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
      • MozCon
      • 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.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • 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. Image URLs changed 3 times after using a CDN - How to Handle for SEO?

    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.

    Image URLs changed 3 times after using a CDN - How to Handle for SEO?

    Local Website Optimization
    2
    6
    2651
    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.
    • emerald
      emerald last edited by

      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.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • RyanPurkey
        RyanPurkey @emerald last edited by

        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!

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

          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.jpg

          OR

          Redirect 301 /wp-content/uploads/2010/09/istanbul-boat-rental.jpg
          http://**CDN.**bosphorusyacht.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/istanbul-boat-rental.jpg

          OR

          How would I 301 this one?: username.net-dns.com/images/abc.jpg

          Hope you can advise one last time - thank you!

          RyanPurkey 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • RyanPurkey
            RyanPurkey @emerald last edited by

            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.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • emerald
              emerald @RyanPurkey last edited by

              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!

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

                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!

                emerald 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • 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

                • BigChad2

                  Does having an embedded Google Map still count as a positive SEO signal?

                  I know this was true a few years ago, however is there still an advantage to having an embedded map vs. a pop up map in 2017?

                  Local Website Optimization | | BigChad2
                  1
                • Ohmichael

                  Multi location silo seo technique

                  A physical therapy company has 8 locations in one city and 4 locations in another with plans to expand. I've seen two methods to approach this. The first I feel is sloppy and that is the individual url for each location that points to from the location pages on the main domain. The second is to use the silo technique incorporated with metro scale addition.  You have the main domain with the number of silos (individual stores) and each silo has its own content (what they do at each store is pretty much the same). My question is should the focus of each silo, besides making sure there is no duplicate copy, to increase their own hyperlocal outreach?  Focus on social, reviews, content curated for the specific location. How would you attack this problem?

                  Local Website Optimization | | Ohmichael
                  1
                • Dissident_SLC

                  Is CNAME / URL flattening a bad practice?

                  I recently have moved a number of websites top a new server and have made the use of CNAME / URL flattening (I believe these are the same?). A network admin had said this is an unrecommended practice. From what I have read it seems flattening can be beneficial for site speed and SEO even if very little.

                  Local Website Optimization | | Dissident_SLC
                  0
                • Virginia-Girtz

                  301 or 302 Redirects with locale URLs?

                  Hi Mozers, I have a bit of a tricky question I need some help answering. My agency are building a brand new website for a client of ours which means changing the domain name (yay...). So! I have my 301's all ready to go for the UK locale, however, the issue I have is that the site will also eventually have French, German and Spanish locales - but these won't be ready to go until later this year. We will be launching in just English for September. The current site already has the French and German locales on it as well. Just to make sure I'm being clear, the site will be www.example.com for launch, but by lets say November, we will also have a www.example.com/fr/ and www.example.com/de/ site launched too. So what do I do with the locale URLs? As I said above, the exisitng site already has the French and German locales on it, so I don't particularly want to redirect the /fr/ and /de/ URLs to the English homepage, as I will want to redirect them to the new URLs in November, and redirecting more than once is bad for SEO right? Any ideas? Would 302s maybe be the best suggestion? Thanks! Virginia

                  Local Website Optimization | | Virginia-Girtz
                  1
                • TriMarkDigital

                  How to Handle Franchise Duplicate Content

                  My agency handles digital marketing for about 80 Window World stores, each with separate sites. For the most part, the content across all of these sites is the exact same, though we have slowly but surely been working through getting new, unique content up on some of the top pages over the past year. These pages include resource pages and specific product pages. I'm trying to figure out the best temporary solution as we go through this process. Previously, we have tried to keep the pages we knew were duplicates from indexing, but some pages have still managed to slip through the cracks during redesigns. Would canonicals be the route to go? (do keep in mind that there isn't necessarily one "original version," so there isn't a clear answer as to which page/site all the duplicated pages should point to) Should we just continue to use robots.txt/noindex for all duplicate pages for now? Any other recommendations? Thanks in advance!

                  Local Website Optimization | | TriMarkDigital
                  0
                • MiriamEllis

                  How Google's Doorway Pages Update Affects Local SEO

                  Hey Awesome Local Folks! I thought I'd take a proactive stance and start a thread on the new doorway pages update from Google, as I feel there will be questions coming up about this here in the forum: Here's the update announcement: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages.html And here's the part that will make local business owners and Local SEOs take a second glance at this: Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages: Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic? I think this will naturally lead to questions about the practice of creating local/city landing pages. At this point, my prediction is that this will come down to high quality vs. crummy quality pages of this type. In fact, after chatting briefly with Andrew Shotland, I'm leaning a bit toward seeing the above language as being strongly geared toward directory type sites and large franchises. I recommend reading Andrew's post about his take on this, as I think he's on the right track: http://www.localseoguide.com/googles-about-to-close-your-local-doorway-pages/ So, I'm feeling at this point that if you've made the right efforts to develop unique, high quality local landing pages, you should be good unless you are an accidental casualty of an over-zealous update. We'll see! If anyone has thoughts to contribute on this thread, I hope they will, and if lots of questions start coming up about this here in the community, feel free to link back to this thread in helping your fellow community members 🙂 Thanks, all!

                  Local Website Optimization | | MiriamEllis
                  9
                • Red_Spot_Interactive

                  Subdomain versus Subfolder for Local SEO

                  Hello Moz World, I'm wanting to know the best practices for utilizing a subdomain versus a subfolder for multi location businesses, i.e. miami.example.com vs. example.com/miami; I would think that that utilizing the subdomain would make more sense for a national organization with many differing locations, while a subfolder would make more sense for a smaller more nearby locations. I wanted to know if anyone has any a/b examples or when it should go one way or another? Thank you, Kristin Miller

                  Local Website Optimization | | Red_Spot_Interactive
                  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

                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
                • Digital Marketers
                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
                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.