URL Change Best Practice
-
I'm changing the url of some old pages to see if I can't get a little more organic out of them.
After changing the url, and maybe title/desc tags as well, I plan to have Google fetch them.
How does Google know that the old url is 301'd to the new url and the new url is not just a page of duplicate content?
Thanks... Darcy
-
Yes, and this is especially problematic if you change all of your internal links to point to the new page, thereby leaving Google little reason to recrawl the old page. There are a couple of quick, simple solutions to this...
1. Update your XML sitemap to include the OLD URLs and set their priority to 1, update frequency to daily, and last updated date to today. This will tell Google that the old URLs are important and updated, so you may be able to coax Google to recrawl them quickly.
2. Use "Fetch as Googlebot" on the old URLs to show Google the 301 redirects
These are, admittedly, speculative, but Google hasn't given us a clear solution to this very common problem. Good luck!
-
Hi Bryan,
Wouldn't it have to re-crawl the old url to see that if forwards to the new url?
-
So long as you set your 301 redirect up correctly, it's not an issue. A 301 tells Google that Page-A should permanently direct to Page-B. Because this is often done to replace or update a page, Google and others will know that the similarity / duplicitous nature of the pages is likely due to that very same thing.
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
-
VTEX Infinite Scroll Design: What is On-Page SEO Best Practice?
We are migrating to the VTEX E Commerce platform and it is built on javascript, so there are no <a>tags to link product pages together when there is a long list of products. According to the Google Search Console Help document, "Google can follow links only if they are an</a> <a>tag with an href attribute." - Google Search Console Help document </a>http://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9112205. So, if there a 1000 products, javascript just executes to deliver more content in order to browse through the entire product list. The problem is there is no actual link for crawlers to follow. Has anyone implemented a solution to this or a similar problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggarciabisco0 -
Competing URLs
Hi We have a number of blogs that compete with our homepage for some keywords/phrases. The URLs of the blogs contain the keywords/phrases. I would like to re-work the blogs so that they target different keywords that don't compete and are more relevant. Should I change the URLs as I think this is what is mainly causing the issue? If so, should I 301 old URL's to the homepage? For example, say we we're a site that specialised in selling plastic cups. Currently there is a blog with the URL www.mysite.com/plastic-cups that outranks the homepage for _plastic cups. _The blog isn't particularly relevant to plastic cups and the homepage should rank for this term. How should I let Google know that it is the homepage that is most relevant for this term? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Buffalo_71 -
How Should We Best List Events Pages?
Hi everyone! Luke here from CHARGED.fm hoping that a brilliant mind could help me with another annoying (at least for me) technical seo question. It's about how we list the events on our ticketing site. Here's the rundown: We currently list tickets by event id, but our competitors keep the event page in the same silo and use the venue name and date of event in the url. So we do this: http://www.charged.fm/kinky-boots-tickets (disregard redirect for now) List the events where you can choose from these: http://www.charged.fm/event/tickets/2518362/kinky-boots
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | keL.A.xT.o
http://www.charged.fm/event/tickets/2511448/kinky-boots Moz lists these as duplicate content, so we're wondering how to resolve this. We're also wondering if it would be benficial to keep the events page in the same silo like our competitors: http://www.vividseats.com/theatre/kinky-boots-tickets/kinky-boots-9-20-1537274.html (notice how they go /theatre/kinky-boots-tickets/event/) Would it be beneficial to list like this? Is it inconsequential? Could we leave things the way that they are or should we at least add the venue and date to the events page URL? Thanks a lot for any help,
Luke0 -
Dealing with Penguin: Changing URL instead of removing links
I have some links pointing to categories from article directories, web directories, and a few blogs. We are talking about 20-30 links in total. They are less than 5% of the links to my site (counting unique domains). I either haven't been able to make contact with webmasters, or they are asking money to remove the links. If I simply rename the URL (for example changing mysite.com/t-shirt.html to mysite.com/tshirts.html), will that resolve any penguin issues? The link will forward to the homepage since that page no longer exists. I really want to avoid using the disavow tool if possible. I appreciate the feedback. If you have actually done this, please share your experience.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
Does having shorter URLs help with rankings?
Hello here.I own an e-commerce website (virtualsheetmusic.com), and some of our most important category pages have pretty long URLs. Here is an example: http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/Violin.html I am evaluating the possibility to shorten URLs like the above to something like: http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/violin/ But since it is going to pretty hard and time consuming (considering the custom system we have in place on that site), I am trying to find out if it really matters and worth doing it from a SEO stand point. I am aware that from a user prospective shorter URLs are preferable, and we plan to pursue a better URL architecture on our website in the near future just for that, but this question, at the moment, should be strictly related to SEO. Any thoughts on this topic are very welcome!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Uppercase in URLs = Dupe Content
Hi Mozzers, My developers recently changed a bunch of the pages I am working on into all lower case (something I know ideally should have been done in the first place). The URLs have sat for about a week as lower case without 301 redirecting the old upper-case URLs to these pages. In Google Webmaster Tools, I'm seeing Google recognize them as duplicate meta tags, title tags, etc. See image: http://screencast.com/t/KloiZMKOYfa We're 301 redirecting the old URLs to the new ones ASAP, but is there anything else I should do? Any chance Google is going to noindex these pages because it seems them as dupes until I fix them? Sometimes I can see both pages in the SERPs if I use personalized results, and it scares me: http://screencast.com/t/4BL6iOhz4py3 Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Pretty URLs... do they matter?
Given the following urls: example.com/warriors/ninjas/ example.com/warriors/ninjas/cid=WRS-NIN01 Is there any difference from an SEO perspective? Aesthetically the 2nd bugs me but that's not a statistical difference. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nymbot0 -
URL Parking and Frame Forwarding..
I have a few URLs... Is there any benefit for me to frame forward these empty domains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IoanSaid0