New blog post URLs due to WordPress permalink structure changes. Any SEO repercussions?
-
A client site had the follwing URLs for all blog posts: www.example.com/health-news/sample-post
www.example.com/health-news is the top level page for the blog section. While making some theme changes during Google mobilegeddon, the permalink structure got changed to www.example.com/sample-post ("health-news" got dropped from all blog post URLs).
Google has indexed the updated post structure and older URLs are getting redirected (if entered directly in the browser) to the new ones; it appears that WordPress takes care of that automatically as no 301 redirects were entered manually.
It seems that there hasn't been any loss of rankings (however not 100% sure as the site ranks for well over 100 terms).
Do you suggest changing the structure back to the old one?
Two reasons that I see are preserving any link juice from domains linking to old URLs and ensuring no future/current loss of rankings.
-
If you have a very small blog, with a limited number of posts on a narrow topic range, this perhaps doesn't apply.
If you are bigger than that and cover a range of topics, a multilevel structure keeps things organized, for you, your readers, and for search engines.
You can also take advantage of internal linking, organizing sub-topics under topics both so that readers can find related articles that might interest them and so that search engines can see how your posts are related, and what concepts are relevant. [A post titled "Shingles" would mean one thing under health-news, and another under building-materials.]
-
Linda - Thanks for the response!
"If you prefer the two-level structure (which I would, for a couple of reasons)"
Would you elaborate those reasons?
-
If the old URLs are being 301 re-directed to the new URLs, you should not lose much link authority, so that by itself shouldn't be a reason to change back.
If you prefer the two-level structure (which I would, for a couple of reasons) then go ahead and change back, but as Andy says, do it carefully so you are not sending conflicting messages.
-
Two reasons that I see are preserving any link juice from domains linking to old URLs and ensuring no future/current loss of rankings.
I can see no reason not to go back, just take care to ensure any old 301's are removed and that you don't fall into any redirect-chains. That could get messy.
-Andy
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
-
Blog posts and 3rd hierarchy pages weigh same as per Google?
Our blogs.website.com has been a sub-directory since 2 years as website.com/blog. Now we have blog posts with URLs website.com/blog/blog-post-1. This blog is located at different place technically, away from website. Now my doubt is whether the blog-posts have equal weightage at Google just like other 3rd hierarchy level pages of website like website.com/page1/topic2. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz1 -
Does it make sense to create new pages with friendlier URLs then redirect old pages to new?
Hi Moz! My client has messy URLs. does it make sense to write new clean URLs, then 301 redirect all old URLs to the new ones? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Just found a wordpress blog duplicating main website blog - what to do?
Hello Mozzers, I am working on a website and found the social media agency, employed by the website owner, was running a parallel wordpress blog which duplicates the content on the main website's blog (200 odd pages of this duplicating wordpress blog are indexed - the duplication is exact other than for non-blog content pages - around 60 category, date pages, homepage, etc. I am planning to 301 redirect the wordpress blog pages to equivalent pages on website blog, and then 301 redirect the homepage, category and date pages, etc. to the website blog homepage, so all the blog pages redirect to somewhere on main website. _Does this make sense, or should I only worry about redirecting the blog content pages? _ Also, the main website is new and there are redirects coming in to pages from old website already. _Is there anything to be cautious about when redirecting to a main website from multiple old websites? _ Thanks in advance, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Internal links to blog posts
I am linking manually to blog posts in my site from my Home page. Our site isn't set up with an auto "Recent Posts" that shows on Home. Should I use the exact blog post title as the anchor text or do I need to create something that is not an exact match to the title of the post?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gfiedel0 -
How to avoid seo loss after URL restructuring / change?
We are doing On Page SEO over haul of our website. Our old url used to be mydomain.com/send/FlowersInCity-1-CityName.html we are changing it to mydomain.com/send/Flowers-to-CityName Firstly, will it be advisable to do so since we are in the top 10 in most of the Keywords (but losing ranking each month): The website is very content rich site. Till beginning of 2012, we used be in the top three spots mostly due to On Page and Good content, thus getting the inbound links automatically. But now the things have change, industry has lot of competition and few players have already done heavy SEO for their website, both On and off page thus overtaking us in Ranking. We are also doing other requisite On Page and Off Page work but I am struck with the URL decision part. Secondly, and MOST IMPORTANTLY – if I should change the url, how to minimize the risk of losing the present SEO in this kind of URL restructuring case? Thanks Suman
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sumanpatra0 -
Refactoring 20,000+ URLs and the SEO impact
I run a site that is largely powered by user reviews. We have almost 20,000 reviews, and each review has its own unique URL (/items/item-reviewed/reviews/1), as each one is quite lengthy and detailed (much longer than the normal Yelp review). Of course, the item being reviewed has its own URL (/items/item-reviewed), and we would very much prefer users are driven to that page rather than a review page in search results. I've been looking into ways to improve our SEO, and I'm wondering if the current structure is hurting our SEO to the item page, and if so, what is the best way to 'solve' the issue without causing future SEO issues. Basically, are the 20,000 (and growing) review pages reducing the SEO impact of the actual item pages? I'd like to get the content in the reviews indexed, but not at the expense of negative SEO impact on the items being reviewed. I have several follow-up questions if the answer to my question is indeed 'Yes, it is negatively impacting the SEO of your item page', so I'll await a response. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jhdavids80 -
Language Attribute - does changing it make a difference to SEO and Search?
I am an SEO newbie, but learning fast. 🙂 I am based in London, UK and have a website: www.twofourseven.co.uk. I noticed that the language attribute was set to 'en-US'. I work in London as well in international locations in the Middle East and Asia. Thinking of this I wanted to ask the experts if given that I am based in the UK, would changing the language attribute make a difference to search results? If so, would 'en' be better than 'en-GB', which might be too specific? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | twofourseven0 -
301 redirects from old to new pages whit a lot of changes
Hello all, We are going to restyle and change CMS so all the urls will change. We are also updating content, adding much more content to the old pages trying to be more user and SEO friendly. My doubt is about doing 301 redirects from old to new pages when the content has changed a lot. Does it will mantain the ranking of the page or will crawlers thought that is a total diferent page. For example: one page new page will change from the old one the url, title, headers, meta description, content text and images. Should i maintain old content and do the CMS change with the 301 redirects and later change the content, that means a lot of work, or do it all at once? Thanks in advance Tomas
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomas.guemes0