Should I not Change the URL of Ranking Pages
-
My site currently ranks #1 or #2 for 2 separate pages on web design & SEO for my geographic location. The URLs are currently mysite.com/services/web-design/ and mysite.com/services/seo/
I'm redesigning my site and I'm taking out the "Services" page as I'm focusing on web design and SEO and lumping everything else into my "Internet Marketing" page. Because my pages for web design and SEO rank so well, should I keep the URL structure even though I don't have a "Services" page or should I just remove services and 301 redirect so I have mysite.com/web-design/ and mysite.com/seo/.
I know doing a 301 redirect could hurt me in the short term but I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet now and change it in favor of a better URL structure.
What do you think?
-
Alright, sounds like I should keep the URL structure. My reason in thinking about removing it was that I don't really want to have the menu structure of:
Services
- Web Design
- SEO
- Internet Marketing
I want Web Design, SEO, and Internet Marketing to be main menu items to draw attention to them. Maybe I'll leave the services page but only link to it from the footer. I guess that provides flexibility for the future if I add services.
-
I honestly dont think you would get that much more incremental benefit from just removing the "services" portion of the url. I wouldnt change whats there (even getting rid of the services page) unless you have a really good reason to. Why not still keep the seo and design under a services page, and then create an internet marketing page that lives off of the services page that houses all your other services?
-
Jared,
I would think more about the user experience and less about the search spider when changing the site / url architecture. If your users are able to find the information they need faster and easier with your new architecture then I would go with that.
Using "services" page does sounds appropriate and you can always use right keywords in the URL while 301 redirecting your older URLs to the new ones.
-
If you are wearing your successful business person's hat or your successful SEO's hat then you will probably decide not to make any change - because there could be some loss of linkvalue on a redirected page.
However, if you are wearing a compulsive web designer's hat and having tidy URLs make you feels so much better that you are willing to risk sacrificing some ranking power and probably some income then change the URLs.
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
-
Doudle URLs without Canonical link and a change in keyword.: What are the effects on SEO?
I built my new website and i have two major worries. 1. My home page has two URLs. The one with a high PA though indexed by Google, is not submitted in the sitemap. I tried to place a canonical tag but the hosting service said it was impossible for me to place the canonical link. My concern is if the indexed page will be successfully optimized for SEO without it being submitted in the sitemap and what happens to the other URL for the same page which is also indexed and submitted in the sitemap? 2.I started my link building campaign for one of my pages. I acquired some good PA already for a particular keyword but later on discovered it will be very difficult for me to rank for the major keyword. I have decided to change the keyword. Will the acquired PA influence the SEO for the new keyword? I wish to know if i should dissolve the links to the page for the former keyword or should i maintain them and move forward with building links for the new keyword as well.
Technical SEO | | trevordocs0 -
Good organic ranking/Poor local ranking
Hi, I am a local retailer with a physical store in a major US City. My website is very well ranked on major keywords related to my business from an organic result perspective (between 1st and 3rd spot). However, in terms of local results (google place), my website isn't even ranked (except for one specific long tail keyword). Anybody know why? Thank you so much for your help. This is driving me crazy:-)
Technical SEO | | larose370 -
Why did I lose my Page 1 ranking for my main term?
My site is http://www.killthezombies.com. I have historically ranked on page 1 for the term "zombie games" up until the beginning of 2012, since my site was launched in 2008. Now I am not in the top 100 at all, since Panda. Over the last year, I've tried many things to answer and solve this problem. I've cleaned up onsite issues, and I've tried to be more active in link building since I historically allowed my users to build links organically. While I don't expect to rank #1, since many of my competitors have the term "zombie games" in their domain, and they are far more aggressive on backlink building than I am, I do not understand why my domain is not even in the top 100. It's clear I used to rank, and that Bing and DuckDuckGo still think KillTheZombies.com belongs on page 1. I have reached out to Google to see if I've been penalized, and they actually got back to me to say I have not been. Google Webmaster Tools shows no crawl issues or warnings. I have many #1 rankings for terms like "zombie killing games", "kill zombies", etc. Does Google now think my site is about "kill the zombies" and somehow not about "zombie games", which is clearly my subject matter and something I've optimized for?
Technical SEO | | webkrew-889150 -
After fixing duplicate pages problem - keyword rankings have fallen off a cliff!
We have recently signed up to SEOMOZ and found that our site had over 2,500 duplicated pages. We reported it the the web designer and they found links on the website to an old prototype version of the website and so they did a SQL run to get rid of them. Doing this got rid of 90% of them. However, this morning, moz has just done another crawl of our website and our keyword rankings have fallen off a cliff. Particularly, important one that we were at position 1 for. We are now on the fifth page. Can anyone shed any light on it? Will this be temporary? Thanks Stuart
Technical SEO | | Stuart260 -
I am trying to correct error report of duplicate page content. However I am unable to find in over 100 blogs the page which contains similar content to the page SEOmoz reported as having similar content is my only option to just dlete the blog page?
I am trying to correct duplicate content. However SEOmoz only reports and shows the page of duplicate content. I have 5 years worth of blogs and cannot find the duplicate page. Is my only option to just delete the page to improve my rankings. Brooke
Technical SEO | | wianno1680 -
Same page from different locations has slight different URL, is it a negative SEO practice?
Hi, Recently we made change in our website link generation logic, and now I can reach the same page from different pages with slightly different URLs like this: http://www.showme.com/sh/?h=wlZJNya&by=Featured_ShowMe and http://www.showme.com/sh/?h=wlZJNya&by=Topic Just wondering is this a bad practice and should we avoid it? Thank you, Karen
Technical SEO | | showme0 -
Why am i still getting duplicate page title warnings after implementing canonical URLS?
Hi there, i'm having some trouble understanding why I'm still getting duplicate page title warnings on pages that have the rel=canonical attribute. For example: this page is the relative url http://www.resnet.us/directory/auditor/az/89/home-energy-raters-hers-raters/1 and http://www.resnet.us/directory/auditor/az/89/home-energy-raters-hers-raters/2 is the second page of this parsed list which is linking back to the first page using rel=canonical. i have over 300 pages like this!! what should i do SEOmoz GURUS? how do i remedy this problem? is it a problem?
Technical SEO | | fourthdimensioninc0
