Relaunch - How to find URL's to keep
-
Hi,
During the process of redefining our business I'm planning a relaunch of our website. My goal is to restructure my content and URL structure. I have a lot of non relevant and not ranked content.
My question how I can find out the top 10 or top 20 URL's of my actual site that are worth to keep.
I'm not familiar with this kind of research...
Thanks in advance
Bastian -
Hi Bastian,
Finding urls to keep is simple. Just login to your Google Analytics and Check the tab "Content". You will find all the urls and their pageviews. Sort down the necessary urls.
Recommended: It is recommended to add 301 redirects from all the old urls to new urls. Also add a custom 404 page after the launch.
Login to webmaster tools to find more errors.
Regards,
Infant Raj
-
Hi Bastian
This process can look quite daunting at first, but can be quite easy and fun to do once you know how.
First, I always look at two criteria for redirecting a page - incoming traffic and incoming links. If a page has a decent amount of either, I will redirect it. If it doesn't, I let it 404.
Finding URLs with incoming traffic can be an easy one with Analytics. If you have Google Analytics, login to the dashboard and click on Traffic Sources -> Sources -> All traffic on the left-hand side. Once it's loaded, just below the graph you will see "Primary dimension" - at the end of this line click "other", then from the dropdown menu, click traffic sources -> landing page.
You'll now have a list of URLs that people have used to enter your site. Pick a time frame of about 3-6 months and see how many people have entered the site via that URL. If you have URLs with 5 or more visits (or whatever threshold you think is best), save the URL as one that will be redirected.
I think it is important to redirect landing page URLs as it is the very start of a user journey that people have used in the past. It can be off putting to see a 404 straight on entry, so ensuring that the user is taken to an appropriate page via a redirect is highly recommended.
Redirecting URLs that have been linked to the in the past can be an important step to take to ensure that you keep all of your link "strength" or "equity" when you relaunch. For this, we can use SEOMoz's Open Site Explorer.
Go into OSE and type in your site's URL. Once loaded, click the "top pages" tab. Export the results into a CSV and open that with Excel. Enable filters, which can be done by clicking "data" and then "filter" while having any of the top row cells selected, and then filter out results in the "inbound links" column to exclude results containing less than 2, 3, or 5 links, depending on your threshold.
You'll then be left with only the pages on your site that have links pointing towards them. Now, rather than just redirecting all those pages, it is worth checking each URL in open site explorer again to look at what links are going to those pages. This may take a bit of time, but this way you can ensure that you will only pass on links that you're happy with. You may have a page that has 5 inbound links, but on review you think those links are spammy. Don't redirect this page and you will not have the new site associated with these links.
Hopefully at the end of this you will have a good list of URLs you should redirect. Try and redirect them to the appropriate pages on your site for a good user experience The rest you can leave to 404. If some pages don't fit in the new structure but you want to keep for user or link reasons, redirecting them to the root domain is no problem. And to add, I've redirected thousands of URLs to a root domain before and have not had any adverse effects.
Remember to update your XML sitemaps and resubmit them to Google/Bing webmaster tools as well once you're done.
Hope this helps and all the best with your relaunch!
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
-
What's brewing on YouMoz? (And how you can Help)
In the last year, we've searched for ways to make YouMoz more interesting, more exciting and more inviting for the Moz community. The blog really does belong to the community, for it's the place where many novel ideas are shared, discussed, and further developed. Aside from being a great place to share ideas, though, YouMoz is also the primary vehicle by which many now-household names in online marketing were discovered. (Many of the top posts on YouMoz eventually find their way onto the main Moz Blog.) YouMoz belongs to the community. The blog was created as a place for the community to share and engage around bright ideas, in addition to being a vehicle for provoking thought around new concepts, strategies and tactics. For both aspiring and established authors, YouMoz has become a popular destination in the online marketing space. In the quest to make YouMoz even better, we’ve come with a few ideas to ensure that everyone continues to feel as though they can contribute to the blog. Beginning today, we’re introducing what we hope becomes four common formats for YouMoz: My Story, Headsmacking Tips, Problem Solved and Here’s How: My Story: The name pretty much says it all. Share with the community an interesting story related to online marketing. The story could be funny, personal or informational. As long as it’s interesting, well-written, and a benefit to the community, we’d love to hear it. A great example of the type of post we’re looking for is Mike Ramsey’s From Zero to a Million: 20 Lessons for Starting an Internet Marketing Agency. Headsmacking Tip: We’re bringing this format, first shared by Rand years ago on the main blog, out of the mothballs. Simply share with the audience an awesome online marketing-related tip that could make their jobs easier. (Example:Headsmacking Tip #21: Write Better Headlines Than Anyone Else.) Problem Solved: Tell the audience how you solved a significant marketing problem, making it easier for you to do your job. Share the nitty-gritty details, and include any graphics or tips needed for the community to solve the problem for themselves. (Example: A Simple Guide to Overcoming Ad Blindness for Publishers.) Here’s How: This style of post is meant to be a little more wide-ranging, allowing you to share with the audience ways they can successfully deploy a technique, tactic, strategy, tool or anything else you’ve gleaned that might be of value to marketers. (Examples: How to Write Emails That Get Opened Every Time and The 10 Tools I Use to Monitor Social Media More Effectively. A big shout out to Katy Katz for the inaugural post in this category: Here’s How to Write an Email That Throws off a Whole Room’s Productivity.) Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? Don’t overthink it. Read our guidelines, then dive in and get started. Also, we’d love to hear what you think about these new formats. Plus, we welcome your comments or questions. Feel free to share your thoughts below
Content Development | | ronell-smith7 -
Recommendations on the URL Structure When Posting Blogs
Sites are adopting different URL structures for posting blogs (examples below). Quicksprout ( www.domain.com/dateposted/blogposttitle) Moz (www.domain.com/blog/blogposttitle) SEO Book (www.domain.com/blogposttitle) What do you recommend?
Content Development | | SEO5Team0 -
Blog Content if Google has stated it doesn't like your blog?
Hi guys, In the new 'mobile usability' tab in Webmaster Tools, Google has stated that our blog isn't offering a good experience for users. Something we already knew and I want to change, but I can't get the budget approved to complete the work. I was just wondering if you think Google isn't going to hold my content very high as a result. I want to produce more content on our blog around our valuable keywords in hope to improve our rankings, but if Google isn't holding our site in high regard I'm thinking there may not be much point in it. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks Brian
Content Development | | brianmadden0 -
Are Duplicate Bio's Duplicate Content?
I'm wondering if I need to go through all the various bio's our firm has on all the various legal directory and client review sites to make sure they have unique bio's? I really, really don't want to do that, but if they are going to flagged as duplicate content, I will. I'm hoping sites like "findlaw," "avvo," etc, have some built in rel:cannonical or something that says these bio's aren't to be seen as unique content and therefore conflict with what's on our site. Anybody know? Just to clarify, any of the sties that have asked for unique content/bio/about us, I have complied with that. However, a lot don't specifically state it has to be unique, so I've just copy and pasted from our site in those cases. Thanks, Ruben
Content Development | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
2 URLs pointing to exactly the same content
Hi guys As far as I know if you have 2 websites with exactly the same (100%) content with 2 URLs which are not pointing to any other URL should attract penalisation from google, right? well, there is such a case and it was online for long time but the bad guys are in top of organic search and it does not seem to bother google at all! I don't want to list them here; it is extremely annoying and frustrating as I worked hard to get in higher search but seeing this thing is extremely frustrating! any advice on this? thanks
Content Development | | photoion0 -
Is the Page Authority/Rank of my corporate site affected by my blog's PA/PR and vice versa?
If I host my blog on my corporate site (it is a wordpress blog) will the page authority and page rank of my site translate to the blog? And does this also go the other way around? My gut says this would make sense, and I think I have seen it in action with other corporate sites that host their wordpress blogs, but I want to be completely sure. Even better, if someone can explain to me how this works, that would be super helpful!
Content Development | | Kendi0 -
How can i solve duplicate problem with different url needed?
My client is a big international firm with 10 websites with different url (.co.uk, .com, .com.au, .pl... etc). All websites are exactly the same except the price. I suggested them to only use .com and use region as a sub domain like au.xxx.com instead of xxx.com.au. However they cannot do that for some reason. I am trying to solve the duplicate issue. I dont think i can use 301 redirect or canonial link because all regions are making even traffics. Any suggestions?
Content Development | | ringochan0 -
Changing URL structure in WP
Hi there. Currently we have our blog (WP site) URLs setup this way: companyname.com/post-name However, it's hard to analyze blog's (only) content in Google Analytics now (since all posts have their own unique URL). I want to change the structure to companyname.com**/blog**/post-name Question: Is there a way to do it safely? Will I have to 301 all the old links to the new structure or is there any other way to do the switch without losing any links? Thoughts or any (other) suggestions? 🙂 Thanks much! 🙂 `Helen
Content Development | | CuMarketing0