If I want clean up my URLs and take the "www.site.com/page.html" and make it "www.site.com/page" do I need a redirect?
-
If I want clean up my URLs and take the "www.site.com/page.html" and make it "www.site.com/page" do I need a redirect?
If this scenario requires a 301 redirect no matter what, I might as well update the URL to be a little more keyword rich for the page while I'm at it. However, since these pages are ranking well I'd rather not lose any authority in the process and keep the URL just stripped of the ".html" (if that's possible). Thanks for you help!
[edited for formatting]
-
Thanks so much! I really appreciate it.
-
Yes, I would highly suggest creating 301 rewrites here. Like Travis said, search engines "may" be smart enough to understand that the new pages (without the .html ext) should redirect to the new site.com/page.
But I would play it safe and create the redirects from the get go.
-
You would get a 404 if you didn't employ the proper URL rewrites at the server level. Unless search engines have become smart enough to understand common extensions of a URL and attribute any possible link equity to the proper URL - then yes - you may likely need a 301 instead of rewrites.
Full disclosure: I've gone extensionless for years. I have never studied this particular case.
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
-
Confused about repeated occurences of URL/essayorg/topic/ showing up as 404 errors in our site logs
Working on a Wordpress website, https://thedoctorwithin.comScanning the site’s 404 errors, I’m seeing a lot of searches for URL/essayorg/topic, coming from Bingbot, as well as other spiders (Google, OpensiteExlorer). We get at least 200 of these irrelevant requests per week. Seems like each topic that follows /essayorg/ is unique. Some include typos: /dissitation/Haven't done a verification to make sure the spiders are who they say they are, yet.Almost seems like there are many links ‘in the wild’ intended for Essay.Org that are being directed towards the site I’m working on.I've considered redirecting any requests for URL/essayorg/ to our sitemap… figuring that might encourage further spidering of actual site content. Is redirection to our sitemap xml file a good idea, or might doing so have unintended consequences? Interested in suggestions about why this might be occurring. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | linkjuiced0 -
Strange URL redirecting to my new site
Hi all, I recently relaunched a site on a brand new URL - www.boardwarehouse.co.uk. I've spent the last couple of weeks building some backlinks as well as developing a basic content strategy. We've started ranking for a few of our less competitive keywords which is great, however there's a strange site which either redirects or is mirroring our content. I'm at a complete loss as to what's causing this to happen and what i can do to stop it. On the attachment - my content is top and second. The fourth result is the offending site. Any help/ advice would be most helpful! Thanks in advance, Alick 0BSyNn6
Technical SEO | | Alick3000 -
How do I get my pages to go from "Submitted" to "Indexed" in Google Webmaster Tools?
Background: I recently launched a new site and it's performing much better than the old site in terms of bounce rate, page view, pages per session, session duration, and conversions. As suspected, sessions, users, and % new sessions are all down. Which I'm okay with because the the old site had a lot of low quality traffic going to it. The traffic we have now is much more engaged and targeted. Lastly, the site was built using Squarespace and was launched the middle of August. **Question: **When reviewing Google Webmaster Tools' Sitemaps section, I noticed it says 57 web pages Submitted, but only 5 Indexed! The sitemap that's submitted seems to be all there. I'm not sure if this is a Squarespace thing or what. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | Nate_D0 -
How to Delete the slug /category/ from wordpress category pages
Hi all, I would like to ask you what's the better way to eliminate the slug /category/ form the wordpress category pages. I need to delete the slug /category/ to make the url seo frendly. The problem is that my site is an old site with the page indexed by Google for a long time. Thanks for your advice.
Technical SEO | | salvyy0 -
Canonicial redirect non-www to WWW in Magento
I am wondering if I have covered the non-www to www redirect in my Magneto OK? I have nominated the preferred URL in google webmasters. I have selected the correct boxes in Magento admin. when I type the "no www" version it redirects OK. Should I still be adding something to .htaccess? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Paul_MC0 -
Correct Redirect method for switching pages from .html to /pretty urls/
I have a customer that has all his site files as .html extensions and i'm going to rebuild this site into a wordpress site for easier management, regarding the new permalink structure, should i just do a 301 redirect on this?
Technical SEO | | tgr0ss0 -
Having both <title>and <meta name="title"...> on a web page?</title>
Hi All, Client of mine using reversed Meta Tags format in their website and Honestly i never saw such Meta Tags formats. In my opinion having 2 Title tags and wrong reversed description tag is not correct and the needs to be removed, and other tags need to be changed,too But they said that it probably doesn't make a difference because weird thing is Search Engines are apparently able to index them ,So they don't think it affects search engine results and won't remove it just based on opinion. So should i persist in correcting them or just hope for the best and ignore it?!?!?! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DigitalJungle0 -
Page MozRank and MozTrust 0 for Home Page, Makes No Sense?
Hey Mozzers! I'm a bit confused by a site that is showing a 0 for home page MozRank and MozTrust, while its subdomain and root domain metrics look decent (relatively). I am posting images of the page metrics and subdomain metrics to show the disparity: http://i.imgur.com/3i0jq.png http://i.imgur.com/ydfme.png Is it normal to see this type of disparity? The home page has very little inbound links, but the big goose egg has me wondering if there is something else going on. Has anyone else experienced this? Or, does anyone have speculation as to why a home page would have a 0 MozRank while the subdomain metrics look much better? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | ClarityVentures0