Is it bad to update product titles and URLs if they are only slightly modified
-
I am doing some house cleaning on the site and made some minor updates to product titles and a rule was written in and it auto updated the URL to what the product title was with a redirect put in place from the old URL. If this a bad thing and should i leave the URL alone and just update the product title?
Then for the ones i did change the Product title and the URL was updated is this a bad thing and should i have just left the URL alone? These are all high ranking popular products so dont want to mess with any rankings going into busy season?
-
Hi Marc,
Could you please tell us if Caro of i have answered your question? If so, please mark the answer. It's nice to get some credits for the work we've both put into this
Thanks very much.
Bas -
Hi Marc,
Changing a URL is like moving your house or office: it can definately be done but you need to think it through. If you just move and don't tell anyone it will be a matter of time before some trouble might start.
Do you have anything in place that will tell Google that you have changed the URL/URL's? Otherwise it will consider the new URL as a completely new page, with a lot less trust than the old URL probably had. The value of the old URL will be lost. Essentially, Google will think you now have two URL's: the old and the new. It won't all of a sudden realise those are the same.
If you have anything in place to tell Google that you have changed the name of the page, the process will go smoother and much better. As soon as Google will visit the old URL, it will be informed of two things:
1. The old URL has been replaced, does not exist anymore and needs to be replaced in the index
2. It knows the new URL right away and will start to replace the old with the new URL and transfer the value of the old URL to the new URLEvery time a page is being loaded, the server will send - amongst others - the source code. And a header code: 200 is everything is OK, 404 is the page cannot be found, 500 is something is wrong with the server, 301 is the URL has changed to something new, etc.
If you don't do anything, Google will read a 404-code and thus think there is an error in your site.
It's better to send a 301-code because that will tell Google that nothing is wrong; you've just changed the URL. It will also tell what the new URL is.
Check out this page for more information about 301 and 302 redirects:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirectionDoes this help you?
Yours,
Bas -
Was the original URL still relevant to the product even though you changed the product title?
Assuming it was, it's best to leave the URLs alone. Changing a URL (even with a 301 in place) just for housekeeping purposes is not great for SEO. I don't usually change URLs without a very good reason. If the original URL has attracted inbound links, that link benefit will be slightly compromised. You also run the risk of losing track of your 301s or incurring looping 301s if you're letting them auto-update without a solid plan.
If you decide to go with the redirects, keep a spreadsheet of all redirecting pages for your own tracking purposes.
~Caro
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 Listing Brand Name as Page Title rather than actual set Title
Any search result including our website is displaying our search result title like this: "Brand Name: Partial Page Title" instead of what it should be "Page Title" (as an example). Where is the "Brand Name:" coming from? We've verified we don't have any code that could cause this, and we're blocking in robots.txt directory listings being used for our search result title/meta. This isn't happening for our competitors. Any ideas on why this is, and if it's something we can control?
Technical SEO | | Closetstogo0 -
Canonical URL on frontpage
I have a site where the CMS system have added a canonical URL on my frontpage, pointing to a subpage on my site. Something like on my domain root.Google is still showing MyDomain.com as the result in the search engines which is good, but can't this approach hurt my ranking? I mean it's basically telling google that my frontpage content is located far down the hierarki, instead of my domain root, which of course have the most authority.
Technical SEO | | EdmondHong87
Something seems to indicate that this could very well be the case, as we lost several placements after moving to this new CMS system a few months ago.0 -
Redirect_to in URLs?
I've never seen this before. I'm assuming that it's not SEO friendly and that these should be 301s or 302s instead? http://ksa-beta.motory.com/ar/login/?redirect_to=http://ksa-beta.motory.com/ar/cars-for-sale-search/results/central/riyadh/ford/explorer/2010/ford-explorer-2010-1038353 http://ksa-beta.motory.com/ar/login/?redirect_to=http://ksa-beta.motory.com/ar/account/my-saved-searches/
Technical SEO | | KatherineWatierOng0 -
Exact Match Domain & Title Tag / URL
I currently own an exact match domain for my keyword. I have it set up with multiple pages and also a blog. The home page essentially serves as a hub and contains links to all the pages and the blog. My targeted keyword is on its own page and I made the title tag the same as my keyword. As an example the URL for my targeted post looks like this: benefitsofrunningshoes.com/benefits-of-running-shoes I have solid, non-spammy content and clean whitehat earned backlinks directing to that specific page. My concern right now is that the URL looks kinda spammy. The website has been live for about a week and the home page ranks well enough but my targeted page is no where to be found. (it does show up if I manually search via search command "site:benefitsofrunningshoes.com"). I'm wondering if it is acceptable to use the exact keyword in title tag / page url if it is also in the domain as an EMD? Should I change the title tag and leave the URL in? Or should I completely change the title tag and URL and 301 redirect to the new page? I appreciate any help!
Technical SEO | | Kusanagi170 -
Why is Google replacing our title tags with URLs in SERP?
Hey guys, We've noticed that Google is replacing a lot of our title tags with URLs in SERP. As far as we know, this has been happening for the last month or so and we can't seem to figure out why. I've attached a screenshot for your reference. What we know: depending on the search query, the title tag may or may not be replaced. this doesn't seem to have any connection to the relevance of the title tag vs the url. results are persistent on desktop and mobile. the length of the title tag doesn't seem to correlate with the replacement. the replacement is happening at mass, to dozens of pages. Any ideas as to why this may be happening? Thanks in advance,
Technical SEO | | Mobify
Peter mobify-site-www.mobify.com---Google-Search.png0 -
Changing URL of posts
HI, I need to change the urls and permalink structure of my blogposts. How I have to deal all this with google? Do I have to re-submit the pages to google with fetch as google? Will google display duplicate content of the same article ( having changed the url) or will it automatically replace the old url with the new ones? Tx for your support guys!
Technical SEO | | tourtravel0 -
URL rewriting causing problems
Hi I am having problems with my URL rewriting to create seo friendly / user friendly URL's. I hope you follow me as I try to explain what is happening... Since the creation of my rewrite rule I am getting lots of errors in my SEOMOZ report and Google WMT reports due to duplicate content, titles, description etc For example for a product detail, it takes the page and instead of a URL parameter it creates a user friendly url of mydomain.com/games-playstation-vita-psp/B0054QAS However in the google index there is also the following friendly URL which is the same page - which I would like to remove domain.com/games-playstation-vita/B0054QAS The key to the rewrite on the above URLs is the /B0054QAS appended at the end - this tells the script which product to load, the details preceeding this could be in effect rubbish i.e. domain.com/a-load-of-rubbish/B0054QAS and it would still bring back the same page as above. What is the best way of resolving the duplicate URLs that are currently in the google index which is causing problems The same issue is causing a quite serious a 5XX error on one of the generated URLs http://www.mydomain.com/retailersname/1 - , if I click on the link the link does work - it takes you to the retailers site, but again it is the number appended at the end that is the key - the retailersname is just there for user friendly search reasons How can I block this or remove it from the results? Hope you are still with me and can shed some light on these issues please. Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0