Should I change .html to / ?
-
On my ecommerce site, we have .html extensions on all files and categories.
I was wondering if it is worth the development cost to make all of them / ?
Is there any SEO benefit in doing so?
Thanks,
B
-
Thanks again Mike...
Our URL structure I think meets Google's requirements - but there is yet no breadcrumbs appearing... does that appear depeding on domain reputation?
-
In many cases, most websites will redirect a trailing slash to the non-trailing slash version, but it all depends on your configuration. Here is some info from Google Webmaster Central on the subject.
I think what you are looking for is breadcrumb rich snippets.
Hope this helps.
Mike
-
Yes, that makes sense thank you. Although I have read on some of this forum that a forward slash helps rank better?
I also thought that by doing slashes in the URL, Google may have added those special links underneath the listing
Mybusiness > Shoes > Mens Shoes
Thank you for your help
-
Hi B,
If I am understanding your question correctly, there is no SEO benefit in what you are suggesting.
For instance if you are suggesting changing www.domain.com/topic.html to www.domain.com/topic that will not make any SEO difference.
The main reason for people removing the extension is that it looks cleaner/friendlier. Also, if you were to switch your platform/CMS, you would be able to continue to use the same URL if you do not use an extension.
Does that make sense?
Mike
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
-
What to do with large number of old/outdated pages?
Are we redoing a large portion of our site (not ecommerce). We have a large number of pages (about 2000 indexed pages, out of about 3000) that have been forgetten about until recently, are very outdated, don't drive any traffic (according to Google Analytics) But they are ranking very well for the targeting keyword (#3 organic for most). What should I do with those pages? Could you give any guidance on whether we should or what affect it might have one the rest of the website if we delete those pages or simply 301 redirecting all those pages to the home page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aphoontrakul0 -
Removing .html from URLs - impact of rankings?
Good evening Mozzers. Couple of questions which I hope you can help with. Here's the first. I am wondering, are we likely to see ranking changes if we remove the .html from the sites URLs. For example website.com/category/sub-category.html Change to: website.com/category/sub-category/ We will of course make sure we 301 redirect to the new, user friendly URLs, but I am wondering if anyone has had previous experience of implementing this change and how it has effected rankings. By having the .html in the URLs, does this stop link juice being flowed back to the root category? Second question: If one page can be loaded with and without a forward slash "/" at the end, is this a duplicate page, or would Google consider this as the same page? Would like to eliminate duplicate content issues if this is the case. For example: website.com/category/ and website.com/category Duplicate content/pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jseddon920 -
Changing URLs from sentence case to lower case
Hi Guys, We are contemplating of changing our site URL structure from sentence case to all lowercase. www.example.com/All-Products/Bedroom-Furniture/ www.example.com/all-products/bedroom-furniture/ We will use 301 redirect for old to new. Its a 3 year old ecommerce site and currently rank very decent on serps. The agency that does our seo is recommending this change and reckons that all lowecase URLs as preferred over our current URL structure. My worry is we will lose our current ranking but agency advises that rankings will probably go lower or fluctuate for some time and get back to its original position or may even rank better in due course as we are doing a 301 redirect and once the site is crawled Google will know the change. We are approaching Christmas and thenext 2 months are most busiest period of the year, we don't want to risk on traffic. I would really appreciate if the community experts can advise, Is it really that lowercase URLs are better than our current url structure? By doing 301 will our rankings come back to same in "due course" ? How much of a risk is it to do these changes at this time of the year? Thanking you in advance, Sohail
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tigersohelll1 -
Domain remains the same IP address is changing on same server only last 3 digits changing. Will this effect rankings
Dear All, We have taken and a product called webacelator from our hosting UKfast and our ip address is changing. UKFasts asked to point DNS to different IP in order to route the traffic through webacelator, which will enhance browsing speed. I am concerned, will this change effect our rankings. Your responses highly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tigersohelll0 -
Client wants a seperate .tv domain for their media/videos instead of a subdomain/subfolder. What is the best way to pass of link equity to a new domain?
We have a client that wants to place their video content on a .tv tld instead of a subfolder/subdomain in their .com website. They believe that the .tv domain will better represent the media experience of their business. We can understand this client's position however we are concerned about their .tv domain will lose out on the link equity if it were no longer placed in the .com's subdomain/subfolder. Here are our questions: 1. What would be the best way to pass of link equity from .com website to a new .tv domain? Should we just have a video link on the .com website that 301 directs to the new .tv domain? 2. Is there any SEO benefit of having a .tv domain for Google Video queries or even Youtube? 3. Is there any long term value of having two different websites? For link equity purposes we understand that it would be better if everything was in a .com. However is a .tv domain ideal for a better representation of their media content? We appreciate any feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Changing URLs to include a fixed identifier or ID
The Scenario: I got pages that I need to track, located in a domain, within several folders. Adding a common identifier or ID (eg. www.domain.com/folder/page-name-identifier.html) in those URL's will ease my work so I would be able to select, in Anlx, all traffic including URL's with that specific identifier. URL's for which track is needed lack this identifier today. My Plan: add identifier (7 letters fixed and common for all URLs) to those existing pages and 301 redirect from old to new URL's My Question: will this change of URL's and redirections SEO-hurt me in anyway?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tit0 -
If I hired you/your company to do my SEO ...
If i hired you or your company to do SEO for my site (http://goo.gl/XUH3f) what would be the first steps you'd take? I'm pretty sure i've covered all of the basics myself, I'm just left trying to figure out what i should do next... rankings have been going up and down for the last few weeks, but even when they're up, they're not high enough 🙂 (and then they go back down anyway) ... I know some of you are going to say build links, please at least give me an example of one or two sites you'd try to get to link to mine... I'm open to any advice or feedback as I'm just a website owner who's been doing their own SEO & learning on the fly... Thanks a lot!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Prime850 -
Finding broken links / resources by topic
Hi fellow mozzers! In an effort to ensure we're exploring every avenue when launching our new website, I was hoping to find some useful broken links / resources that we could incorporate into our link building. We have used the standard tools for this (W3C, Xenu etc), but they all seem to have the same issue in that they reveal all the missing links on a site (although some don't actually tell you the page they are on), but you still have to sort them to see if the links/ resource is related to your theme. When you're on a niche site, this obviously isn't an issue, but on a site like Mashable (to use the example given in a recent SEOmoz blog) it could result in wading through hundreds of links to find one relevant one right at the end. Is there a tool that allows you to specify what theme links you are looking for from a site, or better yet one that allows you to check multiple sites for multiple missing themed links in one go? Or is the best way to export the list and just search the document for certain keywords?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | themegroup0