Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

Your browser does not seem to support JavaScript. As a result, your viewing experience will be diminished, and you have been placed in read-only mode.

Please download a browser that supports JavaScript, or enable it if it's disabled (i.e. NoScript).

SERP result (URL) doesn't change after a 301

Technical SEO

693

ConclusionDigital last edited by

A couple of months ago there was a result in Google for our branded search term which wasn't the 'official' URL, actually the result shown in the SERP was www.mycompany-ip.nl.

We've applied a 301 redirect of this URL to the 'official' URL which is a subdomain: department.mycompany.nl. From Google the redirect is obviously working, but up until now, I don't see Google replacing the incorrect URL by the correct URL.

I am wondering what to do to make the result correct.

André
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 0
ConclusionDigital @DannyHoodless last edited by

Thanks Danny,

Currently working in search console incl. updating the site map and so on. The change of address tool is not applicable to this situation as the 'old' URL was some kind of a testing environment (without GSC implemented) that was indexed before I started in this role ... So wanted to get that result removed from the index by redirecting it to the correct location.

André
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 0
DannyHoodless last edited by

Hi André,

Have you made all the necessary changes in Google Search Console i.e. Change of Address Tool, Sitemap Update, Fetch As Google?

Danny
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 2

Got a burning SEO question?

Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.

Start my free trial

Browse Questions

View

From

Sorted by

With category

Explore more categories

Related Questions

What IS SEO FRIENDLY BEST PRACTICE FOR URLS FILTERED 'TAGGED'

EX: https://www.STORENAME.com/collections/all-deals/alcatel– Tagged "Alcatel", when I run audits, I come across these URLS that give me duplicate content and missing H1. This is Canonical: https://www.STORENAMEcom/collections/all-deals/alcatel Any advice on how to tackle these I have about4k in my store! Thank you
Technical SEO | | Sscha003

0
Moved a site and changed URL structures: Looking for help with pay

Hi Gents and Ladies Before I get started, here is the website in question. www.moldinspectiontesting.ca. I apologize in advance if I miss any important or necessary details. This might actually seem like several disjointed thoughts. It is very late where I am and I am a very exhausted. No on to this monster of a post. **The background story: ** My programmer and I recently moved the website from a standalone CMS to Wordpress. The owners of the site/company were having major issues with their old SEO/designer at the time. They felt very abused and taken by this person (which I agree they were - financially, emotionally and more). They wanted to wash their hands of the old SEO/designer completely. They sought someone out to do a minor redesign (the old site did look very dated) and transfer all of their copy as affordably as possible. We took the job on. I have my own strengths with SEO but on this one I am a little out of my element. Read on to find out what that is. **Here are some of the issues, what we did and a little more history: ** The old site had a terribly unclean URL structure as most of it was machine written. The owners would make changes to one central location/page and the old CMS would then generate hundreds of service area pages that used long, parameter heavy url's (along with duplicate content). We could not duplicate this URL structure during the transfer and went with a simple, clean structure. Here is an example of how we modified the url's... Old: http://www.moldinspectiontesting.ca/service_area/index.cfm?for=Greater Toronto Area New: http://www.moldinspectiontesting.ca/toronto My programmer took to writing 301 redirects and URL rewrites (.htaccess) for all their service area pages (which tally in the hundreds). As I hinted to above, the site also suffers from a overwhelming amount of duplicate copy which we are very slowly modifying so that it becomes unique. It's also currently suffering from a tremendous amount of keyword cannibalization. This is also a result of the old SEO's work which we had to transfer without fixing first (hosting renewal deadline with the old SEO/designer forced us to get the site up and running in a very very short window). We are currently working on both of these issues now. SERPs have been swinging violently since the transfer and understandably so. Changes have cause and effect. I am bit perplexed though. Pages are indexed one day and ranking very well locally and then apparently de-indexed the next. It might be worth noting that they had some de-index problems in the months prior to meeting us. I suspect this was in large part to the duplicate copy. The ranking pages (on a url basis) are also changing up. We will see a clean url rank and then drop one week and then an unclean version rank and drop off the next (for the same city, same web search). Sometimes they rank along side each other. The terms they want to rank for are very easy to rank on because they are so geographically targeted. The competition is slim in many cases. This time last year, they were having one of the best years in the company's 20+ year history (prior to being de-indexed). **On to the questions: ** **What should we do to reduce the loss in these ranked pages? With the actions we took, can I expect the old unclean url's to drop off over time and the clean url's to pick up the ranks? Where would you start in helping this site? Is there anything obvious we have missed? I planned on starting with new keyword research to diversify what they rank on and then following that up with fresh copy across the board. ** If you are well versed with this type of problem/situation (url changes, index/de-index status, analyzing these things etc), I would love to pick your brain or even bring you on board to work with us (paid).
Technical SEO | | mattylac

0
Error: Missing Meta Description Tag on pages I can't find in order to correct

This seems silly, but I have errors on blog URLs in our WordPress site that I don't know how to access because they are not in our Dashboard. We are using All in One SEO. The errors are for blog archive dates, authors and just simply 'blog'. Here are samples: http://www.fateyes.com/2012/10/
http://www.fateyes.com/author/gina-fiedel/
http://www.fateyes.com/blog/ Does anyone know how to input descriptions for pages like these?
Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | gfiedel

0
Removing a URL from Search Results

I recently renamed a small photography company, and so I transferred the content to the new website, put a 301-redirect on the old website URL, and turned off hosting for that website. But when I search for certain terms that the old URL used to rank highly for (branded terms) the old URL still shows up. The old URL is "www.willmarlowphotography.com" and when you type in "Will Marlow" it often appears in 8th and 9th place on a SERP. So, I have two questions: First, since the URL no longer has a hosting account associated with it, shouldn't it just disappear from SERPs? Second, is there anything else I should have done to make the transition smoother to the new URL? Thanks for any insights you can share.
Technical SEO | | williammarlow

0
Internet Explorer and Chrome showing different SERP's

Well the title says it all really. Same query, different browsers, same computer and different search results. I thought at first it may have differed because I was logged into my google profile on chrome but I logged out and tested and still different results. Is this normal ?
Technical SEO | | blinkybill

0
Domain Transfer Process / Bulk 301's Using IIS

Hi guys - I am getting ready to do a complete domain transfer from one domain to another completely different domain for a client due to a branding/name change. 2 things - first, I wanted to lay out a summary of my process and see if everyone agrees that its a good approach, and second, my client is using IIS, so I wanted to see if anyone out there knows a bulk tool that can be used to implement 301's on the hundreds of pages that the site contains? I have found the process to redirect each individual page, but over hundreds its a daunting task to look at. The nice thing about the domain transfer is that it is going to be a literal 1:1 transfer, with the only things changing being the logo and the name mentions. Everything else is going to stay exactly the same, for the most part. I will use dummy domain names in the explanation to keep things easy to follow: www.old-domain.com and www.new-domain.com. The client's existing home page has a 5/10 GPR, so of course, transferring Mojo is very important. The process: Clean up existing site 404's, duplicate tags and titles, etc. (good time to clean house). Create identical domain structure tree, changing all URL's (for instance) from www.old-domain.com/freestuff to www.newdomain.com/freestuff. Push several pages to a dev environment to test (dev.new-domain.com). Also, replace all instances of old brand name (images and text) with new brand name. Set up 301 redirects (here is where my IIS question comes in below). Each page will be set up to redirect to the new permanent destination with a 301. TEST a few. Choose lowest traffic time of week (from analytics data) to make the transfer ALL AT ONCE, including pushing new content live to the server for www.new-domain.com and implementing the 301's. As opposed to moving over parts of the site in chunks, moving the site over in one swoop avoids potential duplicate content issues, since the content on the new domain is essentially exactly the same as the old domain. Of course, all of the steps so far would apply to the existing sub-domains as well, IE video.new-domain.com. Check for errors and problems with resolution issues. Check again. Check again. Write to (as many as possible) link partners and inform them of new domain and ask links to be switched (for existing links) and updated (for future links) to the new domain. Even though 301's will redirect link juice, the actual link to the new domain page without the redirect is preferred. Track rank of targeted keywords, overall domain importance and GPR over time to ensure that you re-establish your Mojo quickly. That's it! Ok, so everyone, please give me your feedback on that process!! Secondly, as you can see in the middle of that process, the "implement 301's" section seems easier said than done, especially when you are redirecting each page individually (would take days). So, the question here is, does anyone know of a way to implement bulk 301's for each individual page using IIS? From what I understand, in an Apache environment .htaccess can be used, but I really have not been able to find any info regarding how to do this in bulk using IIS. Any help here would be GREATLY APPRECIATED!!
Technical SEO | | Bandicoot

0
How to handle URL's from removed products?

Hi All, I have a question about a fashion related webshop. Every month about 100 articles are removed and about the some amouth is added to the site. Most of the products are indexed on brandname and type (e.g. MyBrand t-shirt blue) My question is what to do with the URL / page after the product is removed. I'm thinking about a couple of solutions: 301 the page to the brand categorie page build a script which shows related articles on the old URL (and try to keep it indexed) 404 page optimized for search term with links to brand category any other suggestons? Thanks in advance, Sam
Technical SEO | | U-Digital

0
Why won't google rank my homepage

I have a site that ranks high on the first page for it's main keyword at both Bing and Yahoo but horribly at Google. It's a domain I recently acquired and am in the process of optimizing. My goal is to improve the relevancy for the site in Google so that the site shows up better for it's main keyword. With that said I've been working on building valuable links to the page and I would like some opinions on why the homepage is not ranking for the main keyword. Instead I have a junky content page that is ranking for the term. So in the event that you have a exact match domain showing up very high in Bing and Yahoo but not in Google for the homepage, what factors would you look at? Add in the complexity that a page other than the homepage is making grounds on the exact match keyword having moved up from "not in the top 100" to the 50's, what's my best solution to ranking the homepage? The site is optimized well and most inbound links predominantly point to the homepage.
Technical SEO | | DotCar

0