Getting a Vanity (Clean) URL indexed
-
Hello, I have a vanity (clean looking) URL that 302 redirects to the ugly version. So in other words
302 >>>
http://www.site.com/directory/directory/url.aspx
What I'm trying to do is get the clean version to show up in search. However, for some reason Google only indexes the ugly version.
cache:http://www.site.com/directory/directory/url.aspx is showing the ugly URL as cached and cache:http://www.site.com/url is showing not cached at all.
Is there some way to force Google to index the clean version? Fetch as Google for the clean URL only returns a redirect status and canonicalizing the ugly to the clean would seem to send a strange message because of the redirect back to the ugly.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you,
-
Thank you, great answer.
-
Agree with Devanur - you need to use a 301 permanent redirect not a 302 temporary redirect.
-
Hi,
You need to go in for server-side URL rewrites in this case. With URL rewrite in place, the URL in the address bar for the visitor will be your SEO and user-friendly, vanity URL and the same will be in search engines' indices there by accomplishing your mission. Then you might want to make sure that your old, ugly URL passes on all its SEO goodies to the vanity URL. For this, you can go in for a 301 redirection from the ugly URL to the vanity URL.
Here is a beautiful article from Moz: http://moz.com/blog/url-rewrites-and-301-redirects-how-does-it-all-work
Hope it helps. Good Luck.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
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
-
How to index Backlink Fast
hi, From the past some month i am facing the problem in indexing backlinks, please share the method to index backlink in google fast
Technical SEO | | vijay231 -
Url folder structure
I work for a travel site and we have pages for properties in destinations and am trying to decide how best to organize the URLs basically we have our main domain, resort pages and we'll also have articles about each resort so the URL structure will actually get longer:
Technical SEO | | Vacatia_SEO
A. domain.com/main-keyword/state/city-region/resort-name
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village_ _ domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature _
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village/kid-friend-pool_ B. Another way to structure would be to remove the location and keyword folders and combine. Note that some of the resort names are long and spaces are being replaced dynamically with dashes.
ex. domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village_ _ domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature_
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village-kid-friend-pool_ Question: is that too many folders or should i combine or break up? What would you do with this? Trying to avoid too many dashes.0 -
Google Indexing - what did I missed??
Hello, all SEOers~ I just renewed my web site about 3 weeks ago, and in order to preserve SEO values as much as possible, I did 301 redirect, XML Sitemap and so on for minimize the possible data losses. But the problem is that about week later from site renewal, my team some how made mistake and removed all 301 redirects. So now my old site URLs are all gone from Google Indexing and my new site is not getting any index from Google. My traffic and rankings are also gone....OMG I checked Google Webmaster Tool, but it didn't say any special message other than Google bot founds increase of 404 error which is obvious. Also I used "fetch as google bot" from webmaster tool to increase chance to index but it seems like not working much. I am re-doing 301 redirect within today, but I am not sure it means anything anymore. Any advise or opinion?? Thanks in advance~!
Technical SEO | | Yunhee.Choi0 -
Indexation question
Hi Guys, i have a small problem with our development website. Our development website is website.dev.website.nl This page shouldn't be indexed bij Google but unfortunately it is. What can i do to deindex it and ask google not to index this website. In the robots.txt or are there better ways to do this? Kind regards Ruud
Technical SEO | | RuudHeijnen0 -
Overly Dynamic URLs
I have a site that I use to time fitness events and I like to post the results using query strings. I create a link to each event's results/gallery/etc. I don't need these pages crawled and I don't want them to hurt my seo. Can I put a "do not crawl" meta on them or will that hurt my overall positioning? What are my other options?
Technical SEO | | bobbabuoy0 -
Index Issues with Iframes
I have pages that are being scrapped and displayed in iframes and I wanted to see if anyone could tell me how I could get theses pages to be indexed here is a URL of one of the pages http://coggno.com/onlinetraining/safety-/other/lab-safety-1INde
Technical SEO | | PageOnePowerGang0 -
Keyword and URL
I have a client who has a popular name (like 'Joe Smith'). His blog URL has only his first name and the name of his company in it, like joe.company.com. His blog doesn't rank well at all in the first 3-4 Google SERPs. I was thinking of advising him to change the URL of his blog to joesmith.company.com, and having his webmaster do 301 redirects from the old URL to the new one. Do you think this is a good strategy, or would you recommend something else? I realize ranking isn't just about the URL, it's about links, etc. But I think making his URL more specific to his name could help. Any advice greatly appreciated! Jim
Technical SEO | | JamesAMartin0 -
Is there any value to a home page URL adding the /index.html ?
For proper SEO, which version would you prefer? A. www.abccompany.com B. www.abccompany.com/index.html Is there any value or difference with either home page URL??
Technical SEO | | theideapeople0