Navigational Changes
-
Need some advice on when to use canonical vs. redirects for navigation changes to a website. However, if there are other options i am open to them as well.
- We are consolidating some navigational paths and moving others
- We are renaming product pages (therefore creating new product pages, CMS platform requirements)
- Keep in mind we have desktop domain and a mobile domain
Questions
- Do we redirect old URL's to the new product page URL's?
- Do we redirect old mobile URL's to new mobile URL's or to the desktop equivalent?
- Do we redirect all old product page URL's containing navigation elements to the new product page URL?
- If we have a category page being added to two different sections how do we determine the right canonical URL? (the URL will be different because the customer paths will be different)
- Do we need to make sure and redirect all old URL's to a new URL? If so, what is the best way to find all of the URL's?
-
So, do I just put in a redirect from the old t-shirt page to the new (demoted) t-shirt page? The old one has built up value so I wasnt sure.
Yes, you do redirect. It doesn't matter that page has built up value. If people come to it and it's not what they expect - they gonna be bouncing like crazy. If you think that it's the same or very similar, then you can leave without redirect, but I wouldn't do it.
But more importantly do I need to redirect every single navigational URL for the old URL's and redirect them to a new page?It seems a bit unnecessary.
So, how would you handle it? Leave them be as 404s?
-
To clarify
Example situation
Current Site Taxonomy
- Section: Men's
- Category: T-Shirt
- Sub-Category: Long Sleeve
New Site taxonomy:
- Section: Men's
- Category: Shirts
- Sub-Category: T-Shirts
In new taxonomy the following is happening:
- T-Shirts is being demoted to a sub-category
- Long Sleeve is going away
- Shirts is becoming a brand new category
So, do I just put in a redirect from the old t-shirt page to the new (demoted) t-shirt page? The old one has built up value so I wasnt sure. But more importantly do I need to redirect every single navigational URL for the old URL's and redirect them to a new page? It seems a bit unnecessary.
-
Hi seo32!
Did Dimitrii's answer help? Or do you have more information for us?
-
Hello, my friend.
Do we redirect old URL's to the new product page URL's?
If you keep the product and just changing URL - yes.
Do we redirect old mobile URL's to new mobile URL's or to the desktop equivalent?
So, the whole mobile URL is different? you actually have domain.com/mobile-version-url and domain.com/desktop-version-url, not m.domain.com/all-version-url and domain.com/all-version-url? if first option, then yes, mobile to mobile, desktop to desktop, if second option - then redirect everything to desktop version. However, it does depend on how exactly you're handling mobile version requests. Basically, if it's completely two different static, physically existing pages for mobile and desktop versions, then they need separate redirects.
Do we redirect all old product page URL's containing navigation elements to the new product page URL?
I'm not understanding the question completely. Are you saying if you have a link on page to old url, then should you redirect to new url? If so, then yes, you should change the link.
If we have a category page being added to two different sections how do we determine the right canonical URL? (the URL will be different because the customer paths will be different)
Again, not understanding the question. The same category page will be in two different places? Anyway, canonicalize it to the page, which you prefer to rank.
Do we need to make sure and redirect all old URL's to a new URL? If so, what is the best way to find all of the URL's?
Yes, you do. Otherwise it's not gonna be working (or you gonna have 404s). To determine which pages are not being redirected - use 404 checker - there are whole bunch free ones on the mighty internet.
P.S. I'm a little confused about the way you're doing redirects etc. At least from what I understand from your questions. It seems that in some questions you're actually talking about changing links from pages, not doing redirects. If so, please, clarify. If not, then I need more details (or clearer questions).
Hope this make sense and helps.
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
-
Is there a benefit to changing .com domain to .edu?
Hey All! I'm wondering if there is any benefit (or if benefit could possibly outweigh the cost) to changing a domain from .com to a new .edu domain. The current .com domain has decent credibility already, and the .edu will have never been used before.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | frankandmaven1 -
I have an authority site with 90K visits per month. Now I have to change from non www to www. Will incur in any SEO issues while doing that? Could you please advice me on the best steps to follow to do this? Thank you very much!
Because I want to increase site speed, Siteground (my hosting) suggested I use Cloudflare Plus which needs my site to have www in order to work. I'm also using a cloud hosting. Im a bit scared of doing this, and thus decided to come to the community. I used MOZ for over 6 months now and love the tool. Please help me make the best possible decisions and what steps to follow. It would be much appreciated. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andrew_IT0 -
How do I test images in WP migration without Changing URLs?
I'm redesigning example.com on a subdomain of my own site, so at example.mysite.com. As part of the redesign, I am optimizing the site's images. I used Wordpress Importer to get the content to the development site, but I did not import the images. Instead, I added the images to the development site by copying and moving over the contents of example.com's uploads folder. The posts at example.mysite.com are showing the images, but they are pulling them from the original location. I tried adding the following code to wp-config.php under the (misunderstood?) impression that the image URLs would use the development site's domain: 1 define('WP_HOME', 'http://example.mysite.com');
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimmiedawn
2 define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://example.mysite.com'); I am not seeing any change and the images are still pulling from the original site. How can I test the images on the current site without actually changing the URLs in the database. (If I understand correctly, I could search and replace, but that is not what I am trying to achieve.) The original domain is not changing with the redesign, so there is no need to actually change the URLs. I just need to test the images, as I will be removing those that are not being used as well as optimizing the remaining images before moving the redesigned site over to the original domain.0 -
What to do when all products are one of a kind WYSIWYG and url's are continuously changing. Lots of 404's
Hey Guys, I'm working on a website with WYSIWYG one of a kind products and the url's are continuously changing. There are allot of duplicate page titles (56 currently) but that number is always changing too. Let me give you guys a little background on the website. The site sells different types of live coral. So there may be anywhere from 20 - 150 corals of the same species. Each coral is a unique size, color etc. When the coral gets sold the site owner trashes the product creating a new 404. Sometimes the url gets indexed, other times they don't since the corals get sold within hours/days. I was thinking of optimizing each product with a keyword and re-using the url by having the client update the picture and price but that still leaves allot more products than keywords. Here is an example of the corals with the same title http://austinaquafarms.com/product-category/acans/ Thanks for the help guys. I'm not really sure what to do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aronwp0 -
Ecommerce best-of-the-web article - big article - navigation tricks
Hello, We're writing our biggest article and trying to make it best-of-the-web. Custom illustrations, comprehensive content, maybe video slideshows How do I help people navigate this big thing? Is there some pretty navigation systems you've seen work? There's a lot of sections and my only idea so far is to use an anchor/id href attribute for each section having a big list of sections at the top of the article.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Should I change site link structure? Will that make things worse?
I've got an Exact Match Domain that has just started to do well in Google for say the past year. I've always received good rankings from Bing and Yahoo but I love the traffic levels that Google sends. Long story short on the 25th according to webmaster tools, my impressions on their search engine have been destroyed. No problems, not de-indexed, just not showing my site anymore. I like this site and have been careful, built some links and the anchor text is suspect but also not suspect because its the same as the domain. What I feel the problem may be is the site structure. I set it up a long time ago like this: Exact-Match-keyword. com/ Exact-match-keyword.php/state I thought it looked kinda spammy at the time but also thought it may help. Now I'm wondering if I shorten all the page titles to the state name and 301 the old links if I will regain rankings, or if I may lose some from other search engines. I used to think Penguins were cute......
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TEGS1 -
Changing a URL structure within a site
Im moving a page over from www.domain.com/page to www.domain/category/page currently www.domain.com/page is ranking in google. Would a 301 do the job? is there anything else needed to help keep SE positions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Changing domain reigstrant - seo impact
Hi there if you get a domain off someone and change registrant details and hosting, to what extent does this affect the power of the site? Any opinions of interest, many thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pauledwards0