How much pain can I expect if I change the URL structure of the site again?
-
About 3 months ago I implemented a massive URL structure change by 'upgrading' some of the features of our CMS
Prior to this URL's for catergorys and products looked something like this
http://www.thefurnituremarket.co.uk/proddetail.asp?prod=OX09
I made a few changes but din't implement it fully as I felt it would be better to do it instages as the site was getting indexed more thouroughly.
HOWEVER...
We have just hit the first page for some key SERP's and I am wary to rock the boat again by changing the URL structures again and all the sitemaps.
How much pain do you think we could feel if i went ahead and optimised the URL's fully?
and
What would you do?
-
Hi Robert,
I'm following up on older, unanswered questions. Can you tell us what you ended up doing with the site, and how much pain you went through, and any lessons learned? I'm interested to here what decision you made here.
Thanks!
-
As long as you 301 the pages you should be fine, however, if you are ranking why change it?
-
If you are serioulsy looking at changing CMS - then wait till you are closer to implementation - and then run it all in one go...
-
I am in 301 hell... :-S
With FP extensions you need to access the .htaccess file and I can't find a hosting provider who will touch it for me..
Hence the reason for my question.. I have found a way to add rel=canonical to the dynamic pages on the site but this will change how the site is indexed... also there is a way to amend the URL's to drop catergory.asp / product.asp/ productdetail.asp out of the URL and replace it with the actual product names..
Although other people I've asked seem to think google have overcome issues like this and that they will put less importance on URL's in the future.. the perfectionist in me wants to change everything so its all perfect..
What do you think?
-
Ah I didn't know you were changing CMS. If that's the case then things change a little. You have the option to 301 all your URL's that haven't been rewritten so that's probably your best bet as your duplicating your effort otherwise. I'd like to hear anyone else's view though
DD
-
Thanks for the reply Damien,
Thing is we are looking seriously @ magento and other CMS. We are on old technology here.. I make all the sitemaps and feeds myself (with excel)..
Still think its worth the hit or would you leave it until we got a news CMS?
-
I would take the hit - as I don't believe it will be massive and in the long-run you'd be better off as you'll soon come back to your original ranking position.
You're going to want to change them at some point in time so the sooner it gets done the better in my opinion.
DD
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
-
Duplication content management across a subdir based multisite where subsites are projects of the main site and naturally adopt some ideas and goals from it
Hi, I have the following problem and would like which would be the best solution for it: I have a site codex21.gal that is actually part of a subdirectories based multisite (galike.net). It has a domain mapping setup, but it is hosted on a folder of galike.net multisite (galike.net/codex21). My main site (galike.net) works as a frame-brand for a series of projects aimed to promote the cultural & natural heritage of a region in NW Spain through creative projects focused on the entertainment, tourism and educational areas. The projects themselves will be a concretion (put into practice) of the general views of the brand, that acts more like a company brand. CodeX21 is one of those projects, it has its own logo, etc, and is actually like a child brand, yet more focused on a particular theme. I don't want to hide that it makes part of the GALIKE brand (in fact, I am planning to add the Galike logo to it, and a link to the main site on the menu). I will be making other projects, each of them with their own brand, hosted in subsites (subfolders) of galike.net multisites. Not all of them might have their own TLD mapped, some could simply be www.galike.net/projectname. The project codex21.gal subsite might become galike.net/codex21 if it would be better for SEO. Now, the problem is that my subsite codex21.gal re-states some principles, concepts and goals that have been defined (in other words) in the main site. Thus, there are some ideas (such as my particular vision on the possibilities of sustainable exploitation of that heritage, concepts I have developed myself as "narrative tourism" "geographical map as a non lineal story" and so on) that need to be present here and there on the subsite, since it is also philosophy of the project. BUT it seems that Google can penalise overlapping content in subdirectories based multisites, since they can seem a collection of doorways to access the same product (*) I have considered the possibility to substitute those overlapping ideas with links to the main page of the site, thought it seems unnatural from the user point of view to be brought off the page to read a piece of info that actually makes part of the project description (every other child project of Galike might have the same problem). I have considered also taking the subsite codex21 out of the network and host it as a single site in other server, but the problem of duplicated content might persist, and anyway, I should link it to my brand Galike somewhere, because that's kind of the "production house" of it. So which would be the best (white hat) strategy, from a SEO point of view, to arrange this brand-project philosophy overlapping? (*) “All the same IP address — that’s really not a problem for us. It’s really common for sites to be on the same IP address. That’s kind of the way the internet works. A lot of CDNs (content delivery networks) use the same IP address as well for different sites, and that’s also perfectly fine. I think the bigger issue that he might be running into is that all these sites are very similar. So, from our point of view, our algorithms might look at that and say “this is kind of a collection of doorway sites” — in that essentially they’re being funnelled toward the same product. The content on the sites is probably very similar. Then, from our point of view, what might happen is we will say we’ll pick one of these pages and index that and show that in the search results. That might be one variation that we could look at. In practice that wouldn’t be so problematic because one of these sites would be showing up in the search results. On the other hand, our algorithm might also be looking at this and saying this is clearly someone trying to overdo things with a collection of doorway sites and we’ll demote all of them. So what I recommend doing here is really trying to take a step back and focus on fewer sites and making those really strong, and really good and unique. So that they have unique content, unique products that they’re selling. So then you don’t have this collection of a lot of different sites that are essentially doing the same thing.” (John Mueller, Senior Webmaster Trend Analyst at Google. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=kQIyk-2-wRg&feature=emb_logo)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PabloCulebras0 -
Where can I find either web directories or decent sites that will link back to me...without paying thru the nose?
Hi Community! For starters, from my question, you can probably determine that I am either a novice, or very low intermediate SEO person. We all know, links are king with our friends at Google. I am a recently-retired IT person with a very small freelance IT company (just me), and I'd like to generate more leads/business. I'd be thrilled with one or two small jobs per week to supplement my pension. I've used the MOZ tools only to determine the majority of my competitors have like a thousand links, whereas Google reports me as having 97 links. My on-page grades are all upper 90s and a couple are at 100%. I am not targeting really competitive keywords, so that's not my problem. My problem is my DA, which is sitting at a mere 20...pause to laugh! I don't want to pay thru the nose for high DA links for the obvious reasons. I submitted my URLs to as many directories as I could find. Would anyone have a decent list of sites where I could submit my URL to get some more links? Thanks guys and Gals! Willy
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NewSEOguy0 -
Should I delete older posts on my site that are lower quality?
Hey guys! Thanks in advance for thinking through this with me. You're appreciated! I have 350 pieces of Cornerstone Content that has been a large focus of mine over the last couple years. They're incredibly important to my business. That said, less experienced me did what I thought was best by hiring a freelance writer to create extra content to interlink them and add relevancy to the overall site. Looking back through everything, I am starting to realize that this extra content, which now makes up 1/3 my site, is at about 65%-70% quality AND only gets a total of about 250 visitors per month combined -- for all 384 articles. Rather than spending the next 9 months and investing in a higher quality content creator to revamp them, I am seeing the next best option to remove them. From a pros perspective, do you guys think removing these 384 lower quality articles is my best option and focusing my efforts on a better UX, faster site, and continual upgrading of the 350 pieces of Cornerstone Content? I'm honestly at a point where I am ready to cut my losses, admit my mistakes, and swear to publish nothing but gold moving forward. I'd love to hear how you would approach this situation! Thanks 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ryj0 -
Subtle On-site Factors That Could Cause a Penalty
It looks like we have the same penalties on more than one ecommerce site. What subtle on-site factors can contribute to non-manual penalty, specifically rankings slowly going down for all short tail keywords? And what does it take to pull yourself out of these penalties?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Getting a link from an internal page with PR 2 of a domain with PR 5 is how much effective?
My website got a link from an internal page with PR rank of 2 but the domain has the PR rank 5. For example - A domain www.example.com with PR rank 5 and internal page www.example.com/extra/1 PR rank 2. I got a link from the internal page, will I benefit from main domain Page rank 5? Thanks, Sameer
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KaylaKerr0 -
How to fix doorway site
Hello, This client has a one page doorway site that is a copy of a category of his main site. It looks like the main site and has over 100 links to the site. We're cleaning things up to be white hat and we're wondering how to capture this traffic and link juice (this doorway has no backlinks though, it is an EMD) without a ton of money and effort. My thought so far is to put a uniquely designed paypal cart on there with top products and one link to the main site that says something like: To pay by credit card or to see more products, visit mainsite.com Would that be squeeky clean white hat or is that still a doorway headed for an update? What's best to do here on a low budget?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Site dropped suddenly. Is it due to htaccess?
I had a new site that was ranking on the first page for 5 keywords. My site was hacked recently and I went through a lot of trouble to restore it. Last night, I discovered that my site was nowhere to be found but when i searched site: mysite.com, it was still ranking which means it was not penalized. I discovered the issue to be a .htaccess and it have been resolved. My question is now that the .htaccess issue is resolved , will my site be restored back to the first page? Is there additional things that i should do? I have notified google by submitting my site
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | semoney0 -
Opinions Wanted: Links Can Get Your Site Penalized?
I'm sure by now a lot of you have had a chance to read the Let's Kill the "Bad Inbound Links Can Get Your Site Penalized" Myth over at SearchEngineJournal. When I initially read this article, I was happy. It was confirming something that I believed, and supporting a stance that SEOmoz has taken time and time again. The idea that bad links can only hurt via loss of link juice when they get devalued, but not from any sort of penalization, is indeed located in many articles across SEOmoz. Then I perused the comments section, and I was shocked and unsettled to see some industry names that I recognized were taking the opposite side of the issue. There seems to be a few different opinions: The SEOmoz opinion that bad links can't hurt except for when they get devalued. The idea that you wouldn't be penalized algorithmically, but a manual penalty is within the realm of possibility. The idea that both manual and algorithmic penalties were a factor. Now, I know that SEOmoz preaches a link building strategy that targets high quality back links, and so if you completely prescribe to the Moz method, you've got nothing to worry about. I don't want to hear those answers here - they're right, but they're missing the point. It would still be prudent to have a correct stance on this issue, and I'm wondering if we have that. What do you guys think? Does anybody have an opinion one way or the other? Does anyone have evidence of it being one way or another? Can we setup some kind of test, rank a keyword for an arbitrary term, and go to town blasting low quality links at it as a proof of concept? I'm curious to hear your responses.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AnthonyMangia0