Is 1:1 301 redirect required on indexed URL when restructing URL even if the new URL is canonicalized?
-
Hello folks,
We are restructuring some URLS which forms a fair chunk of the content of the domain.
These content are auto generated rather than manually created unlike other parts of the website.The same content is currently accessible from two URLs:
/used-books/autobiography-a-long-walk-to-freedom-isbn
/autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-isbnThe URL 1 uses the URL 2 as the canonical url and it has worked allright since Moz does
not show the two as duplicate of each other. Google has also indexed the canonical URL although
there is still a few 'URL 1s' which were indexed before the canonical was implemented.The updated URL structure will look like something like this:
/used-books/autobiography-a-long-walk-to-freedom-author-name-isbn
/autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-authore-name-isbnIt would be great to have just a single URL but a few business requirement prevents
us from having just the canonical URL only even with the new structure.Since we will still have two URLs to access the same content and we were wondering
whether we will need to do a 1:1 301 redirect on the current URLs or since there will be canonical URL
(/autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-authore-name-isbn),
we won't need to worry about doing the 1:1 redirect on the the indexed content?Please note that the content will still be accessible from the OLD URL (unless 301ed of course).
If it is advisable to do a 1:1 301 redirect this is what we intend to do:
/used-books/autobiography-a-long-walk-to-freedom-isbn 301 to
/used-books/autobiography-a-long-walk-to-freedom-author-name-isbn/autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-isbn 301 to
/autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-authore-name-isbnAny advice/suggestions would be greated appreciated. Thank you.
-
If I was in your shoes, even though your canonicals are working (great step #1), I'd be inclined to clean up the URLs are much as possible and 301 any duplicate pages that you can get approval for. You'll always want to have your canonicals coded in regardless. But having less actually pages will save you in other areas - content audits, Google bot and other bots crawl time, space on your server, confusion for customers, etc. Less can be more in this 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
-
How to stop URLs that include query strings from being indexed by Google
Hello Mozzers Would you use rel=canonical, robots.txt, or Google Webmaster Tools to stop the search engines indexing URLs that include query strings/parameters. Or perhaps a combination? I guess it would be a good idea to stop the search engines crawling these URLs because the content they display will tend to be duplicate content and of low value to users. I would be tempted to use a combination of canonicalization and robots.txt for every page I do not want crawled or indexed, yet perhaps Google Webmaster Tools is the best way to go / just as effective??? And I suppose some use meta robots tags too. Does Google take a position on being blocked from web pages. Thanks in advance, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
URL Parameter Being Improperly Crawled & Indexed by Google
Hi All, We just discovered that Google is indexing a subset of our URL’s embedded with our analytics tracking parameter. For the search “dresses” we are appearing in position 11 (page 2, rank 1) with the following URL: www.anthropologie.com/anthro/category/dresses/clothes-dresses.jsp?cm_mmc=Email--Anthro_12--070612_Dress_Anthro-_-shop You’ll note that “cm_mmc=Email” is appended. This is causing our analytics (CoreMetrics) to mis-attribute this traffic and revenue to Email vs. SEO. A few questions: 1) Why is this happening? This is an email from June 2012 and we don’t have an email specific landing page embedded with this parameter. Somehow Google found and indexed this page with these tracking parameters. Has anyone else seen something similar happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevin_reyes
2) What is the recommended method of “politely” telling Google to index the version without the tracking parameters? Some thoughts on this:
a. Implement a self-referencing canonical on the page.
- This is done, but we have some technical issues with the canonical due to our ecommerce platform (ATG). Even though page source code looks correct, Googlebot is seeing the canonical with a JSession ID.
b. Resubmit both URL’s in WMT Fetch feature hoping that Google recognizes the canonical.
- We did this, but given the canonical issue it won’t be effective until we can fix it.
c. URL handling change in WMT
- We made this change, but it didn’t seem to fix the problem
d. 301 or No Index the version with the email tracking parameters
- This seems drastic and I’m concerned that we’d lose ranking on this very strategic keyword Thoughts? Thanks in advance, Kevin0 -
Best way to permanently remove URLs from the Google index?
We have several subdomains we use for testing applications. Even if we block with robots.txt, these subdomains still appear to get indexed (though they show as blocked by robots.txt. I've claimed these subdomains and requested permanent removal, but it appears that after a certain time period (6 months)? Google will re-index (and mark them as blocked by robots.txt). What is the best way to permanently remove these from the index? We can't use login to block because our clients want to be able to view these applications without needing to login. What is the next best solution?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Influence on CTR for high traffic keyword in url and redirect
I currently dominate on my site for a very high traffic keyword. My url contains this keyword in it along with the word "Free" in the beginning. Lets say my keyword is "This Keyword" then my url would be freethiskeyword.com. I rank 3rd for this keyword and generates me about 8k on a low month. I was just able to obtain my main keyword as my sole URL through an auction for a measly 2,000.00. (Very Excited about this). So now I have the URL thiskeyword.com What I want to know is what kind of influence can I expect with my new URL have in CTR. Since it is a high traffic keyword is there a automatic "Trust" factor that is involved and will users tend to click on thiskeyword.com as apposed to freethiskeyword.com? My Second Question I am torn as to what I should do with this new URL. Should I redirect my old URL to my new URL and keep both pointing to the same site? or should I try and dominate my niche and build a new site entirely. Since I currently make about 8k a month for third, if I were to build a separate site and be able to obtain 1st place for my new keyword that would generate me 2 amounts in income based on stats. CTR based on http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2049695/Top-Google-Result-Gets-36.4-of-Clicks-Study freethiskeyword.com = 8k/m for 3rd based on 10% of clicks (currently) thiskeyword.com = 24k/m for 1st based on 36% of clicks (in theory) If I keep each site separate and be able to have one site at 3rd and the other at 1st then I would be making about 32k a month. If I redirect my old url to my new url then I would only have 1st place (if I make it to first of course) and that would only make me 24k a month. It seems to me I should keep these sites separate to generate more income. I am torn what I should do. Also with the EMD penalty I am afraid to 301 my site to my new URL since it is my exact keyword as apposed to my current one. I am defiantly branded as "Free This Keyword" so moving it to thiskeyword.com could hurt me more than help (at least I think so) What you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cbielich0 -
Google penalized site--307/302 redirect to new site-- Via intermediate link—New Site Ranking Gone..?
Hi, I have a site that google had placed a manual link penalty on, let’s call this our
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Robdob2013
company site. We tried and tried to get the penalty removed, and finally gave up and purchased another name. It was our understanding that we could safely use either a 302 or 307 temporary redirect in order to redirect people from our old domain to our new one.. We put this into place several months and everything seemed to be going along well. Several days ago I noticed that our root domain name had dropped for our selected keyword from position 9 to position 65. Upon looking into our GWT under “Links to Your site” , I have found many, many, many links which were pointed to our old google penalized domain name to our new root domain name each of this links had a sub heading “Via this intermediate link -> Our Old Domain Google Penalized Domain Name” In light of all of this going on, I have removed the 307/302 redirect, have brought the
old penalized site back which now consists of a basic “we’ve moved page” which is linked to our new site using a rel=’nofollow’ I am hoping that -1- Our new domain has probably not received a manual penalty and is most likely now
received some sort of algorithmic penalty, and that as these “intermediate links” will soon disappear because I’m no longer doing the 302/307 from the old sight to the new. Do you think this is the case now or that I now have a new manual penalty place on the new
domain name.. I would very much appreciate any comments and/or suggestions as to what I should or can do to get this fixed. I need to still keep the old domain name as this address has already been printed on business cards many, many years ago.. Also on a side note some of the sub pages of the new root domain are still ranking very
well, it’s only the root domain that is now racking awfully.. Thanks,0 -
New to SEO. How do I set up a 301 Redirect? What Else should I do?
Hello, I am new to web design. I designed my own site using dreamweaver and did all my seo on my own, I read a few books. Long story short I rank on the bottom of page 1 just after 3 months and the keywords are highly competitive. Now, I am up against some heavy hitters from national brands versus my local real estate site. I don't have a 301 redirect, and am not sure what else I should be doing to get my site ranked higher. I have back links from various sites, ( non-paid ) so it's what others call white hat. When I grade my site on website grader I get a great score versus the sites that are higher than me. I'm guessing my sites age is an issue. I guess I'm looking for some guidance. Thank you all, Here is my site to view. http://www.bronxpad.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
How important is it to canonicalize mobile URLs to desktop URLs?
I know many SEO's prefer a stylesheet and single URL, but if you use m.domain.com, do you canonicalize to your desktop URLS?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
301 redirect for duplicate content
Hey, I have just started working on a site which is a video based city guide, with promotional videos for restaurants, bars, activities,etc. The first thing that I have noticed is that every video on the site has two possible urls:- http://www.domain.com/venue.php?url=rosemarino
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdeLewis
http://www.domain.com/venue/rosemarino I know that I can write a .htaccess line to redirect one to the other:- redirect 301 /venue.php?url=rosemarino http://www.domain.com/venue/rosemarino but this would involve creating a .htaccess line for every video on the site and new videos that get added may get missed. Does anyone know a way of creating a rule to rewrite these urls? Any help would be most gratefully received. Thanks. Ade.0
