Question on changing URL structures
-
We have a lot of "Long URL" errors in moz, and our URLs have no helpful format to them. For example, our blog URLs currently have a date and the title so they end up looking like this: blog/year/month/day/long title that never ends.
If I were to setup a new URL structure using MOZ best practices, can I just make the change going forward and redirect a few high trafficked links to this new structure? Or do I really need to make the change for the website (specifically blog) as a whole to see a positive impact? I know this means there may be an initial drop in traffic which I'd like to avoid.
-
Be very careful about changing hierarchy or structure. It does have an effect on where the pages rank.
Any pages that are ranking well (i.e. position 0 to 5) don't even touch them, in fact anything on the first page I would be slow to alter without very good reason.
Anything that is on the second page or worse you haven't got a lot to lose, so restructuring probably would make sense.
-
Hey there,
I assume you're using WordPress default permalink structure. If your site is a large blog I would recommend to check out yoast premium plugin which allows you to set up the 301 redirect at once when you change the permalink structure. If it's a small blog you can do that with other free plugins that help set up 301 redirects as well.
-
To get the full benefit of changing the link structure it's probably a good idea to structure the whole thing correctly as opposed to just throwing it on top of the links you have now. As long as you do the redirects right, it should be a smooth process.
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
-
Pages with URL Too Long
Hello Mozzers! MOZ keeps kindly telling me the URLs are too long. However, this is largely due to the structure of E-commerce site, which has to include 'brand' 'range' and 'products' keyword. For example -
Moz Pro | | tigersohelll
https://www.choicefurnituresuperstore.co.uk/Devonshire-Rustic-Oak-Bedside-Cabinet-1-Drawer-p40668.html MOZ recommends no more than 75 characters. This means we have 25-30 characters for both the brand name and product name. Questions:
If it is an issue, how to fix it on my site?
If it's not an issue, how can we turn off this alert from MOZ?
Anyone know how big an issue URLs are as a ranking factor? I thought pretty low.0 -
My index URL was removed from Google, but all others remain in the search engines
HI All, My site was ranking very well and was in 1st page of google for most of my keywords. Couple of weeks back we did some update to the site and moved it to new hosting and from then onwards I dont see my site home page in Google ranking . My Website Name is : royalevents.com.au. It used to be in 1st of Google for keywords like wedding Mandaps, Indian Wedding Mandaps etc, Would be great if some one helps us to figure out whats gone wrong .. I also did Webmaster Fetch as Google but nothing happened. Thanks
Moz Pro | | Verve-Innovation0 -
Blog Page URLs Showing Duplicate Content
On the SEOMoz Crawl Diagnostics, we are receiving information that we have duplicate page content for the URL Blog pages. For Example: blog/page/33/ blog/page/34/ blog/page/35/ blog/page/36/ These are older post in our blog. Moz is saying that these are duplicate content. What is the best way to fix the URL structure of the pages?
Moz Pro | | _Thriveworks0 -
4XX (Client Error) Report - Referrer URL Feature Request
Why not allow me to click on the individual 404 errors in the 4XX (Client Error) report and allow me to actually see the where the broken links are coming from (as a hyperlinked url) so I can locate/click and fix them? Providing the referring url w/hyperlink will stop me from having to jump between the report and searching in site explorer, or downloading the complete error report and sorting.
Moz Pro | | WaterGuy0 -
Finding the source of duplicate content URL's
We have a website that displays a number of products. The product has variations (sizes) and unfortunately every size has its own URL (for now anyway). Needless to say, this causes duplicate content issues. (And of course, we are looking to change the URL's for our site as soon as possible) However, even though these duplicate URL's exist, you should not be able to land on them by navigating through the site. In theory, the site should always display the link to the smallest size. It seems that there is a flaw in our system somewhere, as these links are now found in our campaign here on SEOmoz. My question: is there any way to find the crawl path that lead to the URL's that shouldn't have been found, so we can locate the problem?
Moz Pro | | DocdataCommerce0 -
Changing the Timeframe of Historical Crawl Data
Hello, Just read a great post about the implications of duplicate content for sites after the most recent Panda update: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+seomoz+(SEOmoz+Daily+Blog) In the post is an image or crawl data history that shows months, not days or weeks, worth of trending data as it relates to duplicate content. So my question is this: How do I change my view/date range on my own campaigns so that I can view the trailing months of data rather than only what seems to be the past 4 weeks or so? This would really help me identify the impact of some on page changes we've recently made for a client. Many Thanks, Jared
Moz Pro | | surjm0 -
New To SEOMOZ, 2 Questions...
Hi, 1. I got signed up with SEOMOZ yesterday and would like to know about the competitive analysis tool. I saw in a demo video of SEOMOZ that there was an aspect of Social links (Facebook etc) included in the analysis, I can't see this in my analysis however. 2. Is it possible to change websites over time? Let say in a few months I want to work on a new website, can I remove one of my 5 and add a new one? Thanks! James
Moz Pro | | James10