Moving our current homepage to a new URL
-
Our homepage currently speaks to a specific product and we're re-doing our homepage to be more about the brand which links to the product. The current home page has PA of 62 with thousands of links to the page. Question is are there any best practices around this or any risks?
So current page is:
www.xyz.com which we will be refreshing then moving the existing content
to
www.xyz.com/product so all the subdirectories gets shifted over 1
Thank in advance for the help!
-
So right now, we have www.pokki.com that is really our app store that we're using as our home page (nm the bad title tags / metadata etc that we will be addressing as well). We then have a page that is "What Is" pokki page that is written more in the tone of what our new homepage is going to be. The existing home page doesn't give users an idea of what the product does so we want to change it so that our home page will be more contextual and it will then link to the app store page from there (instead of vice versa today).
What we will do is redo the content that is currently on the What Is page, which we will then 301 redirect to www.pokki.com, then move the content that is currently on the homepage to www.pokki.com/apps.
From a keyword search perspective, the new home page should actually strengthen our positioning as there will be a lot more text/content that speaks specifically to the product.
Hope this clarification helps. I'm thinking there shouldn't be a prob, but just wanted to make sure.
-
I am in 100% agreement with Jared. I especially agree with his suggestion to have some kind of obvious, prominent link from the home page to this main product. Be prepared to ride out a dip in rankings, traffic etc. It might not be a bad idea to read Seth Godin's book The Dip as you go through this process
-
If you have one main product then make the homepage target both your brand name (as primary target) and your product as the secondary target.
<title>My Brand Name | My Main Product</title>
especially if you are already getting traffic to the homepage for your product.
-
Definitely to reiterate Dana, need more info about the specifics because yes there could be disastrous effects if not done properly.
Besides meta refresh, there are other things to consider. Probably most importantly is the positioning of the home page in search results for the 'product'. If you are ranking top 5 for your product keywords, and the ranking page is your home page, you may find that when you rework your home page to reflect your brand, you lose that positioning.
If you were moving from one landing page to another (i.e. /products to say /products/buy, it would be a bit different because you could 301 the /products page and officially tell Google and other SEs that you are simply moving the page. You cannot, obviously, do this with the root domain (301) or that would defeat the branding purpose.
I would definitely check positioning and revenue for your money keywords first. Also, once you move the product, i would at the very least have a link in the main navigation of the home page that links directly to the product with the appropriate anchor. If you only have one product, or one product set, i would also encourage you to optimized the URL (i.e. instead of /product it could be /
Still need more info to make solid recommendations.
-
Good question. From my understanding, there's no move in a sense of using redirects e.g. Meta Refresh. We're refreshing the existing domain page with new content, and what is now on www.xyz.com just will now be on www.xyz.com/product.
There was a mistake in my initial question, the sub-pages will not get shifted, there is only one page that is affected which is the current page on the domain. This is the case because those pages were already nested within www.xyz.com/product beforehand.
-
Are you planning on achieving this via a Meta Refresh? (I thought I'd better ask first before officially shouting "Danger, Danger Will Robinson!")
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
-
Create 100% new content in existing page/URL?
We have about 30 pages of content that we are hiding from the website as these articles had some issues. If these pages ranked well, would you recommend that the new content is written within these pages? Meaning, we would replace the content that's in those pages with the same topic and keywords. Or do you think it's best to start a new page instead?
On-Page Optimization | | kvillalobos0 -
Canonical URL Tag Usage
I have a large website, almost 1500 pages that each market different keywords for the trucking logistics industry. I don't really understand the new Canonical URL Tag USAGE. They say to use it so the page is not a duplicate but the page that MOZ is call for to have the tag isn't a duplicate. It promotes 1 keyword that no other page directly promotes. Here is the page address, now what tag would I put up in the HEAD so google don't treat it as a duplicate page. http://www.freightetc.com/c/heavyhaul/heavyhaul.php 1. Number 1 the actual page address because I want it treated like its own page or do I have to use #2 below? 2. I don't know why I would use #2 as I want it to be its own page, and get credit and listed and ranked as its own page. Can anyone clarify this stuff to me as I guess i am just new to this whole tag usage.
On-Page Optimization | | dwebb0070 -
Will changing a URL negatively affect ranking?
Hello Mozzers, We would like to change the URL for a page on our website which ranks well for some our keyphrases/words. We are hoping the change of URL, through the addition of an additional keyword would help boost the rank of that URL further. At the moment out page gets 2 x A and 2 x B 1xF on the MOZ page rank tool using 5 keyphrase/word variations . One phrase ranks 4, one ranks 3 and the other 3 are 'not in the top 50' Our plan was to change the URL, using SHF404, and use 'Fetch' in the Google search console to re-submit the page to Google. Appreciate you can't give any guarantees how Google will behave, just wondered what your thoughts were on the wisdom of changing the URL in the first place? Thanks Ian
On-Page Optimization | | Substance-create0 -
What should I title my homepage tab?
Our homepage tab just reads "home." Am I missing out on something with that? Should I re-write the tab to our brand name or a general descriptor? Best, Ruben
On-Page Optimization | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Tips on URL structure for a site re-design
Wanted to know what you would do with regards to urls – in an ideal world how would you structure them? Keen to know as me and dave are soon to have a meeting about this and were wondering about changing them from the current – http://www.looking4parking.com/airport/gatwick to something like - www.looking4parking.com/gatwick-airport-parking We will soon have pages for the specific parking types that will be a lot more engaging to users with some really useful content on benefits, features, how a certain type of parking works, images, video etc. Currently going to a type of parking, such as meet and greet just brings up a dropdown modal – I was thinking of having the url structure looking like this – www.looking4parking.com/gatwick-airport-meet-and-greet-parking www.looking4parking.com/gatwick-airport-on-site-parking www.looking4parking.com/gatwick-airport-park-and-ride We will then have specific pages for each parking product – in which this product will have unique content built around it – each will have an overview of the product, benefits, features, reviews, images, directions to the car park, find your route and eventually a video on each product So for example we currently have the product “Jet Parks 2” at Manchester airport – the current url is - http://www.looking4parking.com/airport/manchester/park-and-ride/jetparks-2 I would like to change this now we have the opportunity to refresh the whole system, to something along the lines of **domain/location/product title - **www.looking4parking.com/manchester-airport-parking/jetparks-2 or as we have some similar products at certain airports (mainly where the airport has multiple terminals) we would just change it to the following - www.looking4parking.com/manchester-airport-parking/jetparks-3 What are peoples thoughts/opinions on the above?
On-Page Optimization | | RyanCrawf19840 -
Duplicate URL for homepage
Hi Gurus, Thank you for reading this question My site is developed in Classic ASP How can i make sure the homepage is not duplicated for http://www.partyrama.co.uk/ http://www.partyrama.co.uk/default.asp http://partyrama.co.uk/ http://partyrama.co.uk/default.asp Regards Sri
On-Page Optimization | | partyrama0 -
Getting Google to provide a different URL in SERP
For one of my client’s sites, I have several keywords that are ranking in the top 5 positions. However, they have a high bounce rate. I believe this is because Google is delivering a different URL than the page we have optimized for the keyword. Any suggestions on ways I can get Google to present our preferred page?
On-Page Optimization | | TopFloor0 -
Site URL's
We are redeveloping our website, and have the option to amend URLs (with 301 redirects from old URL to new), so my question is: Would 'golfsite.com/golf-clubs' achieve superior rankings than 'golfsite.com/clubs' for the search term 'golf clubs' if all other factors were the same? Should the URL reflect the intended search term wherever possible?
On-Page Optimization | | swgolf1230