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. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. URL Rewriting Best Practices

    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

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    2
    12
    5201
    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.
    • TheDude
      TheDude Subscriber last edited by

      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!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • TheDude
        TheDude Subscriber @DmitriiK last edited by

        Thanks for clearing that up and all of the help!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • DmitriiK
          DmitriiK @TheDude last edited by

          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.

          TheDude 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • TheDude
            TheDude Subscriber @DmitriiK last edited by

            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!

            DmitriiK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • DmitriiK
              DmitriiK @TheDude last edited by

              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.

              TheDude 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • TheDude
                TheDude Subscriber @DmitriiK last edited by

                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?

                DmitriiK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • TheDude
                  TheDude Subscriber @DmitriiK last edited by

                  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]

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • DmitriiK
                    DmitriiK @TheDude last edited by

                    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.

                    TheDude 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • TheDude
                      TheDude Subscriber @DmitriiK last edited by

                      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.html

                      Let me know if I'm being clear enough 🙂 Thanks!

                      DmitriiK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • DmitriiK
                        DmitriiK @TheDude last edited by

                        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>
                        
                        TheDude 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • TheDude
                          TheDude Subscriber @DmitriiK last edited by

                          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> 
                          
                          DmitriiK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • DmitriiK
                            DmitriiK last edited by

                            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.

                            TheDude 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • 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

                            • Fubra

                              410 or 301 after URL update?

                              Hi there, A site i'm working on atm has a thousand "not found" errors on google console (of course, I'm sure there are thousands more it's not showing us!). The issue is a lot of them seem to come from a URL change. Damage has been done, the URLs have been changed and I can't stop that... but as you can imagine, i'm keen to fix as many as humanly possible. I don't want to go mad with 301s - but for external links in, this seems like the best solution? On the other hand, Google is reading internal links that simply aren't there anymore. Is it better to hunt down the new page and 301-it anyway? OR should I 410 and grit my teeth while google crawls and recrawls it, warning me that this page really doesn't exist? Essentially I guess I'm asking, how many 301s are too many and will affect our DA? And what's the best solution for dealing with mass 404 errors - many of which aren't attached or linked to from any other pages anymore? Thanks for any insights 🙂

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fubra
                              0
                            • teddef

                              Best practice for deindexing large quantities of pages

                              We are trying to deindex a large quantity of pages on our site and want to know what the best practice for doing that is. For reference, the reason we are looking for methods that could help us speed it up is we have about 500,000 URLs that we want deindexed because of mis-formatted HTML code and google indexed them much faster than it is taking to unindex them unfortunately. We don't want to risk clogging up our limited crawl log/budget by submitting a sitemap of URLs that have "noindex" on them as a hack for deindexing. Although theoretically that should work, we are looking for white hat methods that are faster than "being patient and waiting it out", since that would likely take months if not years with Google's current crawl rate of our site.

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teddef
                              0
                            • ennovators

                              Replace dynamic paramenter URLs with static Landing Page URL - faceted navigation

                              Hi there, got a quick question regarding faceted navigation. If a specific filter (facet) seems to be quite popular for visitors. Does it make sense to replace a dynamic URL e.x http://www.domain.com/pants.html?a_type=239 by a static, more SEO friendly URL e.x http://www.domain.com/pants/levis-pants.html by creating a proper landing page for it. I know, that it is nearly impossible to replace all variations of this parameter URLs by static ones but does it generally make sense to do this for the most popular facets choose by visitors. Or does this cause any issues? Any help is much appreciated. Thanks a lot in advance

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ennovators
                              0
                            • friendoffood

                              Removing UpperCase URLs from Indexing

                              This search   -  site:www.qjamba.com/online-savings/automotix gives me this result from Google: Automotix online coupons and shopping - Qjamba
                              https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/automotix
                              Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Automotix. Coupon codes for online discounts on Vehicles & Parts products. and Google tells me there is another one, which is 'very simliar'.  When I click to see it I get: Automotix online coupons and shopping - Qjamba
                              https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/Automotix
                              Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Automotix. Coupon codes for online discounts on Vehicles & Parts products. This is because I recently changed my program to redirect all urls with uppercase in them to lower case, as it appears that all lowercase is strongly recommended. I assume that having 2 indexed urls for the same content dilutes link juice.  Can I safely remove all of my UpperCase indexed pages from Google without it affecting the indexing of the lower case urls?  And if, so what is the best way -- there are thousands.

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood
                              0
                            • DarinPirkey

                              Best Practices for Moving a Sub-Domain to a Sub-Folder

                              One of my clients is moving their subdomain to a subfolder on their main domain.  (ie.  blog.example.com to example.com/blog) I just wanted to get everyone's thoughts on some best practices for things we should be doing/looking for when making this move.? ie WMT, .htaccess, 301s etc? Thanks.

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DarinPirkey
                              0
                            • steviephil

                              Best way to noindex an image?

                              Hi all, A client wanted a few pages noindexed, which was no problem using the meta robots noindex tag. However they now want associated images removed, some of which still appear on pages that they still want indexed. I added the images to their robots.txt file a few weeks ago (probably over a month ago actually) but they're all still showing when you do an image search. What's the best way to noindex them for good, and how do I go about implementing it? Many thanks, Steve

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | steviephil
                              0
                            • pano

                              Removing dashes in our URLs?

                              Hi Forum, Our site has an errant product review module that is resulting in about 9-10 404 errors per day on Google Webmaster Tools. We've found that by changing our product page URLs to only include 2 dashes, the module stops causing 404 errors for that page. Does changing our URL from "oursite.com/girls-pink-yoga-capri.html" to "oursite.com/girlspink-yoga-capri.html" hurt our SEO for a search for "girls pink yoga capri"? If so, by how much (assuming everthing else on the page is optimized properly) Thanks for your input.

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pano
                              0
                            • Romancing

                              URL Length or Exact Breadcrumb Navigation URL? What's More Important

                              Basically my question is as follows, what's better: www.romancingdiamonds.com/gemstone-rings/amethyst-rings/purple-amethyst-ring-14k-white-gold (this would fully match the breadcrumbs). or www.romancingdiamonds.com/amethyst-rings/purple-amethyst-ring-14k-white-gold (cutting out the first level folder to keep the url shorter and the important keywords are closer to the root domain). In this question http://www.seomoz.org/qa/discuss/37982/url-length-vs-url-keywords I was consulted to drop a folder in my url because it may be to long. That's why I'm hesitant to keep the bradcrumb structure the same. To the best of your knowldege do you think it's best to drop a folder in the URL to keep it shorter and sweeter, or to have a longer URL and have it match the breadcrumb structure? Please advise, Shawn

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Romancing
                              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
                            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.