URL's for news content
-
We have made modifications to the URL structure for a particular client who publishes news articles in various niche industries. In line with SEO best practice we removed the article ID from the URL - an example is below:
http://www.website.com/news/123/news-article-title
http://www.website.com/news/read/news-article-titleSince this has been done we have noticed a decline in traffic volumes (we have not as yet assessed the impact on number of pages indexed). Google have suggested that we need to include unique numerical IDs in the URL somewhere to aid spidering. Firstly, is this policy for news submissions? Secondly (if the previous answer is yes), is this to overcome the obvious issue with the velocity and trend based nature of news submissions resulting in false duplicate URL/ title tag violations? Thirdly, do you have any advice on the way to go?
Thanks
P.S. One final one (you can count this as two question credits if required), is it possible to check the volume of pages indexed at various points in the past i.e. if you think that the number of pages being indexed may have declined, is there any way of confirming this after the event?
Thanks again!
Neil
-
Hi Neil,
Your URL structure is affecting Google News. There is information here about the URL structure requirements, which can be waived if you use a Google News sitemap. http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?answer=151309.
I don't know of any way to see the number of pages indexed historically, unfortunately.
-
SO, for this one, make a small research on any news website, and on the seomoz blog articles, you will see every url is unique, and for this question, i prefer you urgently to read the seomoz ebook for starters, and read the next book from Randfishkin,and another seos, the name of book is: http://www.amazon.com/Art-SEO-Mastering-Optimization-Practice/dp/0596518862
and google website optimizing, you must understand the search engine friendly,really good, how to make urls,why, what kind of url, avoid the duplicate content, page=moves, because you are moving the published articles, to the new url, and this make a duplicate content on the google-crawl.
But the best answer is, read the art-of-seo ebook,and you will learn all and do perfectly.
hope it helps,
thanks
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
-
"Yet-to-be-translated" Duplicate Content: is rel='canonical' the answer?
Hi All, We have a partially internationalized site, some pages are translated while others have yet to be translated. Right now, when a page has not yet been translated we add an English-language page at the url https://our-website/:language/page-name and add a bar for users to the top of the page that simply says "Sorry, this page has not yet been translated". This is best for our users, but unfortunately it creates duplicate content, as we re-publish our English-language content a second time under a different url. When we have untranslated (i.e. duplicate) content I believe the best thing we can do is add which points to the English page. However here's my concern: someday we _will_translate/localize these pages, and therefore someday these links will _not _have duplicate content. I'm concerned that a long time of having rel='canonical' on these urls, if we suddenly change this, that these "recently translated, no longer pointing to cannonical='english' pages" will not be indexed properly. Is this a valid concern?
Technical SEO | | VectrLabs0 -
Specifying Your Organization's Logo Schema Required If Corporate Contacts Schema is in Place?
Does anyone know if specifying the organization's logo schema is required if corporate contacts schema is in place? I have the corporate contact schema in place on my site but not the second one. The site is http://www.cobaltrecruitment.com/ Thanks,
Technical SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
Can new content be added to a url which has a 301 redirect?
I am working on a site which is currently being redesigned. The home page currently ranks highly for relevant search terms, although on the new site the content on this page will be removed. The solution I was considering, to preserve rankings, was to move the content on the home page to a new url, and use a 301 redirect to help preserve rankings for that particular page. The question I have therefore, is am I able to add new content to the home page, and have this page freshly indexed accordingly? Any thoughts or suggestions would be most welcome. Thanks, Matt.
Technical SEO | | MatthewA0 -
Why can't I redirect 302 errors to 301's?
I've been advised by IT that due to the structure of our website (they don't use sub-folders) it's not possible to change 302's to 301's. Is this correct, or am I being fobbed off?
Technical SEO | | lindsaytuerena0 -
Structuring URL's for better SEO
Hello, We were rolling our fresh urls for our new service website. Currently we have our structure as www.practo.com/health/dental/clinic/bangalore We like to have it as www.practo.com/health/dental-clinic-bangalore Can someone advice us better which one of the above structure would work out better and why? Should this be a focus of attention while going ahead since this is like a search engine platform for patients looking out for actual doctors. Thanks, Aditya
Technical SEO | | shanky10 -
Url rewrites / shortcuts - Are they considered duplicate content?
When creating a url rewrite or shortcut, does this create duplicate content issues? split your rankings / authority with google/search engines? Scenario 1 wwwlwhatthehellisahoneybooboo.com/dqotd/ -> www.whatthehellisahoneybooboo.com/08/12/2012/deep-questions-of-the-day.html Scenario 2 bitly.com/hbb -> www.whatthehellisahoneybooboo.com/08/12/2012/deep-questions-of-the-day.html (or to make it more compicated...directs to the above mentioned scenario 1 url rewrite) www.whatthehellisahoneybooboo.com/dqotd/ *note well- there's no server side access so mentions of optimizing .htacess are useless in this situation. To be clear, I'm only referring to rewrites, not redirects...just trying to understand the implications of rewrites. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | seosquared0 -
What's best hosting option for web design company targeting UK market?
Hi, What would be the best hosting company to go with if I want to promote my site in the UK? Right now it's hostgator and I know I'll have to change it. Should I get something located in the UK (logic would suggest it) and rather dedicated server (very expensive, especially if you're using wordpress) or shared hosting will do? Thanks in advance, JJ
Technical SEO | | jjtech0 -
ECommerce Site, URL's, Canonical and Tracking Referral Traffic
I'm very, very new to eCommerce websites that employ many different URL's to track referral traffic. I have a client that has 18 different URL's that land on the Home Page in order to track traffic from different referral sources. For example: http://erasedisease.com/?ref=abot - Tracks traffic from an affiliate source http://erasedisease.com/?ref=FB01 - Tracks traffic from a FB Ad http://erasedisease.com/?ref=sas&SSAID=289169 - Tracks more affiliate traffic ...and the list goes on and on. My first question is do you think this could hinder our Google rankings? SEOMoz Crawl doesn't show any Duplicate Content Errors, so I guess that's good. I've just been reading a lot about Canonical Url's and eCommerce sites, but I'm not sure if this is a situation where I'd want to use some kind of canonical plugin for this Wordpress website or not. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!!
Technical SEO | | Linwright0