Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Image URLs changed 3 times after using a CDN - How to Handle for SEO?
-
Hi Mozzers,
Hoping for your advice on how to handle the SEO effects an image URL change, that changed 3 times, during the course of setting up a CDN over a month period, as follows:- (URL 1) - Original image URL before CDN:www.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg
- (URL 2) - First CDN URL (without CNAME alias - using WPEngine & their own CDN):
username.net-dns.com/images/abc.jpg - (URL 3) - Second CDN URL (with CNAME alias - applied 3 weeks later):
cdn.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg
When we changed to URL 2, our image rankings in the Moz Tool Pro Rankings dropped from 80% to 5% (the one with the little photo icons).
So my questions for recovery are:
- Do I need to add a 301 redirect/Canonical tag from the old image URL 1 & 2 to URL 3 or something else?
- Do I need to change my image sitemap to use cdn.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg instead of www.?
Thanks in advance for your advice.
-
Sorry I missed this follow-up earlier. Within the site map you'll want to change the http://WWW to http://CDN for these image files. The www version of your site, and the cdn server are on two different IPs / server. You want images to be serving from the CDN one.
For 2, if you do use 301 redirection I'd recommend scripting it so that the script inspects whether or not it's an image file and then applies the cdn change. A pro in your area that works with REgex and htaccess will be able to guide you through that.
The username.net-dns.com thing... That's not your server is it? You can't apply redirects on servers outside of your control. Cheers!
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for your answer - Sorry I didn't mean about the URL for the location of the sitemap - I think my question wasn't clear - may I rephrase it:(1) Inside my image sitemap, the urls serve off the www. subdomain as bolded in the example below (not .cdn). I'm assuming this setup is correct as this was auto-generated by an Image Sitemap Generator - does the below image:loc look correct to you?
<url><loc>http://www.bosphorusyacht.com/yachts/</loc>
image:imageimage:lochttp://**WWW.**bosphorusyacht.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/istanbul-boat-rental.jpg</image:loc></image:image></url>(2) For a 301 image redirect would I set it up like this:
Redirect 301 /wp-content/uploads/2010/09/istanbul-boat-rental.jpg
http://**WWW.**bosphorusyacht.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/istanbul-boat-rental.jpgOR
Redirect 301 /wp-content/uploads/2010/09/istanbul-boat-rental.jpg
http://**CDN.**bosphorusyacht.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/istanbul-boat-rental.jpgOR
How would I 301 this one?: username.net-dns.com/images/abc.jpg
Hope you can advise one last time - thank you!
-
Right. Not everything is going to be served from cdn. It's most likely setup for your images so your sitemap will still reside on www. Make sure to point to the front end files though as those are the publicly accessible ones.
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for your reply and advice. I've read the guidelines and will follow those. But I wonder if you can clarify an issue on implementing them that is not answered there:On my site the images in 'Backend' (edit/admin/code view) start with WWW.mydomain... and in 'Frontend' (actual published view in browser) they start with CDN.mydomain...
So my question is, do I use the Backend or Frontend (www. or cdn.) for the URL in both image sitemaps and in 301 redirect final destination?
My current sitemap for example seems to be using www rather than cdn. : http://www.bosphorusyacht.com/sitemap-image.xml
Thanks for your help!
-
You're on it. Redirecting to the new image source and submitting a new sitemap pointing to the URL 3 location for your images will be big steps in the right direction. Be sure to follow the instructions here for your sitemap: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/178636 as well as reviewing image publishing guidelines: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/114016. Cheers!
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
-
Do old backlinks still help with new URL with 301 redirect? Also I added the www. How does this affect it all?
I changed my URL from exampledetailing. com to exampleautodetailing. com. It is redirected with a 301. Also, it is on Squarespace AND I opted to add the www. So will the old backlinks of exampledetailing. com still help the new URL exampleautodetailing. com or do I need to try and update all the links? Also, future links, do I need to include the www. or just the root domain of exampleautodetailing. com or even the whole https://wwwexampleautodetailing. com? I believe the www is considered a sub domain and a new entity on Google, so I am not sure how that works. Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | Rmarkjr810 -
I have a client in Australia that is going to set up a website that is in Chinese to service their Asian customer base (Indonesia, Singapore, HK, China). What domain should they use?
They're website is hosted on a .com.au domain. Should they host their Chinese language pages under their current domain (.com.au) using a subdirectory (i.e. /asia) or should they use another separate domain that they own that is a regular .com? Or does it really not matter?
Local Website Optimization | | 100yards1 -
Content writing for single entity business (The use of I)
Most of my clients consist of single entity law firms in which my clients repeatedly use the pronoun "I" to describe every service they provide. I have always preferred using the business name The Law Office of..." put lawyer name here". Is it ok to repetitively use the pronoun "I" in the content. To me it feels lack luster and childish not very professional, however I have a hard time convincing the lawyers of this. What are your thoughts? Can good content be written with the repetitive use of "I"? If not is the business name sufficient or maybe another pronoun? I will be showing responses to my clients if that is ok.
Local Website Optimization | | donsilvernail0 -
Improving SEO with no blog
I have a client who understands the value of content for SEO - however getting them to provide some content has proven an impossible task. I've tried every way to make it easy for them. I've offered to come over to their office myself and see if I can just take 15 minutes of their time and record their answers to a few questions. The response is that's a great idea, we'll set up a time...and no time is ever good. So I've thought, what can I do without them? Unfortunately, their industry is so technical and so niche I'd need to have a law degree to even begin to understand exactly what they do, and as they are in law it's probably better to have no content than content with something even slightly incorrect in it. For now, all I can do is summarize and share news from a government website to their social media accounts. It's not highly effective. Their on-page SEO for the main site is completely optimized. I've placed them in every free listing I can possibly find - both industry and local sites. I have them update me on any local events, conferences and/or trade shows they attend for possible backlinks. What else can I do? I suppose I fear that if I can't provide them any additional results, they will stop seeing the value in SEO services, and I'd have a hard time disagreeing as I can't think of what else to do for them. Thanks for any help!
Local Website Optimization | | everestagency1 -
Local SEO - Adding the location to the URL
Hi there, My client has a product URL: www.company.com/product. They are only serving one state in the US. The existing URL is ranking in a position between 8-15 at the moment for local searches. Would it be interesting to add the location to the URL in order to get a higher position or is it dangerous as we have our rankings at the moment. Is it really giving you an advantage that is worth the risk? Thank you for your opinions!
Local Website Optimization | | WeAreDigital_BE
Sander0 -
Call Tracking, DNI Script & Local SEO
Hi Moz! I've been reading about this a lot more lately - and it doesn't seem like there's exactly a method that Google (or other search engines) would consider to be "best practices". The closest I've come to getting some clarity are these Blumenthals articles - http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/05/14/a-guide-to-call-tracking-and-local/ & the follow-up piece from CallRail - http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/11/25/guide-to-using-call-tracking-for-local-search/. Assuming a similar goal of using an existing phone number with a solid foundation in the local search ecosystem, and to create the ability to track how many calls are coming organically (not PPC or other paid platform) to the business directly from the website for an average SMB. For now, let's also assume we're also not interested in screening the calls, or evaluating customer interaction with the staff - I would love to hear from anyone who has implemented the DNI call tracking info for a website. Were there negative effects on Local SEO? Did the value of the information (# of calls/month) outweigh any local search conflicts? If I was deploying this today, it seems like the blueprint for including DNI script, while mitigating risk for losing local search visibility might go something like this: Hire reputable call-tracking service, ensure DNI will match geographic area-code & be "clean" numbers Insert DNI script on key pages on site Maintain original phone number (non-DNI) on footer, within Schema & on Contact page of the site ?? Profit Ok, those last 2 bullet points aren't as important, but I would be curious where other marketers land on this issue, as I think there's not a general consensus at this point. Thanks everyone!
Local Website Optimization | | Etna1 -
How Google's Doorway Pages Update Affects Local SEO
Hey Awesome Local Folks! I thought I'd take a proactive stance and start a thread on the new doorway pages update from Google, as I feel there will be questions coming up about this here in the forum: Here's the update announcement: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages.html And here's the part that will make local business owners and Local SEOs take a second glance at this: Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages: Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic? I think this will naturally lead to questions about the practice of creating local/city landing pages. At this point, my prediction is that this will come down to high quality vs. crummy quality pages of this type. In fact, after chatting briefly with Andrew Shotland, I'm leaning a bit toward seeing the above language as being strongly geared toward directory type sites and large franchises. I recommend reading Andrew's post about his take on this, as I think he's on the right track: http://www.localseoguide.com/googles-about-to-close-your-local-doorway-pages/ So, I'm feeling at this point that if you've made the right efforts to develop unique, high quality local landing pages, you should be good unless you are an accidental casualty of an over-zealous update. We'll see! If anyone has thoughts to contribute on this thread, I hope they will, and if lots of questions start coming up about this here in the community, feel free to link back to this thread in helping your fellow community members 🙂 Thanks, all!
Local Website Optimization | | MiriamEllis9 -
SEO Value in Switching to ".NYC" Domain?
Recently " .NYC" domains have become available for purchase to New York City based businesses. I own and operate a New York City commercial real estate firm, nyc-officespace-leader.com. New domain would be www.metro-manhattan.nyc Our existing domain has been in use for seven years.would there be an SEO benefit to transferring our site to .NYC domain? Or would a new domain kill our domain rank? Thanks, Alan
Local Website Optimization | | Kingalan10