Question on changing URL structures
-
We have a lot of "Long URL" errors in moz, and our URLs have no helpful format to them. For example, our blog URLs currently have a date and the title so they end up looking like this: blog/year/month/day/long title that never ends.
If I were to setup a new URL structure using MOZ best practices, can I just make the change going forward and redirect a few high trafficked links to this new structure? Or do I really need to make the change for the website (specifically blog) as a whole to see a positive impact? I know this means there may be an initial drop in traffic which I'd like to avoid.
-
Be very careful about changing hierarchy or structure. It does have an effect on where the pages rank.
Any pages that are ranking well (i.e. position 0 to 5) don't even touch them, in fact anything on the first page I would be slow to alter without very good reason.
Anything that is on the second page or worse you haven't got a lot to lose, so restructuring probably would make sense.
-
Hey there,
I assume you're using WordPress default permalink structure. If your site is a large blog I would recommend to check out yoast premium plugin which allows you to set up the 301 redirect at once when you change the permalink structure. If it's a small blog you can do that with other free plugins that help set up 301 redirects as well.
-
To get the full benefit of changing the link structure it's probably a good idea to structure the whole thing correctly as opposed to just throwing it on top of the links you have now. As long as you do the redirects right, it should be a smooth process.
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
-
Special Characters in URL & Google Search Engine (Index & Crawl)
G'd everyone, I need help with understanding how special characters impact SEO. Eg. é , ë ô in words Does anyone have good insights or reference material regarding the treatment of Special Characters by Google Search Engine? how Page Title / Meta Desc with Special Chars are being index & Crawl Best Practices when it comes to URLs - uses of Unicode, HTML entity references - when are where? any disadvantage using special characters Does special characters in URL have any impact on SEO performance & User search, experience. Thanks heaps, Amy
Moz Pro | | LabeliumUSA0 -
Is www.domain.com/page the same url as www.domain.com/page/ for Google? (extra slash at end of url)
Dear all, in open site explorer there is a difference the url's 'www.domain.com/page' and 'www.domain.com/page/' (extra slash at end). There can be different values in pageauthority etc. in the open site explorer tool, but is this also the case for Google? Thanks for replying, Regards, Ben
Moz Pro | | HMK-NL0 -
Why would my domain authority keep changing when I refresh?
Hi All, I've noticed that my domain authority is changing every time I refresh SEO MOz. In some instances it increases and other time stays the same as a previous month. Is this just a mid-transitional stage? or is there a potential bug in the system? It's making it difficult to know what is really happening.
Moz Pro | | Benjamin3790 -
API and bitflag question
I've googled and read and still confused on this. Regarding the link metric bit flags: http://apiwiki.seomoz.org/link-metrics I understand everything about how the API works and have it all working, except for this bit flag thing... And there's no example on this page of how to use the bit flags in an API request so it's hard to work it out. My current API call is: "http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/" & $db & "/" & $objectURL & "? SourceCols=" & $SourceCols & "&TargetCols=" & $TargetCols & "&Scope=" & $Scope & "&Sort=page_authority" & "&Filter=" & $Filter & "&AccessID=" & $accessID & "&Expires=" & $expires & "&Signature=" & $urlSafeSignature There are 4 Link Metric Bit Flags: 2, 4, 8, and 16. How do I use those in the above URL Do I use those in SourceCols? And there's about 15 Link Flag Definitions (ranging from 1 to 65536). So I use those in TargetCols? I've tested different variations and I get different responses but the responses aren't documented either. For example, if I get "luutrp":5.432777943351583,"luutrr":1.415861867916131e-14" in a response... what IS luutrp or luutrr. These acronyms are not outlined anywhere that I can find. This link: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/the-busy-developers-guide-to-seomoz-bit-flags outlines an example but is using Cols (not SourceCols or TargetCols) so either this page is outdated or I'm missing something. Is there also a "Cols" parameter? Basically, I just want: - given a single URL, show me all links (page to page) pointing to that URL, and give me the same information that's displayed in Open Site Explorer (page authority, anchor text, title, etc, etc) but also give me some additional information such as, "is it on the same C block?" What's an example URL for the above request? Really hoping someone can shed some light on this under-documented API.
Moz Pro | | eatyourveggies0 -
Do SEOmoz private questions get answered?
I submitted a question on September 30 and never received a response. I then followed up on October 6 and had an exchange with the support staff, who first told me that the question would be answered and then a couple of days later told me that they had no record of the question. By chance, I had taken a screen shot showing confirmation that the question had been sent (just something I did to remind myself to follow up if I didn't get a response!), which I sent to them along with the question again. That was four days ago, and I've heard nothing since then - not even an automated email saying that the question was received. Is it common for it to take almost a month before a response is received, and to have to follow up multiple times just to get an answer?
Moz Pro | | csmm0 -
Difference in data between http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty and http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/url-metrics/
Hi, Has any once else experienced any difference in data between http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/url-metrics/ and http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty Please look at the attached image. For "http://www.webmd.com/diet/guide/choosing-weight-loss-program" and "http://www.freedieting.com/" page authority and domain authority match exactly. But for "http://www.fitnessmagazine.com/weight-loss/plans/" data does not match. The data from "http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/url-metrics/" was retrieved brely 60 seconds latter after data from "http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty". We used our custom app for retrieve data from "http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/url-metrics/". The columns were matched against the specs given in "http://apiwiki.seomoz.org/w/page/13991153/URL-Metrics-API". We are retrieving following columns 1)ut(Title) 2)ueid(External Links) 3)uid(Links) 4)umrp(mozRank) 5)upa(Page Authority) 6)pda(Domain Authority) Any help will be greatly appreciated. zvFif.jpg
Moz Pro | | claytons0 -
Campaign 4XX error gives duplicate page URL
I ran the report for my site and had many more 4xx errors than I've had in the past month. I updated my .htaccess to include 301 statements based on Google Webmaster Tools Crawl Errors. Google has been reporting a positive downward trend in my errors, but my SEOmoz campaign has shown a dramatic increase in the 4xx pages. Here is an example of an 4xx URL page: http://www.maximphotostudio.net/engagements/266/inniswood_park_engagements/http:%2F%2Fwww.maximphotostudio.net%2Fengagements%2F266%2Finniswood_park_engagements%2F This is strange because URL: http://www.maximphotostudio.net/engagements/266/inniswood_park_engagements/ is valid and works great, but then there is a duplicate entry with %2F representing forward slashes and 2 http statements in each link. What is the reason for this?
Moz Pro | | maximphotostudio1 -
Question about difficulty score of keywords
I have a question regarding keyword selection and the difficulty score. I get the idea that you need to temper your desire to go after keyword phrases that generate lots of traffic with the reality of competition for that keyword, which is conveyed by the difficulty score. But how do we know when the difficulty score is too high? And isn't this relative to a website? If my website is in the top 1% of traffic, can't I go after more difficult keywords than if my traffic is in the top 10%? Are there guidelines or best practices to help with this decision? How do I know whether my website is "strong" enough to compete for a keyword that has a high difficulty score. If we already rank on page one of Google for numerous keywords with difficulty scores of 50 or so, is that an indicator that we can try to rank for other keywords with a difficulty score of 50? When do we know that we can start trying to rank for more diffcult keywords?
Moz Pro | | espressob2b0