Image URLs changed 3 times after using a CDN - How to Handle for SEO?
-
Hi Mozzers,
Hoping for your advice on how to handle the SEO effects an image URL change, that changed 3 times, during the course of setting up a CDN over a month period, as follows:- (URL 1) - Original image URL before CDN:www.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg
- (URL 2) - First CDN URL (without CNAME alias - using WPEngine & their own CDN):
username.net-dns.com/images/abc.jpg - (URL 3) - Second CDN URL (with CNAME alias - applied 3 weeks later):
cdn.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg
When we changed to URL 2, our image rankings in the Moz Tool Pro Rankings dropped from 80% to 5% (the one with the little photo icons).
So my questions for recovery are:
- Do I need to add a 301 redirect/Canonical tag from the old image URL 1 & 2 to URL 3 or something else?
- Do I need to change my image sitemap to use cdn.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg instead of www.?
Thanks in advance for your advice.
-
Sorry I missed this follow-up earlier. Within the site map you'll want to change the http://WWW to http://CDN for these image files. The www version of your site, and the cdn server are on two different IPs / server. You want images to be serving from the CDN one.
For 2, if you do use 301 redirection I'd recommend scripting it so that the script inspects whether or not it's an image file and then applies the cdn change. A pro in your area that works with REgex and htaccess will be able to guide you through that.
The username.net-dns.com thing... That's not your server is it? You can't apply redirects on servers outside of your control. Cheers!
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for your answer - Sorry I didn't mean about the URL for the location of the sitemap - I think my question wasn't clear - may I rephrase it:(1) Inside my image sitemap, the urls serve off the www. subdomain as bolded in the example below (not .cdn). I'm assuming this setup is correct as this was auto-generated by an Image Sitemap Generator - does the below image:loc look correct to you?
<url><loc>http://www.bosphorusyacht.com/yachts/</loc>
image:imageimage:lochttp://**WWW.**bosphorusyacht.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/istanbul-boat-rental.jpg</image:loc></image:image></url>(2) For a 301 image redirect would I set it up like this:
Redirect 301 /wp-content/uploads/2010/09/istanbul-boat-rental.jpg
http://**WWW.**bosphorusyacht.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/istanbul-boat-rental.jpgOR
Redirect 301 /wp-content/uploads/2010/09/istanbul-boat-rental.jpg
http://**CDN.**bosphorusyacht.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/istanbul-boat-rental.jpgOR
How would I 301 this one?: username.net-dns.com/images/abc.jpg
Hope you can advise one last time - thank you!
-
Right. Not everything is going to be served from cdn. It's most likely setup for your images so your sitemap will still reside on www. Make sure to point to the front end files though as those are the publicly accessible ones.
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for your reply and advice. I've read the guidelines and will follow those. But I wonder if you can clarify an issue on implementing them that is not answered there:On my site the images in 'Backend' (edit/admin/code view) start with WWW.mydomain... and in 'Frontend' (actual published view in browser) they start with CDN.mydomain...
So my question is, do I use the Backend or Frontend (www. or cdn.) for the URL in both image sitemaps and in 301 redirect final destination?
My current sitemap for example seems to be using www rather than cdn. : http://www.bosphorusyacht.com/sitemap-image.xml
Thanks for your help!
-
You're on it. Redirecting to the new image source and submitting a new sitemap pointing to the URL 3 location for your images will be big steps in the right direction. Be sure to follow the instructions here for your sitemap: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/178636 as well as reviewing image publishing guidelines: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/114016. Cheers!
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
-
What's your proudest accomplishment in regards to SEO?
After many years in the industry, you come to realize a few things. One of of the biggest pain points for us at web daytona was being able to give clients a quick keyword ranking cost estimation. After multiple trial and error and relying on API data from one of the most reliable SEO softwares in our industry, we were able to develop an SEO tool that allows us to quickly and accurately get the estimated cost for a given keyword (s) using multiple variables. Most agencies can relate to that story. It’s something my colleagues and I at Web Daytona have been through before. Finding the cost and amount of time needed to rank for a keyword is a time consuming process. That’s why it’s a common practice to sell SEO packages of 5-10 keywords for about $1000-2000 / month. The problem is not all keywords are equally valuable, and most clients know this. We constantly get questions from clients asking: “how much to rank for this specific keyword?” It’s difficult to answer that question with a pricing model that treats the cost of ranking every keyword equally. So is the answer to spend a lot more time doing tedious in-depth keyword research? If we did we could give our clients more precise estimates. But being that a decent proposal can take as long as 2-5 hours to make, and agency life isn’t exactly full of free time, that wouldn’t be ideal. That’s when we asked a question. What if we could automate the research needed to find the cost of ranking keywords? We looked around for a tool that did, but we couldn’t find it. Then we decided to make it ourselves. It wasn’t going to be easy. But after running an SEO agency for over a decade, we knew we had the expertise to create a tool that wouldn’t just be fast and reliable, it would also be precise. Fast forward to today and we’re proud to announce that The Keyword Cost Estimator is finally done. Now we’re releasing it to the public so other agencies and businesses can use it too. You can see it for yourself here. Keyword-Rank-Cost-Ectimator-Tool-by-Web-Daytona-Agency.png
Local Website Optimization | | WebDaytona0 -
What's the current best practice for URL structure?
We’re really confused about the current best practice of URL structure. For example what would anyone advise to rank for luxury hotel rooms? name.com/luxury-hotel-rooms/
Local Website Optimization | | SolveWebMedia
name.com/hotel/luxury-hotel-rooms/
name.com/hotel/luxury-rooms/
name.com/hotel/luxury/
name.com/luxury-rooms/ Or do we add location? name.com/luxury-hotel-rooms-location/
name.com/hotel/luxury-hotel-rooms-location/ name.com/hotel/luxury-rooms-location/ They also do cottages name.com/cottages/sea-view-holiday-cottages/0 -
Local SEO for Multiple Locations - Is this the best approach?
Hi everyone! I previously have worked with single-location companies, and am now working for a company that is continuously growing and adding new locations. We are a financial institution that currently has 12 locations, and we should have 15+ locations by year-end 2017. Seeing as we have all of these locations, I thought the following approach would be the best for increasing our presence in local search. Our primary keyword is "credit union in location". Our search traffic has increased heavily over last year, but is down from the beginning of the year. I've gone through and done the following: Freshened up the content on the main website Created pages for each of our locations around April-end Attributed these location page URLs to our Google My Business locations Verified each location Wrote unique content for each page Our primary keyword rankings seem to fluctuate weekly. My next steps are to get our web design company to add the following: Structured Data on all location pages The ability to change SEO title and meta descriptions on location pages Sitemap (there is none currently, and I've been fighting them to get one added because it isn't needed.) I also plan on utilizing Moz Local to manage our local listings. After this is done I plan on finding ways for us to build links for each location, like the chambers of commerce in each city and local partnerships. Is this the best approach for our overall goal, and should I continue? Is there anything I should change about our current approach? I appreciate the help!
Local Website Optimization | | PelicanStateCU0 -
What more can be done to get Google to change the landing pages it uses for certain search terms?
For one of my SEO campaigns, Google is using the website's home page as the landing page for the majority of search terms being tracked. The website splits its products by region and so we want specific region pages to rank for search terms related to that region, rather than the home page. We have optimised each regional page to a reasonably high standard and we have ensured that there is a good amount of internal linking and sign-posting to those region pages, however, Google is still using the home page. The only complication is that for the first few months there were canonical tags on these pages to the home page. These were removed around 3 months ago and we've checked that the region pages are indexed properly. Is there anything we are missing? Has anyone had any success in getting Google to change its landing pages?
Local Website Optimization | | ClickHub-Harry0 -
What is the effect of CloudFlare CDN on page load speeds, hosting IP location and the ultimate SEO effect?
Will using a CDN like CloudFlare.com confuse search engines in terms of the location (IP address) of where the site is actually physically hosted especially since CloudFlare distributes the site's content all around the globe? I understand it is important that if customers are mostly in a particular city it makes sense to host on an IP address in the same city for better rankings, all things else being equal? I have a number of city-based sites but does it make having multiple hosting plans in multiple cities/ countries (to be close to customers) become suddenly a ridiculous thing with a CDN? In other words should I just reduce it down to having one hosting plan anywhere and just use the CDN to distribute it? I am really struggling with this concept trying to understand if I should consolidate all my hosting plans under one, or if I should get rid of CloudFlare entirely (can it cause latency in come cases) and create even more locally-based hosting plans (like under site5.com who allow many city hosting plans). I really hope you can help me somehow or point me to an expert who can clarify this confusing conundrum. Of course my overall goal is to have:
Local Website Optimization | | uworlds
1. lowest page load times
2. best UX
3. best rankings I do realise that other concepts are more important for rankings (great content, and links etc.) but assuming that is already in place and every other factor is equal, how can I fine tune the hosting to achieve the desirable goals above? Many thanks!
Mark0 -
Can you, somehow, use dynamic number insertion on a click to call button (image)
Hello Moz! I have been beating my head against the wall for a few hours, and I am starting to get a headache. My question is simple: I am doing some work for a local salon, and we started a PPC campaign recently. It's very important that I get accurate ROI metrics from both our PPC efforts and Yelp advertising program, and the best way to do this is by using custom phone numbers and dynamic number insertion w/ CallRail to track phone calls being made to the salon. I can then cross reference the numbers used to call with the salon POS software to see what they spent, how many appts. they booked, etc. A VERY large portion, the majority in fact, of traffic comes from mobile, and in the past I had a big, fat, beautiful CTA click-to-call button that showed the salon phone number. However, I have found that with dynamic number insertion, and my near non-existent programming skills, it is impossible to have the number dynamically insert into an href image. Sooooo...any ideas on how to do this, or is it just not possible????
Local Website Optimization | | Sean_Gutermuth0 -
Local seo landing pages and proper keywords to optimize and showing up for generic keyword localized results
looking for advice. I have my site built into landing pages for each city I service. Would it effect my seo in a negative way if I built other landing pages with "keyword + zip code" as well as the city ones I already have or do you think it would make my city rankings worst? Also how do you get a seo city landing page to show up for the "keyword" or "keyword near me" in the city of interest? Is making landing pages with "keyword + city" sufficient way to accomplish this or is there a trick I am unaware of?
Local Website Optimization | | Spartan220 -
Multilingual site making new URLs, how to preserve SEO juice?
Hello! My site currently serves content in german and english, however without having separate URLs (it depends on Accept-Language and has a submitform for changing language based on set cookies). The site appears extremely well in the search engine, with many keywords ranking at #1-10. They appear on the german and english google search, with the first one bringing the best results. It's however the english site that appears in the results. I want to change to a better approach by having subdirectories for each language, as I'm extending the site, I know how to do this but I have found -nowhere- any infos on how to preserve my search engine ranks? If I keep the english version as homepage and send german visitors to /de/, might this kill my position in the german search engine which is very important, as the new frontpage under /de/ would become more relevant and the english one maybe less? Or should I keep the german version the default one and send english visitors elsewhere? What happens with my search positions, if I have no side on the / but visitors are always send to either /en/ or /de/? Every help is greatly appreciated, as I found a lot of articles everywhere on how to make a multilingual site, but nowhere anything on how it affects current search results.
Local Website Optimization | | innovacy0