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.
URL Rewriting Best Practices
-
Hey Moz!
I’m getting ready to implement URL rewrites on my website to improve site structure/URL readability. More specifically I want to:
- Improve our website structure by removing redundant directories.
- Replace underscores with dashes and remove file extensions for our URLs.
Please see my example below:
Old structure: http://www.widgets.com/widgets/commercial-widgets/small_blue_widget.htm
New structure: https://www.widgets.com/commercial-widgets/small-blue-widget
I've read several URL rewriting guides online, all of which seem to provide similar but overall different methods to do this. I'm looking for what's considered best practices to implement these rewrites. From what I understand, the most common method is to implement rewrites in our .htaccess file using mod_rewrite (which will find the old URLs and rewrite them according to the rewrites I implement).
One question I can't seem to find a definitive answer to is when I implement the rewrite to remove file extensions/replace underscores with dashes in our URLs, do the webpage file names need to be edited to the new format? From what I understand the webpage file names must remain the same for the rewrites in the .htaccess to work. However, our internal links (including canonical links) must be changed to the new URL format. Can anyone shed light on this?
Also, I'm aware that implementing URL rewriting improperly could negatively affect our SERP rankings. If I redirect our old website directory structure to our new structure using this rewrite, are my bases covered in regards to having the proper 301 redirects in place to not affect our rankings negatively?
Please offer any advice/reliable guides to handle this properly.
Thanks in advance!
-
Thanks for clearing that up and all of the help!
-
I'm saying rename files first and do rewrite for removing extensions.
You will have to do rewrite for replacing underscores with hyphens anyway, just for redirect purposes.
So, rename files from underscores to hyphens; do rewrite rule for underscore to hyphens to insure old pages are being redirected; do another rewrite for removing file extensions. In som time (2-3-4 months) when old file names (with underscores) are out of google index, delete first rewrite.
-
Hey Dmitrii,
I was planning on using two rewrites.
One rewrite for replacing the underscores with hyphens.
And another rewrite for removing the file extensions.
Just so I fully understand, you recommend implementing the rewrite for replacing the underscores with hyphens in our .htaccess file. Then once the new URLs are indexed, change the webpage file names themselves by replacing the underscores with hyphens, make the newly named files live and remove this rewrite from our .htaccess. Is my understanding correct?
Again...thanks for all of your help!
-
Well, I thought that's what you were going to do and use rewrite just for deleting file extensions. Honestly, I'd leave file extensions and rename files to hyphens. This way there is no server processing involved.
-
Another question just popped into my head...
Once our new website directory structure and URL format has been rewritten, redirected and indexed by search engines, would it make sense to edit the actual webpage file names (replacing the underscores w/ hyphens) and then remove the URL rewrite that replaces the underscores with the hyphens? Or is this not recommended?
-
Thanks for the help Dmitrii!
Both the rewrite I posted above and yours for removing file extensions failed to work. However, it seems this one does the trick (taken from the Apache help forums).
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s([^.]+).htm [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s([^.]+).php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R,L] -
Yes, I believe so, that's the only rewrite you'd need not to mess up rankings.
I don't know if one of codes is better than another. All I know that my piece of code is working and i haven't used the one you wrote. It seems ok to me, but just test it. If it works, I don't think there is any difference.
-
Hey Dmitrii,
This rewrite that I posted above...
RewriteRule ^old/(.*)$ /new/$1 [L,R=301]
...isn't intended to remove the file extensions. I'm using it to redirect the old directory structure to our new directory structure.
I was asking if using this rewrite when changing my directory structure will be all I need in regards to having all the necessary redirects in place to not negatively affect our SEO/SERP rankings. Any idea?
Also, would you recommend the rewrite you provided above over the one below when removing file extensions?
RewriteBase /
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.htmlLet me know if I'm being clear enough
Thanks!
-
the rule you wrote wont work.
What it will do is redirect this: _domain.com/old/small_blue_widget.htm _to this: domain.com/new/small_blue_widget.htm
To remove the extension would be:
<code>RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.htm [NC,L]</code>
-
Thanks for the response Dmitrii!
Thanks for for confirming that I don't need to update the webpage file names.
Do you know if redirecting the old directories to the new ones (using the the rewrite below) is all I need to do regarding redirects? In other words, when redirecting directories using the rewrite below is there any need to redirect the old URL format (small_blue_widget.htm) to the new (small-blue-widget)? My understanding is no, all I need to do is redirect the directories; but please share your knowledge.Thanks in advance!
<code>RewriteRule ^old/(.*)$ /new/$1 [L,R=301]</code>
-
Hi there.
Well, as for best practices - you got it covered - remove/substitute underscores, remove redundant directories, make urls readable and understandable by users, implement redirects for pages, which are being renamed.
As for removing extensions from files - i'm not sure it has any effect on SEO or user experience at all. But no, you don't have to create new format pages. Basically what mod_rewrite does is when somebody requests a page, server says "I gonna server you this file with this name, because you sent me this specific request". Just be aware that there is no way to access both original url and rewritten url at the same time, since it would create duplicate issues.
As for rankings affect - as long as all redirects are done properly and urls are targeting the keywords on the page - you 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
-
Attack of the dummy urls -- what to do?
It occurs to me that a malicious program could set up thousands of links to dummy pages on a website: www.mysite.com/dynamicpage/dummy123 www.mysite.com/dynamicpage/dummy456 etc.. How is this normally handled? Does a developer have to look at all the parameters to see if they are valid and if not, automatically create a 301 redirect or 404 not found? This requires a table lookup of acceptable url parameters for all new visitors. I was thinking that bad url names would be rare so it would be ok to just stop the program with a message, until I realized someone could intentionally set up links to non existent pages on a site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood1 -
Weird 404 URL Problem - domain name being placed at end of urls
Hey there. For some reason when doing crawl tests I'm finding pages with the domain name being tacked on the end and causing 404 errors.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jay328
For example: http://domainname.com/page-name/http://domainname.com This is happening to all pages, posts and even category type 1. Site is in Wordpress
2. Using Yoast SEO plugin Any suggestions? Thanks!0 -
Duplicate Content www vs. non-www and best practices
I have a customer who had prior help on his website and I noticed a 301 redirect in his .htaccess Rule for duplicate content removal : www.domain.com vs domain.com RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com [NC]
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EnvoyWeb
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com/$1 [R=301,L,NC] The result of this rule is that i type MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com in the browser and it redirects to www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com I wonder if this is causing issues in SERPS. If I have some inbound links pointing to www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com and some pointing to MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com, I would think that this rewrite isn't necessary as it would seem that Googlebot is smart enough to know that these aren't two sites. -----Can you comment on whether this is a best practice for all domains?
-----I've run a report for backlinks. If my thought is true that there are some pointing to www.www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com and some to the www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com, is there any value in addressing this?0 -
301 redirect with /? in URL
For a Wordpress site that has the ending / in the URL with a ? after it... how can you do a 301 redirect to strip off anything after the / For example how to take this URL domain.com/article-name/?utm_source=feedburner and 301 to this URL domain.com/article-name/ Thank you for the help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
E-commerce site, one product multiple categories best practice
Hi there, We have an e-commerce shopping site with over 8000 products and over 100 categories. Some sub categories belong to multiple categories - for example, A Christmas trees can be under "Gardening > Plants > Trees" and under "Gifts > Holidays > Christmas > Trees" The product itself (example: Scandinavian Xmas Tree) can naturally belong to both these categories as well. Naturally these two (or more) categories have different breadcrumbs, different navigation bars, etc. From an SEO point of view, to avoid duplicate content issues, I see the following options: Use the same URL and change the content of the page (breadcrumbs and menus) based on the referral path. Kind of cloaking. Use the same URL and display only one "main" version of breadcrumbs and menus. Possibly add the other "not main" categories as links to the category / product page. Use a different URL based on where we came from and do nothing (will create essentially the same content on different urls except breadcrumbs and menus - there's a possibiliy to change the category text and page title as well) Use a different URL based on where we came from with different menus and breadcrumbs and use rel=canonical that points to the "main" category / product pages This is a very interesting issue and I would love to hear what you guys think as we are finalizing plans for a new website and would like to get the most out of it. Thank you all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | arikbar0 -
Exact keyword URL or not?
Hi all, I have a quick question about the proper use of permalinks. Let's say that I have a website about sports and I want to create an internal page dedicated to shoes. I know that the keyword "shoe" has 15.000 monthly visits, while the keyword "shoes" has 1.000 monthly visits. How do I have to name the internal page? http://www.example.com/shoe or http://www.example.com/shoes (with a final 's')? I would think that by naming the URL http://www.example.com/shoes, the search engine would consider that page for the keywords "shoe" and "shoes", but I am not sure about it. Should I create a URL that only focuses on one specific keyword ("shoe", in this example) or a URL that may encompass more than one keyword ("shoe" and "shoes")? I hope this is clear. Thank you for your time and help. All best, Sal
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0 -
URL Shorteners. Are they SEO Friendly?
Do URL shortener services like bit.ly act as 301 redirects? I was thinking about utilizing one for longer query based URLs and didn't want to risk losing link juice. Thanks for the insight! Regards - Kyle
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kchandler0 -
There's a website I'm working with that has a .php extension. All the pages do. What's the best practice to remove the .php extension across all pages?
Client wishes to drop the .php extension on all their pages (they've got around 2k pages). I assured them that wasn't necessary. However, in the event that I do end up doing this what's the best practices way (and easiest way) to do this? This is also a WordPress site. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digisavvy0