Huge e-commerce site migration - what to do with product pages?
-
My very large e-commerce client is about to undergo a site migration in which every product page URL will be changing. I am already planning my 301 redirect process for the top ~1,000 pages on the site (categories, products, and more) but this will not account for the more than 1,000 products on the site. The client specified that they don't want to implement much more than 1,000 redirects so as to avoid impacting site performance. What is the best way to handle these pages without causing hundreds of 404 errors on site migration day?
Thanks!
-
They are changing from what old format to what new format? Sometimes, if there is logic to the URL structure, you can handle thousands of redirects with only one line of code called a regular expression.
-
Hmm, I'm not too familiar with Oracle ATG. Is that Java-based? I mainly work with PHP. To answer your question, yes it does return a clean 301 redirect response for crawlers.
I came across this link on Oracles doc for ATG. It looks like you could possibly use the URL templates to accomplish this. Do the URLs that you plan on redirecting have a commonality between them? (ie. switching 100 URLs from http://example.com/example1/* to http://example.com/*). If so, you can possibly separate them into these common "groups" and develop a redirect for each group instead of each URL.
-
The new site will be built on the Oracle ATG platform. Does your method still return a 301 response code?
-
What language is the new site coded in? You can always create a redirector within the new sites code all at once using a database query and amending a URL. This will prevent you from having to create such a large .htaccess file for redirects. I may be able to help you if you let me know which language you're using along with providing examples of the type of redirects you'd like to setup.
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
-
Site not showing up in search - was hacked - huge comment spam - cannot connect Webmaster tools
Hi Moz Community A new client approached me yesterday for help with their site that used to rank well for their designated keywords, but now is not doing well. Actually, they are not on Google at all. It's like they were removed by Google. There are not reference to them when searching with "site: url". I investigated further and discovered the likely problem . . . 26 000 spam comments! All these comments have been removed now. I clean up this Wordpress site pretty well. However, I want to connect it now to Google webmaster tools. I have admin access to the WP site, but not ftp. So I tried using Yoast to connect. Google failed to verify the site. So the I used a file uploading console to upload the Google html code instead. I check that the code is there. And Google still fails to verify the site. It is as if Google is so angry with this domain that they have wiped it completely from search and refuse to have any dealings with it at all. That said, I did run the "malware" check or "dangerous content" check with them that did not bring back any problems. I'm leaning towards the idea that this is a "cursed" domain in Google and that my client's best course of action is to build her business around and other domain instead. And then point that old domain to the new domain, hopefully without attracting any bad karma in that process (advice on that step would be appreciated). Anyone have an idea as to what is going on here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlistairC0 -
Links / Top Pages by Page Authority ==> pages shouldnt be there
I checked my site links and top pages by page authority. What i have found i dont understand, because the first 5-10 pages did not exist!! Should know that we launched a new site and rebuilt the static pages so there are a lot of new pages, and of course we deleted some old ones. I refreshed the sitemap.xml (these pages are not in there) and upload it in GWT. Why those old pages appear under the links menu at top pages by page authority?? How can i get rid off them? thx, Endre
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Neckermann0 -
Duplicate content on product pages
Hi, We are considering the impact when you want to deliver content directly on the product pages. If the products were manufactured in a specific way and its the same process across 100 other products you might want to tell your readers about it. If you were to believe the product page was the best place to deliver this information for your readers then you could potentially be creating mass content duplication. Especially as the storytelling of the product could equate to 60% of the page content this could really flag as duplication. Our options would appear to be:1. Instead add the content as a link on each product page to one centralised URL and risk taking users away from the product page (not going to help with conversion rate or designers plans)2. Put the content behind some javascript which requires interaction hopefully deterring the search engine from crawling the content (doesn't fit the designers plans & users have to interact which is a big ask)3. Assign one product as a canonical and risk the other products not appearing in search for relevant searches4. Leave the copy as crawlable and risk being marked down or de-indexed for duplicated contentIts seems the search engines do not offer a way for us to serve this great content to our readers with out being at risk of going against guidelines or the search engines not being able to crawl it.How would you suggest a site should go about this for optimal results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FashionLux2 -
Use Nonindex or Canonical on product tags of a e-commerce site
I run a e-commerce site and we have many product tags. These product tags come up as "Duplicate Page Content" when Moz does it's crawl. I was wondering if I should use Nonindex or Canonical? The tags all go to the same product when used so I figure I would just nonindex them but was wondering what's the best for SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EmmettButler1 -
Can pop-ups cause duplicate content issues in product pages?
Normally for ecommerce clients that have 100's of products we advise for size guides, installation guides etc to be placed as downloadable PDF resources to avoid huge blocks of content on multiple product pages. If content was placed in a popup e.g. fancybox, across multiple product pages would this be read by Google as duplicate content? Examples for this could be: An affiliate site with mutiple prices for a product and pop-up store reviews A clothing site with care and size guides What would be the best practice or setup?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shloy23-2945840 -
Splash/Warning Pages at front of site
We are looking at working on a site that needs a warning for users visiting - This splash/warning page is the only just google sees this not performing well in search engine - The sites are Wordpress sites - Would we use script to force a full screen pop up? This would be needed on a visit but if the user leaves and returns to the site the warning would need to reappear. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
What is the best way to optimize/setup a teaser "coming soon" page for a new product launch?
Within the context of a physical product launch what are some ideas around creating a /coming-soon page that "teases" the launch. Ideally I'd like to optimize a page around the product, but the client wants to try build consumer anticipation without giving too many details away. Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GSI0 -
Mystery: Ranking in Amazon for a product page?
My client has a product on Amazon that has more reviews and better rankings. However, their competitor with less reviews and lower ratings are ranking #1 for our primary keyword in Google. Our product page doesn't even rank on Google, but I'm assuming Google doesn't want to display two results from Amazon. The only difference is they have 1 link pointed to the product page that has a small PA of 10 and DA of 15. Do you think this link could be the only thing making a difference? Should we start building more links to this product page in addition to their website? Any other tips to help our Amazon page rank?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stryde0