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    4. Switched from Wix to Wordpress dreaded hashtag URL

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    Switched from Wix to Wordpress dreaded hashtag URL

    Web Design
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    • limited7
      limited7 last edited by

      Recently took over managing a site for a non-profit which was using the dreaded Wix. Switched over to Wordpress but now Google still has the old URL's with the hashtag.  Can't forward them in .htaccess and don't want to add javascript for fear of slowing down load time.

      I found a solution that seems like it will take hours and hours of work. I found the solution at http://www.thedriversgarage.com/web-technology/redirecting-hashbang-urls-wix-urls/ but it seems like it would take hours with all the URL's.

      I submitted an XML sitemap in Google webmaster tools.

      My question is, how serious could this effect SEO for my site?  Google accepted the new sitemap but still has the old URL's in SERP. How long does this generally take to remove? Will the hashtag URL's penalize the site for duplicate content? If so is there a way to tell Google the homepage without hashtags is the page with original content? Sort of like the rel=canonical tag which I know wont work as the hashtag URL's all redirect to the homepage so they will all have the tag.

      Does Google ignore the hashtag?  Could there even be a benefit to this, possibly the homepage getting more page authority due to the redirects?  How serious is this?  Thanks in advancing.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • lcallander
        lcallander last edited by

        I'm in the same boat, and even tried the DRIVERS GARAGE solution (which is also posted on quite a few other blog sites).  Unfortunately, that did not work for me.  Neither did the REDIRECTION WP plugin, nor did editing my .htaccess a zillion different ways.  Heck, I even tried creating directories and html files with embedded java.

        Here is the only redirection that DID WORK for me (as indicated it would by Peter):

        JAVASCRIPT

        (1) Create a Javascript file with this code:

        var hashesarr = { "#!old-news/chi3":'/new-page/', 
        "#!another-news/dkc8":'/another-new-page/', 
        "#!something-old/eckje8":'/something-new/' };
        for (var hash in hashesarr) {
        var patt = new RegExp(hash);
        if (window.location.hash.match(patt) !== null) {
        window.location.href = hashesarr[hash]; 
        } 
        }

        (2) Save that file to your theme's child folder (so it doesn't get overwritten in the future by theme or Wordpress updates.
        I saved my file here: \wp-content\themes\aweseometheme-child\

        (3) In your SEO Plugin, or wherever you can edit the home page's HEAD file, add this code:

        (4) Test, make changes, try again and PRESTO!

        As a disclaimer, I have not yet tested to see how this will affect SEO Pagerank or Google redirects.  I'm guessing I will still have to implement the Sitemap with the UGLY url's per the DRIVERS GARAGE.  But all my client really cared about was that the client's who bookmarked specific pages, or had links pointing to deep pages would be redirected properly.

        MY AHA ANSWER WAS FOUND HERE:
        http://www.simosh.com/article/cbgaifec-301-redirect-from-wix-to-wordpress.html
        (Alex Nikitenko is a genious!)

        AND JAVASCRIPT INSTRUCTION HERE:
        https://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Javascript

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Mobilio
          Mobilio last edited by

          Tuff situation. Why? Browser didn't sent # and everything behind it to the server.

          So if you trying to get url as http://www.example.com/#!my-super-duper-url
          Browser will sent to the server request for http://www.example.com/ and server will process it. But full url that browser want is also included #! fragment. This mean that you can't make .htaccess redirect, nor some server side redirects for the moment.

          So same hurt also all bot and crawlers (Including Moz Roger!). And there was solution:
          https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/specification?hl=en
          but later this solution was deprecated:
          https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.bg/2015/10/deprecating-our-ajax-crawling-scheme.html

          And this make things complicated. For now they still support old solution so will be OK for bots. Probably for some users that comes from bookmarks, emails and/or other traffic sources can have hard times. Because will be redirected to "homepage". So maybe combination of both methods (JS redirector + your actual method) can save the day for humans and bots.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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