ECommerce Platform Switch and SEO Loss
-
Hi -
We're switching eCommerce platforms, and naturally we're worried about losing organic search ranking.
From what I've read on the message boards, I understand it's important to try to minimize as many 301 redirects as possible.
Here's my problem: Our Product URLs are like this (ex: http://www.stupid.com/fun/TOLMG.html). On the new platform, URLs cannot contain capital letters.
According to the new eCommerce platform's design team: "Google and other search engines do not see that as a change in URL, they are not case sensitive and will not affect search listings"
How accurate is this? And how come on our current platform, if I use an all lowercase URL, it get a 401? (ex: http://www.stupid.com/fun/tolmg.html) Will we be fine switching our Product URLs to lowercase on the new platform?
One thing also to note: Our Category URLs will remain the same. Are there any other areas of a typical eCommerce store that I should avoid changing URLs if I want to prevent SEO loss?
Thanks!
-Justin
-
301 redirects still pass link juice, just not quite all of it. If the content of the pages remains the same, you should still be fine, you might see a slight slip but not much.
-
Thanks Matt - I didn't even think about pagination!
-
Thanks Daniel - This is SUPER helpful.
So yeah, now it looks like I have to do tons of redirects, possibly to all my products and categories.
So if I potentially had to do 301 redirects to all my Category and Product pages, would I be risking losing my search engine rankings?
-
Hi Justin,
URLs definitely aren't case sensitive from a Google point of view, although depending how the RewriteRule is set up (I'm assuming your web server is Apache) the e-commerce software itself might require a URL to be typed in the correct case.
I'd advise testing this on a subdomain first though (ie. dev.stupid.com)... but remember to block all search engines using robots.txt so you don't get some accidental indexing!
As for other things to think about, one would be pagination. Make sure the new tool deals with that the same as the old one or you'll end up with a load of broken links to your sub-pages. Static pages are also something to check, particularly if you have landing pages or product reviews posted through there.
I'm sure there'll be something I've missed but that'll give you more than enough to be getting on with
- Matt
-
Minimizing 301 redirects is good. Google is not case sensitive except in file names. So seomoz.org is the same to them as SEOMOZ.org or SeOMOz.org. Doesn't matter. Filenames like TOLMG.html are different than tolmg.html.
Try it. Find an image on your website like img.jpg. Now type in the full URL of that image with IMG.jpg instead of img.jpg at the end. Not the same.
So since you use .html as your URL ending, those are specific files with specific names, and they are case sensitive. You will have to redirect every uppercase file name to its lowercase counterpart when the new site is up. Or find a way to allow uppercase .html file names. That's how I understand things here.
-
It is SEO best practices to be consistent with case use, however upper case and Lower case are interchangeable on some server systems, while they are different/unique on others. If the new system allows for you to use upper and lower case interchangeably, you should not see anything but 200's. If that's true, then you should be okay.
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
-
Display ads and SEO
I have a section(no. of webpages with content) on my site with display ads. The site is mainly for UK visitors. I want to show ads to UK visitors but not US visitors. Rest of the content will be the same for UK and US. There will just be 1 page with same UrL for US and UK. Hence, no href lang tags are being used.
Technical SEO | | Kohliharleen
Is there any correlation between display ads and SEO? Would not showing ads in US cause any issues for bots or do bots consider display ads and SEO as two completey different aspects. Asking as Google bot crawls from the US.1 -
Spam Links Attack, Negative SEO?
Last April we migrated our old domain www.nyc-officespace-leader.com to a new domain www.metro-manhattan.com. The old domain has been receiving numerous links from very spammy sites such as these: -adinternet.net/the_worlds_most_visited_web_pages_958.htm <colgroup><col width="263"></colgroup>
Technical SEO | | Kingalan1
| -www.online-advertisement.net/the_worlds_most_visited_web_pages_958.html | <colgroup><col width="263"></colgroup>
| www.webfind.org/the_worlds_most_visited_web_pages_958/ | Since the old domain redirects to our new domain we are concerned this could be very detrimental. Oddly enough the 50-100 spammy domains that link to us all are a site called: "http://theglobe.se/start/" when the linking domain is entered in the browser. What should we do? Should we disavow these links? Is this some kind of an attack? Would very much appreciate some input/advice. Thank,
Alan1 -
Static Links in Sidebar Hurting SEO?
Our website currently has a sidebar/widget area that appears on almost all pages throughout of entire site (350 page domain). In that sidebar, we have some static links and some non-static links. Right now there are: 6 Related Post Links - Non-Static
Technical SEO | | DemiGR
1 - Call To Action - Static to a landing page
10 Calculators - Static - These calculators I think are very useful to our users (financial website). So in total 17 total sidebar links, 11 static links, and 6 which change based on the content of the page. Do you think these static links from an SEO perspective can be hurting us? Is there some sort of best practice for sidebar links in regards to quantity as well as static vs non-static? Thanks!0 -
Angular seo
Hi, how to do seo with angular ? is there an easy way to make google crawl your website healthy?
Technical SEO | | bigrat950 -
What will be the future of seo ?
this question may sound like old one but i want to know something in depth. i mean will seo live forever ? Will i loose my seo job ? so just wanted to know what will be the future of seo ?
Technical SEO | | isolve1 -
Seo For Forum Sites
I have forum site.I've opened it 2 months ago.But there is a problem.Therefore my content is unique , my site's keyword ranking constantly changing..Sometimes my site's ranking drops from first 500.After came to 70s. I didn't make any off page seo to my site.What is the problem ?
Technical SEO | | tutarmi0 -
Seo template for new website
I am revamping my website (www.UltimateBasicTraining.com). It's going to be major and I am concerned about the potential traffic loss since over 60% of my overall traffic comes from organic search results in the military basic training area. Are there any good SEO website templates I can start from? I see a lot out there but would prefer the advice of professionals. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TheVolkinator0 -
Is SEO affected when hosting service is changed?
I put my plan to change web hosts on abeyance when an SEO friend of mine told me that it would negatively impact the sites SEO. I am not changing the url or anathing, just the host.
Technical SEO | | ambisuite0