Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Change url structure and keeping the social media likes/shares
-
Hi guys,
We're thinking of changing the url structure of the tutorials (we call it knowledgebase) section on our website. We want to make it shorter URL so it be closer to the TLD.
So, for the convenience we'll call them old page (www.domain.com/profiles/profile_id/kb/article_title) and new page (www.domain.com/kb/article_title)
What I'm looking to do is change the url structure but keep the likes/shares we got from facebook. I thought of two ways to do it and would love to hear what the community members thinks is better.
1. Use rel=canonical
I thought we might do a rel=canonical to the new page and add a "noindex" tag to the old page.
In that way, the users will still be able to reach the old page, but the juice will still link to the new page and the old pages will disappear from Google SERP and the new pages will start to appear.
I understand it will be pretty long process. But that's the only way likes will stay
2. Play with the og:url property
Do the 301 redirect to the new page, but changing the og:url property inside that page to the old page url. It's a bit more tricky but might work.
What do you think? Which way is better, or maybe there is a better way I'm not familiar with yet?
Thanks so much for your help!
Shaqd
-
Shaqd
I have done this, although I am not familiar with the canonical method you mentioned. Social share counts are tied directly to a URL so if the structure of a URL changes at all the old count will be attributed with the shares. You can create a custom social share button that pulls the data from the old pre url structure change. Mike King has an awesome post about how to do that here (which is what I believe you are referring to with the og: url propterty?): http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2172926/How-to-Maintain-Social-Shares-After-a-Site-Migration
You can read a thread where he and I discussed it here: http://moz.com/community/q/preserving-social-shares-through-url-changes
His method works.
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
-
Google Pagination Changes
What with Google recently coming out and saying they're basically ignoring paginated pages, I'm considering the link structure of our new, sooner to launch ecommerce site (moving from an old site to a new one with identical URL structure less a few 404s). Currently our new site shows 20 products per page but with this change by Google it means that any products on pages 2, 3 and so on will suffer because google treats it like an entirely separate page as opposed to an extension of the first. The way I see it I have one option: Show every product in each category on page 1. I have Lazy Load installed on our new website so it will only load the screen a user can see and as they scroll down it loads more products, but how will google interpret this? Will Google simply see all 50-300 products per category and give the site a bad page load score because it doesn't know the Lazy Load is in place? Or will it know and account for it? Is there anything I'm missing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
My url disappeared from Google but Search Console shows indexed. This url has been indexed for more than a year. Please help!
Super weird problem that I can't solve for last 5 hours. One of my urls: https://www.dcacar.com/lax-car-service.html Has been indexed for more than a year and also has an AMP version, few hours ago I realized that it had disappeared from serps. We were ranking on page 1 for several key terms. When I perform a search "site:dcacar.com " the url is no where to be found on all 5 pages. But when I check my Google Console it shows as indexed I requested to index again but nothing changed. All other 50 or so urls are not effected at all, this is the only url that has gone missing can someone solve this mystery for me please. Thanks a lot in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davit19850 -
Ogranization Schema/Microformat for a content/brand website | Travel
Hi, One of our clients have a website specific to a place, for eg. California Tourism in which they publish local information related to tourism, blogs & other useful content. I want to understand how useful is to publish Organization Schema on such website mentioning the actual Organization, which in this case is a Travel Agency? Or any other schema would fit in for such websites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ds9.tech0 -
URL structure - Page Path vs No Page Path
We are currently re building our URL structure for eccomerce websites. We have seen a lot of site removing the page path on product pages e.g. https://www.theiconic.co.nz/liberty-beach-blossom-shirt-680193.html versus what would normally be https://www.theiconic.co.nz/womens-clothing-tops/liberty-beach-blossom-shirt-680193.html Should we be removing the site page path for a product page to keep the url shorter or should we keep it? I can see that we would loose the hierarchy juice to a product page but not sure what is the right thing to do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ashcastle0 -
What does Disallow: /french-wines/?* actually do - robots.txt
Hello Mozzers - Just wondering what this robots.txt instruction means: Disallow: /french-wines/?* Does it stop Googlebot crawling and indexing URLs in that "French Wines" folder - specifically the URLs that include a question mark? Would it stop the crawling of deeper folders - e.g. /french-wines/rhone-region/ that include a question mark in their URL? I think this has been done to block URLs containing query strings. Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Managing Subsidiaries. Should I house them all in a single domain? What about a single social media presence?
Situation: My company has 8 subsidiaries. They each have their own niche (IT, Electrical, Roofing, etc...). We also have offices in multiple countries (If that's even a factor). Questions: 1. Should I establish a web presence for each one? (www.SubsidiaryOne.com) I would then link to these sites from www.ParentCompany.com. The other options are to do something like www.ParentCompany.com/SubsidiaryOne or SubsidiaryOne.ParentCompany.com. We are trying to build the brand of the parent company so I figured that housing everything inside of the parent company domain would help me meet my goal. Each company will have its own unique content, products, blogs, etc... 2. Should each subsidiary have its own social media presence (Its own Google+, Twitter, FB, etc...) or should I house them all under the umbrella of the parent? Thanks, Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MeasureEverything0 -
Changing a url from .html to .com
Hello, I have a client that has a site with a .html plugin and I have read that its best to not have this. We currently have pages ranking with this .html plug in. However If we take the plug in out will we lose rankings? would we need a 301 or something?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
/%category%/%postname%/ Permalink structure
Mostly everyone seems to agree that /%category%/%postname%/ is the best blog structure. I'm thinking of changing my structure to that because now it's structured by date which is bad. But almost all of my posts are assigned to more than one category. Won't this create duplicate pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | UnderRugSwept0