Absolute urls
-
I am redesigning my website with an updated theme.
One of the theme plugins takes my url: https://example-site.com/1st-level-page/2nd-level-page/page-contentand changes it to https%3A%2F%2Fexample-site.com%21st-level-page%22nd-level-page/page-content%2F
Does this effect how a web crawler see's my internal links?
Can this have a negative effect on my SEO?
Should I edit the plugin to force it to render the url exactly as written? -
HI Joe. Yes. Links still work flawlessly. And if you view page source, they look perfect.
Here's a button I just made in the theme.
http://starttheme2.wpengine.com/url-encoding/
If you hover over it you can see the url is perfect. But the url it's coded in the page like this:
https%3A%2F%2Fmoz.com%2Fabout%2Fteam%2Fbritney-muller
I'm not sure what plugin is causing this. If you want to have a look you most certainly are welcome to.
https://starttheme2.wpengine.com/wp-admin/UN: demo
PW: St#rtTh#m#2018 -
Hello Patrick
- Do the links still work?
- What Plugin are you using & why does it encode the URLs?
-
So after researching this, I'm being told that this is called url encoding. So the question really is, does URL encoding negatively effect internal linking and crawlers and can it negatively effect SEO?
-
No. It only displays the extra code in the word press text editor. The browser displays it properly.
Something is converting the "/" to %. There are no spaces in the url.
As I mentioned in my previous response, if I "view source" in the browser window the internal urls are all correct so I am at a loss.
Appreciate your help.
-
Yikes! Does it display that way in the browser? Is it possible to show how it looks in a browser?
The % shows when there are spaces in the domain name. You definitely don't want that URL structure - it's bad news.
-
Hi John!
Thanks for the feedback. Greatly appreciated.
Screenshot attached.
When I "view source" on a webpage in browser, the url is displayed exactly as needed. Does that matter? Or is that entirely different from the crawlers?
-
Hey Pat,
Any chance you can put the URL's in a word doc and pop a screen shot into the thread? I'm seeing % in the URL and I'm not sure if it's actually putting that in there.
If it's changing your URL structure, you'll need to do 301 redirects (one to one) in order to preserve the SEO equity. If you can edit the plugin to keep the old URL structure, that would be preferred.
Thanks!
John
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
-
Backlinks to an anchor name URL: How Google sees them
I have been searching for the answer to this question and to my surprise have yet to find anything on the web. This is my situation: I have a form at the bottom of one of my pages and have another website that wants to link to this page, more specifically this form. I have an anchor link on the page to this form already. I was planning on sending the anchor name URL to the Webmaster to link to my page so their users will go straight to my form. My question is: do I lose link juice to my URL from this link because it is an anchor name URL? Does Google see this link that goes to a specific portion of my page to be less valuable than if I just linked to the plain URL? Cheers Sean
Link Building | | Tyler1232 -
I am switching shopping cart providers, and I cannot keep the same URL's we've had for the past 10+ years.
This applies to our product and category pages. What is the best way to limit the impact of this?
Link Building | | absoauto0 -
URL purchasing strategy
Hi, At my company we have alot of URLs (around 500), which are purchased for different reasons, some for defensive reasons, some because we think we potentiallly could use them in the future. Now we want to "clean up" this list, in order to minimize costs, butt im unsure about some of the URLs, and have some questions that in some way all are SEO-related. How used are the .xxx domains, we have alot of them of defensive reasons, but im not sure that we have anything to fear, whats your take on that? - and arent .xxx domains excluded by the search engines? We have alot of URLs which we redirect to our main domain, some of them have been their own domains before, and some of them are just redirects. When i remove these, i get two challenges: 1. If someone links to that domain, i wont be able to redirect them anymore. 2. If the domain have a good Page Authority in itself, i loose that link juice. How do i proceed in order to get knowledge about the above two factors, that are crucial in order to decided wheter to keep or delete domains?
Link Building | | Petersen110 -
My URL has certain powerful in-inks that do not show up on Open Site Explorer not even as No-Follow, why could that be?
The specific pages are: http://www.venere.com/blog/5-things-to-know-about-eating-out-in-rome/ see the anchor text Eating Italy Food Tours in Rome http://www.foodtourpros.com/testimonials/ see anchor text Eating Italy Food Tours in Rome
Link Building | | EatingItaly0 -
Shortened url vs. anchor text
Are there any benefits to linking a shortened url vs. an anchor text when I am link building?Would linking via shortened link such as tinyurl cause problems with SERPS? Also, would it be more beneficial to short link to the homepage or landing page?
Link Building | | Modbargains0 -
Linkbuilding URL Problem
Hi, I work for Perfectly Engraved. A lot of our links point to http://www.perfectlyengraved.co.uk/. However that address forwards to - http://www.perfectlyengraved.co.uk/ecommerce/scripts/default.htm. Should we ensure our links point to http://www.perfectlyengraved.co.uk/ecommerce/scripts/default.htm or does it not make difference? I've put our forwarding code below. <%@ Language=VBScript %> <% Option explicit Response.Buffer = true Response.Redirect "http://www.perfectlyengraved.co.uk/ecommerce/scripts/default.htm" %> Also, would it help if we did a 301 redirect from http://perfectlyengraved.co.uk/ecommerce/scripts/default.htm to http://www.perfectlyengraved.co.uk/ecommerce/scripts/default.htm? As both addresses for every page on our site return the page with or without www Thanks
Link Building | | Aardvark0 -
Index.php OR .php - Which is better for urls
I was wondering. When I build links should I build them using "index.php" OR ".php" at the end? Does one have any more value than the other from an SEO standpoint Example: www.mywebsite.com\hotdogs\index.php or www.mywebsite.com\hotdogs.php
Link Building | | openspan0 -
Marketing URLs - best practices
Hi, We do have a consistent url structure like http://www.company.com/productname-london
Link Building | | ecnic
http://www.company.com/productname-auckland
etc. Now marketing wants to include each URL in our yearly printed catalogue.
Out of marketing reasons (I agree with that), they think the URLs are too long and should be for example: http://www.company/london
http://www.company/auckland
etc. Our brochure is very important for direct customers and we have a target group that actively uses the internet and social media and therefore will pick up these links. Even if we do correct redirects in the background - couldn't we have the problem
that we have a double set of urls? What do you think about that?0