing > Jackets Brand > Brand Name > Brand Jackets There's been talk of removing this and having it like Chico's does, where on item pages they just have a link at the top to previous category (i.e. you're on a shirt product page and at the top it says "Back to Tops" instead of listing Home > Clothing > Tops) Is doing something like this detrimental to SEO? From what I've read Breadcrumbs are for user experience but I just want to be sure.
Technical SEO | | AliMac261 -
SEO problem: wrong language sitelinks
The French and German version of my web site are showing mixed language sitelinks I have no idea how to fix this now that Google have remove demote sitelinks feature, how can I make sure only the german site links appear in the german version of the site and french site links only appear in the french version of the site? www.mercimamanboutique.com/de-de/ www.mercimamanboutique.com/fr-fr/ Thanks again
Technical SEO | | ss20160 -
Magento SEO question
Hello Moz Community, I am wondering if these magento settings are correct for seo. www.domain.com 301 > www.domain.com/main-language www.domain.com/main-language/main-keyword (index & follow) www.domain.com/main-language/main-keyword/shopby/size-m (index & follow & canonicalized to www.domain.com/main-language/main-keyword) All layered navigation links are no-follow
Technical SEO | | mhenze0 -
Page speed in relation to SEO
I cannot seem to find any information about this, so I thought I would try to get a few people's opinion. How do you think pagespeed is measured in terms of Google using it as a ranking factor? Do you think they use their internal Pagespeed app? Something during the crawl? Your GA site speed?
Technical SEO | | LesleyPaone0 -
Wordpress Pods and Wordpress SEO by Yoast
Hi I am optimising a new site that has been built in Wordpress using Pods. The Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin is not recognising any content on the site - has anyone any ideas on how to get around this - does it matter - is it the plugin that is at fault rahter than the set up of the site?
Technical SEO | | Highlandgael1 -
What price should you pay for seo services
A friend of mine has a business site and he has said to me that he has been receiving a number of emails with regards to seo services. He is seriously thinking about using a company to help him as he does not have the time to promote his site and get it in the top of the search engines. Last week he asked me what price should he be paying for a small business site and to be honest i could not give him an answer as i have never used a company who deal with seo before. A lot of the emails he has received are from India, and i would like to know what is involved, do they need access inside your site and what price is a good price to pay. Normally i would have told him to learn seo himself but due to the lack of time he has i can understand why he needs a company to help him any help would be good
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
How to get SEO juice from a widget iframe?
Looking at building a widget for my site, Babyhuddle. We're looking at using iframes for the widget and I'm concerned that this means I won't be able to get any SEO juice out of each widgets that are implemented on users' blogs. Any recommendations on how we can get SEO juice out of widgets in iframes?
Technical SEO | | walidalsaqqaf0 -
Need advanced SEO help!
Hi guys, This is my last attempt to work out what is up with this site before it goes to the big Flipper in the sky (and even then I doubt it will make much more than £1!) This site was a successful site, then one day Google decided it didnt like it, and I have not had much joy with it for nearly a year now. I must admit I tried to forget about it for a while, but it has always been a thorn in my side due to the fact it used to be a nice little earner. I have SEOmoz crawled it and I cant find any issues that would cause such a severe penalty, I removed many of the affiliate links, clocked the rest of the affiliate links and tried numurous other ideas, but now, as a last ditch attempt I am looking for some help! I tried to avoid the typical thin affiliate site by adding relevant content, but I have seen sites with much poorer design and content rank higher than this one. Any ideas welcome! Thanks in advance My site
Technical SEO | | mozUser14692366292850