SEO Strategy for URL Change
-
I'm working with a company who will likely have to change their URL because of a trademark dispute. They will be able to maintain the new URL for some period but will soon need to drop the existing URL all together.
Aside from the usual keyword considerations when choosing a URL, are there any SEO strategies I should consider as we execute this change?
-
Hi,
This video from Matt Cutts talks about how Google will best handle the 301's and how long it might take.
If the site is large and database driven, then using database lookups to generate your 301's would probably be the best solution. Long lists of 301's have a potential to create processing issues - not to mention the pain associated with having to create them!
I would also do the work to at least attempt to get external sites to change any existing links. Given the legal ramifications, I would not want to leave any anchor text out there for the other party to take issue with if I could avoid it. (I would also keep a detailed record of all the work done in this area, just in case there is any kind of legal challenge).
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
A couple of obvious ones that folks sometimes forget:
1. Update your XML sitemaps and resubmit to webmaster tools through Google, Bing, etc.
2. Update all your internal links! (This one can be a pain in the...)
Best of luck!
W
-
I hope someone corrects me if im wrong on this but I believe 6 months will be more than enough time for the passed data to go through google. That being said after the 6 months you'll lose and juice from the links going to the domain currently. are there significant website linking to it now and could you contact those websites with an updated URL?
-
I'll be able to setup a 301 for a period of time (6 months or so), but eventually they'll lose it all together.
-
Will you be able to 301 the URL or will you have to lose it all together? if you 301 everything should be fine.
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
-
After blog URL structure change, should you wait to optimize old posts?
Hi all, I'm changing the URL structure on my site's blog (getting rid of dates) soon, but I'm also working on updating/optimizing a bunch of old posts. Some of these old posts have a good amount of traffic, which I don't want to lose when I redirect the old URLs to the new URLs after restructure. I know that you are more likely to maintain your rank and traffic after a redirect if you keep the page content the exact same. So my question is -- should I leave the old posts alone (not making any changes) for a couple of weeks after the URL restructure/redirects for Google to index the new URLs and see that the content is the exact same so the pages don't lose any traffic, OR does it not really matter because I am optimizing these posts, meaning that the content will be better and hopefully get ranked higher? I haven't been able to find a consensus on this, so I'd really appreciate the advice! Many thanks, Rebecca
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rwhite10 -
HTML5: Changing 'section' content to be 'main' for better SEO relevance?
We received an HTML5 recommendation that we should change onpage text copy contained in 'section" to be listed in 'main' instead, because this is supposedly better for SEO. We're questioning the need to ask developers spend time on this purely for a perceived SEO benefit. Sure, maybe content in 'footer' may be seen as less relevant, but calling out 'section' as having less relevance than 'main'? Yes, it's true that engines evaluate where onpage content is located, but this level of granular focus seems unnecessary. That being said, more than happy to be corrected if there is actually a benefit. On a side note, 'main' isn't supported by older versions of IE and could cause browser incompatibilities (http://caniuse.com/#feat=html5semantic). Would love to hear others' feedback about this - thanks! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mirabile0 -
Mixing static.htm urls and dynamic urls on a Windows IIS Server?
Hi all, We've had a website originally built using static html with .htm extensions ranking well in Google hence we want to keep those pages/urls. We are on a dedicated sever (Windows IIS). However our developer has custom made a new DYNAMIC section for the site which shows new added products dynamically and allows them to be booked online via shopping cart. We are having problems displaying them both on the same domain even if we put the dynamic section withing its own subfolder and keep the static htms in the root. Is it possible to have both function on IIS (even if they may have to function a little separately)? Does anyone have previous experience of this kind of issue or a way of making both work? What setup do we need to do on the dedicated server.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emerald0 -
Can Anybody Link to my URL to Hurt SEO? Weird URL pointing at my Domaine!
Our ranking has drop since a few weeks. I did not do any major change in my site. Surfing WebMaster Tool, I found lots of new URL linking at our site: url.org linkarena.com seoprofiler.com folkd.com digitalhome.ca bustingprice.com surepurchase.com lowpricetoday.com oyax.com couponfollow.com aspringcleaning.com pamabuy.com etzone.ca How do I find if those was done intentionelly to hurt SEO? Could it be possible? Thank you, BigBlaze
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigBlaze2050 -
Language Attribute - does changing it make a difference to SEO and Search?
I am an SEO newbie, but learning fast. 🙂 I am based in London, UK and have a website: www.twofourseven.co.uk. I noticed that the language attribute was set to 'en-US'. I work in London as well in international locations in the Middle East and Asia. Thinking of this I wanted to ask the experts if given that I am based in the UK, would changing the language attribute make a difference to search results? If so, would 'en' be better than 'en-GB', which might be too specific? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | twofourseven0 -
What's the best SEO practice for having dynamic content on the same URL?
Let's use this example... www.miniclip.com and there's a function to log in... If you're logged in and a cookie checks that you're logged in and you're on page, let's say, www.miniclip.com/racing-games however the banners being displayed would have more call to action and offers on the page when a user is not logged in to entice them to sign up but the URL would still be www.miniclip.com/racing-games if and if not logged in, what would be the best URL practice for this? just do it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdiRste0 -
SEO Overly-Dynamic URL Website with thousands of URLs
Hello, I have a new client who has a Diablo 3 database. They have created a very interesting site in which every "build" is it's own URL. Every page is a list of weapons and gear for the gamer. The reader may love this but it's nightmare for SEO. I have pushed for a blog to help generate inbound links and traffic but overall I feel the main feature of their site is a headache to optimize. They have thousands of pages index in google but none are really their own page. There is no strong content, H-Tags, or any real substance at all. With a lack of definition for each page, Google see's this as a huge ball of mess, with duplicate Page Titles and too many onpage links. The first thing I did was tell them to add a canonical link which seemed to drop the errors down 12K leaving only 2400 left...which is a nice start, but the remaining errors is still a challenge. I'm thinking about seeing if I can either find a way to make each page it's own blurb, H Tag or simple have the Nav bar and all the links in the database Noindex. That way the site is left with only a handful of URLs + the Blog and Forum Thought?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikePatch0 -
Is this Negative SEO?
Hello Everyone, I have just spent the past 9 months designing, engineering, and manufacturing our first product. We just opened our web store and started selling product. http://miveu.com. I have spent zero time doing any kind of SEO. We haven't even put up a sitemap yet or any redirects. I'm just now starting to take a look at things. As soon as I start digging, I find that it appears that someone is at least attempting to do some kind of negative SEO against us. It seems to have started about a month ago. Check this out. https://www.google.com/search?q=miveu&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-beta#q=miveu&hl=en&client=firefox-beta&hs=bo2&tbo=1&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvns&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:d&sa=X&psj=1&ei=AGgBUJfJNK650QHW8YW-Bw&ved=0CE0QpwUoAg&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=335379d2f3ac2208&biw=993&bih=637 At first I was thinking this isn't so good, but it seems they are just trying to build crap content about our keywords and make it relevant to us. After taking a closer look, I'm thinking maybe this isn't all bad. They have targeted all of our exiting YouTube videos and created new videos that use all of our keywords, titles, people, etc in an effort to make our existing videos irrelevant. They have have also done the same thing with articles that were written about us, awards we have won as well as started negative campaigns about us and people who have said good things about us. Here are my thoughts. While the content is really crappy, it seems like they are actually building keyword relevance to us and our products. They have all the right keywords, the content is just crappy. "There is no such thing as bad press". I don't know if anyone has ever said this before, but I'm going to refer to their effort as "White-Hate SEO" because it doesn't appear to be a real dark effort. Am I missing something here, am I way off base? My bigger worry is that their campaign may include some much darker efforts that I just haven't found yet. I'm pretty sure I know who is responsible for this. They have made it clear that they really do hate us. Frankly, I'm not interested in retaliation, I just want to get my own house in order with some good old-school whit-hat SEO. I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dmac
David0