Rebranded Website Uses a Forward Slash /at End of URS-Is This Considered a Redirect?
-
Our website was rebranded and relaunched. The old site did not use a / at the end of the URL. The site uses a forward slash at the end of the URL.
My developer claims that this makes no difference, that in Google's eyes this is meaningless. My concern is that link juice will be lost because this necessitates a redirect. Links that were developed in the last few months now are redirected to the identical domain, but with a backslash at the end.
Is this something to be concerned about or is it meaningless?
Thanks,
Alan -
301 redirects will almost assuredly be utilised to keep this maneuver SEO-friendly. but wait! 301 redirects fail to translate 'most' of the SEO authority from one page to another, in two key situations. If the content is too dissimilar on the destination URL, 301s can fail to port authority across
For you, this won't be a big issue as (from the sounds of it) the pages will be almost identical, byte for byte. The new pages may be very, very slightly larger due to having source code that contains more instances of the character "/" but that's not something which would phase Google at all
Another situation where 301s can fail to move all the SEO authority across is when redirect chains occur. But you're just 301-ing "non trailing /" URLs to "trailing /" URLs, so it shouldn't be a problem right? Hmmm there are ways you could come unstuck here
Let's imagine we have a hypothetical retail site called "buymyproducts.com"
Let's imagine that a few years ago, the site used to be on HTTP (insecure) and has moved over to HTTPS (encrypted)
All pages were influenced by a HTTPS-injecting redirect, let's create and example:
http://buymyproducts.com/product-category/product
was 301 redirected to
https://buymyproducts.com/product-category/product (with HTTPS)
That redirect rule now sits within the web.config or .htaccess file and waits for insecure requests, redirecting as appropriate
Now we want a new redirect rule, and it will affect the page like this:
https://buymyproducts.com/product-category/product
will be 301 redirected to
https://buymyproducts.com/product-category/product/ (with a trailing slash)
That seems fine, but when the oldest architecture is queried, you'll end up with redirect chaining like this:
A) http://buymyproducts.com/product-category/product
will be redirected to
B) https://buymyproducts.com/product-category/product (with HTTPS)
which will then be redirected to
C) https://buymyproducts.com/product-category/product/ (with HTTPS and a trailing slash)
... so as you can see, your redirects will begin to chain unless you foresee that problem up-front and write 'more complex' redirect rules that just connect A to C whilst entirely skipping B.
If the site existed on the oldest architecture (no trailing slash, insecure / HTTP) for the longest time (say 7 out of 10 years) then it's likely that many of the best links will still be hitting the very oldest architecture in terms of link destinations. Those backlinks won't translate into SEO authority for your site (very well) if your redirects begin to chain-up
To stop yourself from losing large chunks of legacy-authority, you'd have to do the redirects really well and ensure that your developer's rules do not ever begin to chain. If they are confident that they can avoid this chaining by writing much more complex redirect rules then go for it. If not, hold off
-
-
It’s the same domain?
What was the changed about the site structure other than forcing a forward slash?
I would ask your dev to do a search and replace on the URLs putting them back to non “/“ then 301 t force a non forward slash you got a pick one or the other.
But if I was making a new site from scratch I would force use a forward slash.
Hope this helps,
Tom
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
-
Is there a way to forward banklink benefits from one domain to another without a redirect?
In this situation I have SiteA, and SiteB on completely separate domains. SiteA is the marketing front for the company and SiteB is an app that company owns. SiteB receives a fair amount of backlinks as it has the login page of the application where customers link to a branded version for their members to login. Additionally none of that domain is indexable including the login page. SiteB's domain can't be changed to be a subdomain of SiteA as it isn't technically feasible. Initially I was reluctant to use canonical because as it isn't really duplicate content. Is there a method for forwarding any link-juice from SiteB to SiteA without the use of a redirect and would canonical be appropriate in this case? Additionally would SiteB's not being indexed negate any link benefit? Edit: Typo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OCN0 -
Restructuring Areas of a Website
Hi We are changing the structure of 2 areas of our site but the URL's won't be changing. We're effectively removing the first category level as it doesn't make much sense: Current structure Cat 1 - http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/cupboards-lockers Cat 2s - http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/lockers & http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/cupboards Cat 3s... New structure will look like Cat 1's http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/lockers & http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/cupboards Cat 2's.... etc The top category 1 doesn't rank for much & the level 2's perform better anyway. Will moving the structure change rankings even though the URLs don't change - just what is assigned to them in the back changes I know if the on-page content changes, things may be affected, but we're minimising this as much as possible. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
No content using Fetch
Wooah, this one makes me feel a bit nervous. The cache version of the site homepage shows all the text, but I understand that is the html code constructed by the browser. So I get that. If I Google some of the content it is there in the index and the cache version is yesterday. If I Fetch and Render in GWT then none of the content is available in the preview - neither Googlebot or visitor view. The whole preview is just the menu, a holding image for a video and a tag line for it. There are no reports of blocked resources apart from a Wistia URL. How can I decipher what is blocking Google if it does not report any problems? The CSS is visible for reference to, for example, <section class="text-within-lines big-text narrow"> class="data"> some content... Ranking is a real issue, in part by a poorly functioning main menu. But i'm really concerned with what is happening with the render.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
Huge httaccess with old 301 redirects. Is it safe to delete all redirects with no traffic in last 2 months?
We have a huge httaccess file over several MB which seems to be the cause for slow server response time. There are lots of 301 redirects related to site migration from 9 months ago where all old URLs were redirected to new URL and also lots of 301 redirects from URL changes accumulated over the last 15 years. Is it safe to delete all 301 redirects which did not receive any traffic in last 2 months ? Or would you apply another criteria for identifying those 301 that can be safely deleted? Any way to get in google analytics or webmaster tools all 301 that received traffic in the last 2 months or any other easy way to identify those, apart from checking the apache log files ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse0 -
Training Website Improvements...
Hi Folks, I'm in the process of going over our corporate website with a view to improving on-page optimisation, layout, design and user experience and I would like your feedback on what you think I should improve or change with respect to SEO. Some of my ideas include: Restructure Home Page to Better Show Our Services Possibly Add a Slider to the Home Page (I know engagement rates with these are generally low) Restructure the Course Pages Completely (https://purplegriffon.com/courses/itil-training/itil-foundation-training/itil-foundation) Restructure the Events Pages Completely (https://purplegriffon.com/event/2028/itil-foundation) Improve & Streamline the Booking Process AJAXIFY the Booking Process Improve Responsive Elements I'm also interested in conducting user testing before I go ahead and make any changes. What are your thoughts? What would you change? Thanks. Gaz
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PurpleGriffon0 -
How to 301 redirect all URLs with /? in?
I want to redirect all URLs that have /? in it. Indexed in Google is a bunch of urls lik: mysite.com/?674764 mysite.com/?rtf8y78 I want all these URLs to be redirected to my home page. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
It appears that Googlebot Mobile will look for mobile redirects from the desktop site, but still use the SEO from the desktop site.
Is the above statement correct? I've read that its better to have different SEO titles & descriptions for mobile sites as users search differently on mobile devices. I've also read it's good to link build, keep text content on mobile sites etc to get the mobile site to rank. If I choose to not have titles & descriptions on my mobile site will Google just rank our desktop version & then redirect a user on a mobile device to our mobile site or should I be adding in titles & descriptions into the mobile site? Thanks so much for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DCochrane0 -
What are the SEO ramifications to forwarding your website to Facebook?
I have a client who wants to forward their website traffic to a campaign on Facebook for two week. I think it's a horrible idea on so many levels, but need a solid reason why. My gut says that their Google rankings will suffer, but I can't find any research/articles that state such. Help?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Axis410