Overly-Dynamic URLs & Changing URL Structure w Web Redesign
-
I have a client that has multiple apartment complexes in different states and metro areas. They get good traffic and pretty good conversions but the site needs a lot of updating, including the architecture, to implement SEO standards. Right now they rank for " <brand_name>apartments" on every place but not " <city_name>apartments".</city_name></brand_name>
There current architecture displays their URLs like:
- http://www.<client_apartments>.com/index.php?mainLevelCurrent=communities&communityID=28&secLevelCurrent=overview</client_apartments>
- http://www.<client_apartments>.com/index.php?mainLevelCurrent=communities&communityID=28&secLevelCurrent=floorplans&floorPlanID=121</client_apartments>
I know it is said to never change the URL structure but what about this site? I see this URL structure being bad for SEO, bad for users, and basically forces us to keep the current architecture.
They don't have many links built to their community pages so will creating a new URL structure and doing 301 redirects to the new URLs drastically drop rankings?
Is this something that we should bite the bullet on now for future rankings, traffic, and a better architecture?
-
I tend to subscribe to the 'don't change the page names' rule but sometimes, it just has to be done for the greater good. The trick her is to be absolutely fastidious in the approach to rewriting the old pages to new and try to make sure there are several benefits to the new page name and url structure.
You are not moving the domain so you are only possibly impacting page level metrics so I tend to feel that if you 301 and come up with a better structure for humans and a better architecture for search you will not have any major problems.
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
-
Keywords in URL
I have an ecommerce store and i am using moz to get it into the best seo situation... my question is this..... I want to know how important it is to have the targeted keyword actually in the product page url.... I working on meta title and description which is good, but if i start changing all my product urls, it has major impact on the work i have to do since i would have to redo all my product links in ads, and all my product urls in emails, etc. So how much of a part do the urls play in seo?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bkhoward20010 -
Structure of HTML Page
Hello, Is is true that search engine give more value to some part of the page than other ? Is only the main content considered ? or are the other also given weight but very small weight ? If I have div in the main content as those considered par of the main content or no ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
After blog URL structure change, should you wait to optimize old posts?
Hi all, I'm changing the URL structure on my site's blog (getting rid of dates) soon, but I'm also working on updating/optimizing a bunch of old posts. Some of these old posts have a good amount of traffic, which I don't want to lose when I redirect the old URLs to the new URLs after restructure. I know that you are more likely to maintain your rank and traffic after a redirect if you keep the page content the exact same. So my question is -- should I leave the old posts alone (not making any changes) for a couple of weeks after the URL restructure/redirects for Google to index the new URLs and see that the content is the exact same so the pages don't lose any traffic, OR does it not really matter because I am optimizing these posts, meaning that the content will be better and hopefully get ranked higher? I haven't been able to find a consensus on this, so I'd really appreciate the advice! Many thanks, Rebecca
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rwhite10 -
URL structure for SEO
Hi Mozzers, I have a site which is a combination of product pages, and news and advice pages that relate to the products. How would you approach the URL structure for this, following SEO best practice? Approach 1 Product pages:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | A_Q
www.website.com/product-category/product-page News and advice pages:
www.website.com/product-category/product-page/news-and-advice-story-1
www.website.com/product-category/product-page/news-and-advice-story-2
etc or Approach 2 Product pages:
www.website.com/product-category/product-page News and advice pages:
www.website.com/news/product-category/news-and advice-story-1 (with internal linking to relevant product page)
www.website.com/news/product-category/news-and advice-story-2 (with internal linking to relevant product page)
etc Or would a different approach be better?0 -
Weird 404 URL Problem - domain name being placed at end of urls
Hey there. For some reason when doing crawl tests I'm finding pages with the domain name being tacked on the end and causing 404 errors.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jay328
For example: http://domainname.com/page-name/http://domainname.com This is happening to all pages, posts and even category type 1. Site is in Wordpress
2. Using Yoast SEO plugin Any suggestions? Thanks!0 -
Short Url vs Medium Urls ?
Hello Moooooooooooz ! I got a SEO fight today and though the best would be to involve more people into the fight ! 😛 Do you think it's better to get A- company.com/services/service1.html or B- company/service1.html I was for A as services is also googled to find the service1. I also think that it's better to help google to understand where the service is on the website My friend was for B as URL has to stay as short as possible What do you think ? ps: I can create the URL I want using Joomla and Sh404. The websites has 4 different categoies: /about, /services/ products, /projects Tks ! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AymanH0 -
Are these URLs too Keyword-packed?
Hi guys, Here is the URL: http://www.consumerbase.com/mailing-lists/dog-stores-mailing-list.html The target keywords are "Dog stores mailing list" and "Dog stores mailing lists" Does having "mailing-list" and "mailing-lists" in my URL hurt me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
How to avoid seo loss after URL restructuring / change?
We are doing On Page SEO over haul of our website. Our old url used to be mydomain.com/send/FlowersInCity-1-CityName.html we are changing it to mydomain.com/send/Flowers-to-CityName Firstly, will it be advisable to do so since we are in the top 10 in most of the Keywords (but losing ranking each month): The website is very content rich site. Till beginning of 2012, we used be in the top three spots mostly due to On Page and Good content, thus getting the inbound links automatically. But now the things have change, industry has lot of competition and few players have already done heavy SEO for their website, both On and off page thus overtaking us in Ranking. We are also doing other requisite On Page and Off Page work but I am struck with the URL decision part. Secondly, and MOST IMPORTANTLY – if I should change the url, how to minimize the risk of losing the present SEO in this kind of URL restructuring case? Thanks Suman
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sumanpatra0