Will a 301 alter URL structures?
-
Hi all,
I'd like to re-direct page A to page B. The problem is, under page A, I have a number of other pages. So, for example -
www.website.co.uk/A/fake/website
If I re-direct www.website.co.uk/A/ to www.website.co.uk/B/, would the sub-pages then become unusable as a URL? Or would they stay intact because I'm not changing the location of the pages, merely applying a re-direct to the folder that it's in.
Cheers,
Rhys
-
Thanks, John!
-
Hey Rhys, it does indeed and you should be totally fine technically. Though I'd still recommend redirecting the one without subpages from a pure SEO point of view.
And of course, test it on a test server first to make sure there are no other unforeseen issues!
-
Thanks, John!
Basically, before I started, two pages were created for a directory page. This is now splitting the traffic, but the page we'd like to re-direct has, for some reason, had a number of pages built under it. So, we need to 301 the page without damaging the URL structure of the sub-pages, but I wasn't sure if that was possible!
Hope that makes sense?
Thanks for your help!
Cheers,
Rhys
-
Hi Rhys! Yes, that should be fine as long as you do a one-to-one redirect from /page/ to /page2/.
Out of curiosity, why change the URL and not update the content and styles on the current page? You'd save any link equity, keep your URLs consistent, and probably stand a better chance of ranking longterm.
-
Hi John,
Thank you for the very detailed response, that's exactly what I meant. So, the URL for the children of /page/ should stay exactly the same? /page/1/ and /page/2/ aren't controlled by me, but /page/ is, and is outdated so I'm looking to apply a 301 to a new page which we've developed for it.
Assuming I've understood your answer, this should be fine...
Thanks again for your response - very helpful!
Best wishes,
Rhys
-
Hi Rhys! Great question.
Just to be clear, you're talking about this scenario. You have page site.com/page/ and want to redirect it to site.com/page2/, but you also have children of /page/ that are /page/1/ and /page/2/.
You are wondering what happens when you redirect **just **/page/ to /page2/. Is that correct?
If you do a one-to-one redirect, no REGEX and no pattern matching, then /page/1/ and /page/2/ should remain where they are. You are not removing the /page/ subfolder, but are simply forwarding the /page/ URL to /page2/.
If you are also wanted to move /page/1/ to /page2/1/ and /page/2/ to /page2/2/, then you should be sure that those URLs resolve before you redirect the original URL. From a pure SEO point of view, moving all the pages is the right move to keep your URL architecture clean. Though if you are just moving /page/ to /page2/ in order to test things and are going to come back to /page/ eventually, then redirecting the sub pages is not really necessary right now.
Does that help? If you need to clarify more, please do and I can adjust my answer!
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
-
Rankings preferring English URL
We've recently had a redesign of our website and we have both a Dutch and an English version. However, in MOZ for both NL and BE-NL it seems to favor the English URLs. This never used to be the case and I'm wondering why it's happening and whether it could actually be hurting our SEO, as search engines would favor local languages for search queries.
Local SEO | | Billywig0 -
Rankings preferring English URL above local URL
We've recently had a redesign for our website and it has influenced our rankings a little bit. However, what I mainly noticed is that for some keywords in MOZ the English URL is looked at in terms of ranking, instead of the local URL. It used to be just the local URL ranking, even for keywords that are more English oriented, and I'm wondering if that might be hurting our rankings. And more importantly, why it's happening. An example of a page where it's happening is: https://www.bluebillywig.com/online-video-platform/
Local SEO | | Billywig0 -
What is the best structured data for my website
We have 10:branches for our agency where we are looking to attract local businesses to use our marketing services, should each landing page have structured data for ‘local business’? Any advice would be helpful
Local SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
Will I get Penelized for having a .co.uk site AND a .com site?
Hi Mozers, I have a very important pitch coming up which needs to tackle a questions about international SEO. My client currently has a .com website, but we are debating internally about creating a .co.uk website too so that we can localise content for the UK versus American English on our .com site. Currently, our clients proposition is global, so we made the decision to create a .com website but using American English spelling as a large chunk of English speakers in the world use American English over British English. However, we want to grow the business within the UK, and therefore want to use British English language. Hence creating a .co.uk website. Now, my question is this.... the new .co.uk website will be identical content as the .com website, except for a few spelling changes and the way we phrase certain sentences. How would we be able to run both a .co.uk site and .com site without being penelized from Google for plagarism? Would it involve href lang tags? Server hosting location? Any ideas from you guys out there?
Local SEO | | Virginia-Girtz0 -
Local SEO Website Structure.
Hi everyone, This might be quite a long post so please bear with me. I am currently rebuilding my website. My previous website was built by a web designer and was very basic. 5 page html site consisting of home, services, gallery, testimonials, contact pages. None of them were great - thin content, not optimised as well as could be - no h1's etc. To be fair I knew nothing about websites and didn't bother much with the site. As a new business I used it simply as a place for people to visit for more information after receiving a leaflet and never bothered much about driving traffic to the site. A few years down the line and I have realised I need the website to be working for me as opposed to alongside me. I am building it myself via wordpress as web designer didn't want to work in wordpress. I have done my keyword research and I'm working on pages as we speak. Previously my homepage - around 80% of visitors landed here for my main keyword (driveway cleaning glasgow) as it was number 6 in the organic listing. With my services page appearing directly underneath in 7 for the same keyword. I have starting building a new page for that keyword which contains (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) in the url. I have 301'd my previous services page to this url. Now for my questions...
Local SEO | | sfrediktru8
My 2nd keyword based on volume is driveway cleaning. How do I optimise for this or will the (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) page rank for this also as the words are contained within this page? I plan on having the same structure for the remaining services - pressure-washing-glasgow, monoblock-cleaning-glasgow etc, etc. As I am building new pages for each service with location built in, where does this leave my homepage? Should I be targeting keywords for this page? It is still my strongest page and apart from the (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) page which will get some help from the 301 these are all new pages so I would expect perhaps initially to lose some traffic. But as I am not ranking well for anything other than the main 2 keywords mentioned above it can only be beneficial long term when google recognises the specific pages for each service. And when I start using Adwords I will have a specific landing page for each service. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks0 -
Google cache is showing the wrong URL with CCTLD's
Hi Folks, At Lightspeed we decided to setup local websites with CCtld's. Momentarily we have issues with the Google cache. I'm not sure what's going wrong. For example if I check the Google cache of www.lightspeedhq.be in the Belgium Google it refers to www.lightspeedhq.nl. See link: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fm0XIZ8sEe8J:https://www.lightspeedhq.be/+&cd=2&hl=nl&ct=clnk&gl=be We have the same problem for our www.lightspeedhq.co.uk website, which is referring to www.lightspeedhq.com: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:OXdAIIFa7AYJ:https://www.lightspeedhq.co.uk/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk Does Google sees it as duplicate content? Or don't we have to use 'Alternative Hreflang'? A week ago we changed our canonical links which were actually randomly referring from .be > .nl and .co.uk to .com. What can we do now to make sure all is properly indexed? Best, Ruud
Local SEO | | Ruudst0 -
How can you add custom Structured Data to a website hosted on Squarespace?
I have a client with a simple one page landing website hosted on Squarespace. Is there any method to easily apply structured data to this format?
Local SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Do not understand why a page will not rank- AT ALL!
I have a business that provides on-site services out of a central location. For instance in Denver, we have a warehouse location where we can perform repairs but the majority of business is performed within a 50 mile radius of the city center- on-site, a homes, businesses, etc. Our Google local page is set up to reflect this (mobile service as well as physical location). In order to capture business organically within this 50 mile veil, we have set up city specific service pages on our site to reflect the more than 30 municipalities that fit within the 50 mile veil. This strategy seems to work pretty well in Colorado but in Minnesota we are not having the same outcome. The following city page is created specifically for the term "iPhone repair Minneapolis" and has been live for over a year. It is not even in the top 50. Is this a regional issue or a specific page issue? Our domain actually ranks 15th for this term. http://www.shatterbuggy.com/service-areas/minneapolis/iphone-repair/ Thoughts?
Local SEO | | BenjaminH0