When URL rewrite can lead to un pretty URLs
-
Hi Mozzers. I've a client that has done a little bit of mess rewriting the URLs of its site. In fact, also the data base driven URLs are rewritten, but the dev forgot to change the space with "-", so that now the 95% of the URLs are like this one:
http://www.portalesardegna.com/search/Appartamenti e Residence/
Obviously not really a pretty URL.
I am not so sure if this issue has an SEO consecuences (in fact, the site ranks pretty well also with those kind of url), but I am thinking more on usability issue.
Could you suggest me any easy fix to this rewrite problem?
-
Wondering why you would recommend this solution vs. confining such redirects to the .htaccess file. Thanks.
-
To change the URL to exclude the spaces you would simply change the link to include the dash and then parse it out. I must be missing the question as you already know this.
If you need to check for old links, the the PHP snippet I posted earlier would help catch and redirect those pages.
if (!$_GET['post']) {
$location = "http://www.YourSite.com/jobs/";
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: {$location}");
exit;Cheers
-
Good suggestion
-
Additionally to usability and seo purpose you can let them change the term "search" in the url - they have the english word in all three languages - perhaps they can change it to "vacance", "urlaub" and "holiday".
-
Hah yes I noticed the same.
Ah okay - well I think the second order benefits are quite substantial. Even savvy web users get confuse when facing a URl with blanks in it. They look different and ugly when you paste them. So I would definitely make it a priority to get them changed to something prettier
-
Ehehe... I think you were answering to my question while I was doing the same with yours.
My question was really about those second order benefits you talk about.
Thanks for link.
-
I think Rand usually makes a very good point about non-pretty URLs: That there are some lost 2nd order benefits, because people find it hard to share them / link to them.
There is a great URL rewrite guide here that should help you edit the URLs easily: http://corz.org/serv/tricks/htaccess2.php
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
-
URL is invalid: Why?
Hello everyone, I am currently listing my company on business directories. For some websites however when I add my website URL, it comes up as URL is invalid. What could be the reason for this? I have tried different variations like www., http:// and https://. Kind Regards,
Technical SEO | | SMCCoachHire
Aqib0 -
Is there a limit to how many URLs you can put in a robots.txt file?
We have a site that has way too many urls caused by our crawlable faceted navigation. We are trying to purge 90% of our urls from the indexes. We put no index tags on the url combinations that we do no want indexed anymore, but it is taking google way too long to find the no index tags. Meanwhile we are getting hit with excessive url warnings and have been it by Panda. Would it help speed the process of purging urls if we added the urls to the robots.txt file? Could this cause any issues for us? Could it have the opposite effect and block the crawler from finding the urls, but not purge them from the index? The list could be in excess of 100MM urls.
Technical SEO | | kcb81780 -
Mobile URLs in the desktop SERPs
Our real estate website URL is listed on desktop search as well as the mobile URL. I've read several blogposts on this subject but I still don't understand the fix for this. I've read to use rel=canonical tags. But does that stop Google from listing it in the desktop SERP? Is there a way to stop this without blocking the mobile site which is what our programmer wants to do? Or is this something we have to live with until Google fixes this issue?
Technical SEO | | MassMedia0 -
Affiliate urls and duplicate content
Hi, What is the best way to get around having an affiliate program, and the affiliate links on your site showing as duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | Memoz0 -
Why is Google not displaying the right URL on SERP?
Google is not displaying the URL correctly for this page. (See image) Here is the search that I performed: http://goo.gl/xk7L8 If you click on the URL, it doesn't take you to the page that it the URL references. Any ideas? It should show this URL: http://www.theskincentermd.com/breast-enhancement tsc-serp.png
Technical SEO | | theBREWROOM0 -
URL rewriting from subcategory to category
Hello everybody! I have quite simple question about URL rewriting from subcategory to category, yet I can't find any solution to this problem (due to lack of my deeper apache programming knowledge). Here is my problem/question: we have two website url structures that causes dublicate problems: www.website.lt/language/category/ www.website.lt/language/category/1/ 1 and 2 pages are absolutely same (both also returns 200 OK). What we need is 301 redirect from 2 to 1 without any other deeper categories redirects (like www.website.com/language/category/1/169/ redirecting to .../category/1/ or .../category/). Here goes .htaccess URL rewrite rules: RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&par3=$5&par4=$6&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&par3=$5&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/$ /index.php?lang=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] There are other redirects that handles non-www to www and related issues: RedirectMatch 301 ^/lt/$ http://www.domain.lt/ RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.lt RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.lt/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://www.domain.lt/$1/ [R=301,L] At this moment we cannot solve this problem with rel canonical (due to our CMS limits). Thanks for your help guys! If You need any other details on our coding, just let me know.
Technical SEO | | jkundrotas0 -
301 an old URL with a ? in the URL?
I am redoing a site and the URL's are changing structure. The client's site was in magento and in the store they would get two URLs, for example: /store/categoryname/productname and /store/categoryname/productname?SID=dslkajsfdoiu947598whouieht983hg98 Do I have to 301 redirect both of these URL's to their new counterpart? Both go to the same content but magento seemed to add these SIDs into the navigation and Google has both versions in the index.
Technical SEO | | DanDeceuster0