Is it detrimental to make a site wide change from .html to .shtml (all pages)?
-
We have an established website with decent domain authority. My developer inherited the site from another developer and is recommending that we convert all pages from the .html to the .shmtl From an SEO perspective, would this hurt us?
Also, if this is not an issue, would updating the canonical help us, or does the canonical setting only deal with the "www." vs. "non-www"?
Any insights will be appreciated greatly. Thanks!
-
If you have decent rankings already I would hesitate to do this. While your rankings will eventually come back to where they're at now, there will DEFINITELY be some time in the middle where you're not doing as well. The 301s suggested in other answers are a great (and necessary) idea.
If you don't HAVE to do this, I would question it as well. It will definitely affect your site.
-
Hi Barry,
Well from a marketing perspective I would always go back to your developer and say that it's not an option to change the URL structure only because of technical dependencies. You build up your reputation and with changing the URLs, even if you redirect them to the new location there always will be a certain loss in authority.
-
If you decide to go down this route the best way to minimise SEO impact would be to implement 301 redirects from the .html to the new .shtml.
Have a look at the Redirect While Changing File Extensions section on Moz's Guide to redirects here - http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection
This page is well worth a read in order for you to get a better understanding but I thought I would draw your attention to this section to help put your mind at ease -
"There are multiple options for doing this, but in general, the 301 redirect is preferable for both users and search engines. Serving a 301 indicates to both browsers and search engine bots that the page has moved permanently. Search engines interpret this to mean that not only has the page changed location, but that the content—or an updated version of it—can be found at the new URL. The engines will carry any link weighting from the original page to the new URL"
In terms of what loss of value a 301 redirect will have no one is sure and what impact this will have. 301 redirects would be the best way to do what is being suggested by your developer with minimal seo impact. I think you might find this post interesting - http://moz.com/community/q/how-much-juice-do-you-lose-in-a-301-redirect
Hope this helps
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
-
Number of index pages in web master is different from site:mydomainname
Google says one to discover whether my pages is index in Google is site:domain name of my website: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/34444?hl=enas mention in web page above so basically according to that i can know totally pages indexed for my website right:it shows me when type (site:domain name ) 300 but it says in Google web master that i have 100000so which is the real number of index page 300 or 1000000 as web master says and why i get 300 when using site:domain name even Google mention that it is way to discover index paged
Technical SEO | | Jamalon0 -
Is it better to use XXX.com or XXX.com/index.html as canonical page
Is it better to use 301 redirects or canonical page? I suspect canonical is easier. The question is, which is the best canonical page, YYY.com or YYY.com/indexhtml? I assume YYY.com, since there will be many other pages such as YYY.com/info.html, YYY.com/services.html, etc.
Technical SEO | | Nanook10 -
Staging site and "live" site have both been indexed by Google
While creating a site we forgot to password protect the staging site while it was being built. Now that the site has been moved to the new domain, it has come to my attention that both the staging site (site.staging.com) and the "live" site (site.com) are both being indexed. What is the best way to solve this problem? I was thinking about adding a 301 redirect from the staging site to the live site via HTACCESS. Any recommendations?
Technical SEO | | melen0 -
Redirect from old wordpress site to new php site? Best approach
Hi I have two websites one legacy site done in wordpress the other in php. However I would like to merge the two together and remove the wordpress site. However it has a good link profile and the pages rank well. What is the best approach to do a 301 redirect from the old site with all its pages pointing to the homepage of the new site? If so what's the best way to do this in wordpress? Many thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Micro formats to block HTML text portions of pages
I have a client that wants to use micro formatting to keep a portion of their page (the disclaimer) from being read by the search engines. They want to do this because it will help with their keyword density on the rest of the page and block the “bad keywords” that come from their legally required disclaimer. We have suggested alternate methods to resolve this problem, but they do not want to implement those, they just want a POV from us explaining how this micro formatting process will work. And that’s where the problem is. I’ve never heard of this use case and can’t seem to find anyone who has. I'm posting the question to the Moz Community to see if anyone knows how microformats can keep copy from being crawled by the bots. Please include any links to sites that you know that are using micro formatting in this way. Have you implemented it and seen results? Do you know of a website that is using it now? We're looking for use cases please!
Technical SEO | | Merkle-Impaqt0 -
Is there any value to a home page URL adding the /index.html ?
For proper SEO, which version would you prefer? A. www.abccompany.com B. www.abccompany.com/index.html Is there any value or difference with either home page URL??
Technical SEO | | theideapeople0 -
What is the best way to change your sites folder structure?
Hi, Our site was originally created with a very flat folder structure - most of the pages are at the top level. Because we will adding more content I want to tidy up the structure first. I just wanted to check what the best way to go about this was. Is it best to: First configure all the new 301 redirects to point to the new pages, while leaving the actual links on our site pointing to the old pages. Then changing the links on the site after a few weeks. Configure the redirects and change the actual links on my website at the same time to point to the new locations. My thinking that if I go with option 1 route then I will give Google a chance to process all the redirects and change the locations in their index before I start pointing them to the new locations. But does it make any difference? What is the best wat to go about making this sort of change to minimize any loss in rankings, page rank etc? Thanks for the help.
Technical SEO | | Maximise0 -
Existing Pages in Google Index and Changing URLs
Hi!! I am launching a newly recoded site this week and had a another noobie question. The URL structure has changed slightly and I have installed a 301 redirect to take care of that. I am wondering how Google will handle my "old" pages? Will they just fall out of the index? Or does the 301 redirect tell Google to rewrite the URLs in the index? I am just concerned I may see an "old" page and a "new" page with the same content in the index. Just want to make sure I have covered all my bases. Thanks!! Lynn
Technical SEO | | hiphound0