Converting to WP - Should I add .html or 301?
-
Moving my site to WP and the old url structure pages end in ".html".
I have seen there are plugins that allow you to add .html to the WP pages to preserve links.
I am hosting on Synthesis and they do not support htaccess, although you can submit 301 re-directs through the help ticket system. My question is what is the best way to proceed? I have read that 301s "leak" some link juice, but I sure do like those pretty urls.
Advice appreciated!
-
Thanks Dan,
I will be moving to the new url structure, probably post name as I don't have a lot of "juice" to pass anyway. Thanks to Dana for bringing this up in her answer.
In fairness to Synthesis, I believe my question was not clear and on a follow up they gave a very comprehensive response to my question and actually recommended this forum!
As to the htaccess issue, I may not understand this but I believe there is no htaccess file since they don't use apache. Quite a bit on them here <a>http://yoast.com/synthesis-managed-wordpress-hosting/</a>
-
Hi Chris
As I said in the other comment (and I'm just seeing your comment here) - this is crazy! Use a different host that "likes" whatever plugin you want and allows you full access to everything.
-Dan
-
Hey Chris
Personally, I would use a different host that allows you to edit .htaccess! And I would 301 redirect to the new urls.
Go with long term. Even if you lose .1% of link value the non-html will provide a much better UX in my opinion, and you'll have a standard setup.
-Dan
-
I would go towards trying the permalinks option + plugin. It's quite easy to set up and check if it's working right away.
Let me know how it goes either way
-
I think htaccess is relative to apache and the Synthesis servers don't use apache.
Synthesis is a Copyblogger company, the folks who make Genesis, so I hope they have this figured out. I am not concerned about support tickets as there support is very responsive.
Leaning toward the 301.
Thanks
-
Excellent insight Dana, I actually thought about that when I first read the article.
Here's my take: 301 redirect does actually pass full PR. What I think Matt Cutts was referring to w(hen comparing a 301 dissipating PR as much as a link) is actually linking to an URL through a 301.
As an example, siteA.com -> siteB.com would have the same effect as siteA.com -> bit.ly -> siteB.com, as in, the link from siteA would dissipate the same amount of PR whether it's through a 301 or not. Otherwise, there would be little sense comparing a 301 to a link, since they have completely different uses (it's not like you would move your site from one domain to another using links).
Again, this is just my take, which seems most logical to me (otherwise no one would use link shortening services ever again).
-
I read that post at SEO Roundtable and I agree with Eric Enge's interpretation of what Matt was saying in the video. Here's Eric's comment in full:
"It's funny because I find this news for a completely different reason. We have long known that links from a page can't pass all that page's PageRank. No one knows how much PC is not passable, but I have always assumed that it was something like 15%.
In the interview with Matt, my working assumption was the 301 redirect passed nearly all the PR, maybe all but 1% or 2%. I never thought the 301 eroded PR at a greater rate than that.
This comment makes this sound like the 301 redirect consumes the same amount of PR as a normal link. So, my understanding of the dilution through a 301 just jumped from 1 to 2% to something more like 15%.
So now, when you move a site from one domain to another, the degradation in PageRank is quite significant!"
I would love to hear others' take on this one.
-
The .html plugin is not a redirect plugin, it's just using the permalink structure with .html at the end to also work on pages.
However, using permalinks does require .htaccess (it's how WP works), so I'm not sure how you're going to work around that.
Best of luck!
-
Thanks Dana and Mihai,
I asked Synthesis support and just got the response that they do not like "re-direct plug-ins" as they can cause issues.
So this makes me wonder if the .html plug-ins are actually redirects in disguise?
-
Hey Chris,
You can still maintain .html extension in WP. For posts, you only need to add that inside the permalink settings panel. For pages, you can simply use this plugin: http://www.introsites.co.uk/wordpress/html-on-pages-plugin.html
If you decide that you do want to use 301s to change the links and don't have access to .htaccess, you can use this plugin to manage redirects: http://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/
The redirect-leaks-link-juice issue has been settled: http://www.seroundtable.com/redirects-links-pagerank-16419.html
Hope this helps!
-
I think this totally depends on how much authority your original pages have accumulated. If it's a really old site and you've got beaucoup links, I'd leave the .html on there. The other thing I would take into consideration is the time involved, and potential for error, when having to submit 301 redirect requests via a ticket system. That just sounds like trouble waiting to happen. I'd keep the .html if it were me. Just my 2 cents !
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
-
Cleaning WP theme 404s in GSC
I'm trying to clean all of the Crawl Errors for my sites, and I've reached the point where I've become slightly confused. A lot of these pages that come up in Crawl Errors aren't being linked to anywhere. The ones I'm referring to are mostly pages that came with a theme that I'm using - part of the demo content - which I've since set to Unpublished Drafts. I'm not linking to these pages anywhere on any of my Published pages, yet Google is still looking for them, still showing them in Crawl Errors as Not Found. I'm assuming that Google found these pages at some point and can't find them now. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to keep setting up 301 redirects for these, or should I use the Disavow tool for these pages? I want to tell Google to forget these pages completely because I never intended for these pages to be indexed. This happens for just about all of my Wordpress websites in Google Search Console. Can someone please shed some light on this? If there are any articles on this problem, please share! Thanks!
Web Design | | Millermore0 -
What is the longest you would go back to ressurrect links that should have been 301's?
I have never thought of anything beyond a site that was possibly developed a month or two ago, but an interesting possible client has come along and begs a question. They had their site "redesigned" in April 2014 and it appears whomever did the work did not realize what a 301 was for. Using ahrefs or MajesticSEO, they have gone from roughly 15,000 referring pages to 500 and the time line perfectly intersects the redesign. Sooooo, just wondering if any of you geniuses has ever gone back that far to try and pull off a 301.... I am actually just thinking of a link building / content marketing plan but thought it was an interesting question. Thanks for the help, Robert
Web Design | | RobertFisher1 -
Advanced 301 Redirects
Hi all! I'm moving a blog from a subdomain to a folder on my root domain and want to make sure I am properly implementing 301's. Is there a code or method for making specific pages 301 to the corresponding new URL without having to manually 301 each? For example, a current blog may exist at blog.website.com/3-tips-for-selling-your-home and, since we are moving the blog, will now exist at website.com/3-tips-for-selling-your-home. We obviously want to implement 301's to ensure any link equity carries over to the new url. Anyone know how to implement these in scale to without having to set up each manually? Thanks!
Web Design | | RickyShockley0 -
Switching from HTML Static to WordPress Platform - SEO
Hi All, Hope everyone is doing well. I am currentyl in the process of having a re-design to myu HTML Static Site, I am switching to WordPress. My site is still running now until the new one is prepared. My question is: I do rank pretty well for some of our strong local keywords, we also have a FEW links pointing to inner pages with an extension of .HTML, should I set the the WordPress URL's to reflect .HTML or will the Search Enginesfigure out that http://www.domain/innerpage.html is the same as http://www.domain/innerpage/ or is it NOT the same. Should I switch or not? Thanks for your input Jimmy
Web Design | | jimmy02250 -
Does it do harm if you add a rel="canonical" tag on a page that doesn't need it?
If a page is clearly unique and there is obviously no canonical tag needed, does it hurt anything if one has been added?
Web Design | | jaychow0 -
301 redirects from old site to new
hey all, we just did a site redesign and have less pages on the new site than the old. is it bad to redirect multiple pages from the old site to the same page on the new? for example redirect ...com/apps ...com/android ...com/mobile and point them all to....com/custom-apps thanks!
Web Design | | jaychow0 -
Anyone Know Of A WP Plugin for Before and After Pictures
Hey Mozzers- Does anyone know of a good WordPress Plugin for displaying before and after images. This could be for a docs office, etc. Any feedback would be great! Thanks!
Web Design | | kpeacy0 -
Redirecting 301 Redirects -- Will Search Engines Notice?
Hello Mozzers, We're currently evaluating a client site where the previous web developer redesigned the site and got lazy, 301 redirecting hundreds of pages to the home page instead of to their respective new URLs. Ugh. In any case, we will probably fix this for the sake of implementing best practices. But I am curious how search engines treat 301'd URLs, as they are supposed to be permanent redirects. Will search crawlers ever visit the old URLs again to find that we've re-redirected them? Or have they written them off as moved to the home page for good, meaning that there's no way to direct the authority of the previous URLs to their rightful targets? Thanks!
Web Design | | SEOTeamSF0