Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

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

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Local SEO
    4. Local Website Optimization
    5. Website Migration - remove unnecessary sub-folder?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Website Migration - remove unnecessary sub-folder?

    Local Website Optimization
    4
    4
    1073
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • aj613
      aj613 last edited by

      Rebuilding a site that currently has good rankings.  The original site was build in Joomla. I am doing the rebuild on WordPress.  The old site is at the domain www.savannah-dentist.com, but clicking on any link generates a url with a subfolder; i.e. the website is at www.savannah-dentist.com, click on the logo and you will go to www.savannah-dentist.com/rosenthal/, the "meet the doctors" link goes to "www.savannah-dentist.com/rosenthal/meet-the-doctors"

      When I rebuild the site, do I have to retain that url structure?

      If I get rid of the folder and make everything simply like www.savannah-dentist.com/meet-the-doctors, will I be jeopardizing our rankings?

      Thanks!

      -Adam

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • David-Kley
        David-Kley last edited by

        301 the old links to the new linking structure. If it is already a high ranking page, the link weight should carry through.

        Since it already ranks high, I would keep as many elements as you can the same, unless they dont rank well and need to be improved. Make sure to do a site search for indexed pages, and redirect or create a removal request for any unatural cms-generated links. (component/SAMPLE/123456 etc)

        DO NOT just delete the entire folder without seeing how many on page links still link to those pages. Check your on-page links to see if it is generated by the menu system, or if is hard-coded in the content.

        Wordpress also has a few items you will want to change in the robots.txt file vs the old Joomla site.

        User-agent: *
        Disallow: /feed/
        Disallow: /trackback/
        Disallow: /wp-admin/
        Disallow: /wp-content/
        Disallow: /wp-includes/
        Disallow: /xmlrpc.php
        Disallow: /wp-
        Allow: /wp-content/uploads/
        Sitemap: http://example.com/sitemap.xml
        Disallow: /wp-content/plugins

        or you could also use this one:

        User-agent: *
        Disallow: /cgi-bin/
        Disallow: /wp-admin/
        Disallow: /wp-includes/
        Disallow: /wp-content/
        Disallow: /archives/ disallow: /?
        Disallow: ?replytocom Disallow: /wp-
        Disallow: /author
        Disallow: /comments/feed/
        User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
        Allow: /
        User-agent: Googlebot-Image
        Allow: /wp-content/uploads/
        User-agent: Adsbot-Google
        Allow: /
        User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile
        Allow: /

        Hope this helps! Best of luck with your new build.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • TheeDigital
          TheeDigital last edited by

          If the folder is there for no reason, get rid of it.  Rewrite out the entire directory.  Try this:

          In the .htaccess add:

          Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews

          Turn mod_rewrite on

          RewriteEngine On
          RewriteBase /

          RewriteRule ^rosenthal/(.*)$ /$1 [L,NC,R=301]

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • alrockn
            alrockn last edited by

            You can 301 to any place, so if it's beneficial to change the structure the site, now's the time to do it.  Beware though, when you change the structure of the website, and are placing pages in different folders, you're changing the URL, so it will affect your ranking, hopefully for the positive.   I think what you're proposing would be an improvement.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            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

            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • Alagurajeshwaran

              Is there any way to report a website that is not complying with webmaster guidelines to Google?

              Like how we can "suggest an edit" in Google Business Listings, is there any way to report Google about the webmaster guidelines violation?

              Local Website Optimization | | Alagurajeshwaran
              0
            • SMCCoachHire

              More pages on website better for SEO?

              Hi all, Is creating more pages better for SEO? Of course the pages being valuable content. Is this because you want the user to spend as much time as possible on your site. A lot of my competitors websites seem to have more pages than mine and their domain authorities are higher, for example the services we provide are all on one page and for my competitors each services as its own page. Kind Regards, Aqib

              Local Website Optimization | | SMCCoachHire
              0
            • 100yards

              I have a client in Australia that is going to set up a website that is in Chinese to service their Asian customer base (Indonesia, Singapore, HK, China). What domain should they use?

              They're website is hosted on a .com.au domain. Should they host their Chinese language pages under their current domain (.com.au) using a subdirectory (i.e. /asia) or should they use another separate domain that they own that is a regular .com? Or does it really not matter?

              Local Website Optimization | | 100yards
              1
            • Adam_RushHour_Marketing

              Subdomain for ticketing of a client website (how to solve SEO problems caused by the subdomain/domain relationship)

              We have a client in need of a ticketing solution for their domain (let's call it www.domain.com) which is on Wordpress - as is our custom ticket solution.  However, we want to have full control of the ticketing, since we manage it for them - so we do not want to build it inside their original Wordpress install. Our proposed solution is to build it on tickets.domain.com.  This will exist only for selling and issuing the tickets. The question is, is there a way to do this without damaging their bounce rate and SEO scores?
              Since customers will come to www.domain.com, then click the ticketing tab and land on tickets.domain.com, Google will see this as a bounce.  In reality, customers will not notice the difference as we will clone the look and feel of domain.com Should we perhaps have the canonical URL of tickets.domain.com point to www.domain.com? And also, can we install Webmaster Tools for tickets.domain.com and set the preferred domain as www.domain.com? Are these possible solutions to the problem, or not - and if not, does anyone else have a viable solution? Thank you so much for the help.

              Local Website Optimization | | Adam_RushHour_Marketing
              0
            • dogtopiamichigan

              Sub-Domain Google Search Nested under main Domain?

              Hello, I have a strange issue that I have not come across before:My subdomain is: michigan.dogdaycare.com. Some of the Keyword searches show our subdomain being nested under the main domain for Google searches instead of being indexed individually. Example search term: Dogtopia Bloomfield https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=dogtopia+bloomfield -This will show two subdomain links nested under the main domain Example search term: Dogtopia Birmingham https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=dogtopia+birmingham -This shows the subdomain showing correctly in searches and not nested. Any idea as to how to fix this? Thanks in advance!

              Local Website Optimization | | dogtopiamichigan
              0
            • molchman

              Are there any suggestions when you completly redesign your web page keeping the same domain but change the host? I want it to go smoothly and want to avoid the rankings we already have including sub pages.

              I am currently having our website completely redone by a design company.  Are there any suggestions on this process as to not lose the rankings we currently have for our site?  The domain will remain the same however we are planning on changing our host.  We also have a good amount of sub domains that the web company will not be changing for us.

              Local Website Optimization | | molchman
              0
            • Berner

              Does building multiple websites hurt you seo wise? Good or bad strategy?

              HI,rategy. So I spoke to a local Colorado seo company and they suggested to find whatever keywords is the most searched under my GWT's and put .com behind it and build other sites for other keywords. I was curious about this type of strategy. Does this work? This seo guy said I could just get a DBA bank account and such for each domain name etc. I am not wanting to mislead anyone, but I am curious if for the sake of promoting other services, if creating other websites with partial and EMD's are worthwhile? Another issue I worry about is if I put my companies phone number, then next thing you know there is 3 or 4 sites that use that same phone number. To me this does not build trust with Google. But being I am learning, maybe this is a common strategy, or doomed from the start. Just curious what you think. Would you build other sites to try and rank for other services? Or keep one sites and maximize it? Thank you for your thoughts. I just do not want to pay $3000 per site if it will hurt not help.

              Local Website Optimization | | Berner
              0
            • SarahCollins

              How Best to do implement a Branch Locator for a Website with invididual location category pages

              Hi All, We have an ecommerce Website with multiple locations for our stores and we currently display separate location specific pages for the different categories and sub categories. This has helped us previously to rank well for local search in each of the areas we have a store but over the last few months since humingbird, our local rankings on some things have dip a little . We want to implement a branch locator of some description to improve the user experience. From looking at other websites with branch locators, they tend to a separate button/page with which you can search for a branch etc. However, they don't have location specific pages. My query is should I do it so if  a user comes in on a specific category location page and follows it through to product page , then to have a tab on the product page displaying the local branch from which he can come in. My thinking here is that , is that it would help confirm my local citations and help improve local rankings. Or Should the local branch be displayed on the local category pages instead or as well ?. If a user comes in from the homepage or not on a specific location page, then the branch locator will allow them to search for a specific branch. Should I also put in a branch locator as a separate page or can It be in more places. I don't want to damage anything which may have an effect on rankings due to citations and NAP on the location specific pages. Any advice or good examples to look at would be greatly appreciated thanks Sarah.

              Local Website Optimization | | SarahCollins
              1

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter

            Access all your tools in one place. Whether you're tracking progress or analyzing data, everything you need is at your fingertips.

            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.