Navigational Changes
-
Need some advice on when to use canonical vs. redirects for navigation changes to a website. However, if there are other options i am open to them as well.
- We are consolidating some navigational paths and moving others
- We are renaming product pages (therefore creating new product pages, CMS platform requirements)
- Keep in mind we have desktop domain and a mobile domain
Questions
- Do we redirect old URL's to the new product page URL's?
- Do we redirect old mobile URL's to new mobile URL's or to the desktop equivalent?
- Do we redirect all old product page URL's containing navigation elements to the new product page URL?
- If we have a category page being added to two different sections how do we determine the right canonical URL? (the URL will be different because the customer paths will be different)
- Do we need to make sure and redirect all old URL's to a new URL? If so, what is the best way to find all of the URL's?
-
So, do I just put in a redirect from the old t-shirt page to the new (demoted) t-shirt page? The old one has built up value so I wasnt sure.
Yes, you do redirect. It doesn't matter that page has built up value. If people come to it and it's not what they expect - they gonna be bouncing like crazy. If you think that it's the same or very similar, then you can leave without redirect, but I wouldn't do it.
But more importantly do I need to redirect every single navigational URL for the old URL's and redirect them to a new page?It seems a bit unnecessary.
So, how would you handle it? Leave them be as 404s?
-
To clarify
Example situation
Current Site Taxonomy
- Section: Men's
- Category: T-Shirt
- Sub-Category: Long Sleeve
New Site taxonomy:
- Section: Men's
- Category: Shirts
- Sub-Category: T-Shirts
In new taxonomy the following is happening:
- T-Shirts is being demoted to a sub-category
- Long Sleeve is going away
- Shirts is becoming a brand new category
So, do I just put in a redirect from the old t-shirt page to the new (demoted) t-shirt page? The old one has built up value so I wasnt sure. But more importantly do I need to redirect every single navigational URL for the old URL's and redirect them to a new page? It seems a bit unnecessary.
-
Hi seo32!
Did Dimitrii's answer help? Or do you have more information for us?
-
Hello, my friend.
Do we redirect old URL's to the new product page URL's?
If you keep the product and just changing URL - yes.
Do we redirect old mobile URL's to new mobile URL's or to the desktop equivalent?
So, the whole mobile URL is different? you actually have domain.com/mobile-version-url and domain.com/desktop-version-url, not m.domain.com/all-version-url and domain.com/all-version-url? if first option, then yes, mobile to mobile, desktop to desktop, if second option - then redirect everything to desktop version. However, it does depend on how exactly you're handling mobile version requests. Basically, if it's completely two different static, physically existing pages for mobile and desktop versions, then they need separate redirects.
Do we redirect all old product page URL's containing navigation elements to the new product page URL?
I'm not understanding the question completely. Are you saying if you have a link on page to old url, then should you redirect to new url? If so, then yes, you should change the link.
If we have a category page being added to two different sections how do we determine the right canonical URL? (the URL will be different because the customer paths will be different)
Again, not understanding the question. The same category page will be in two different places? Anyway, canonicalize it to the page, which you prefer to rank.
Do we need to make sure and redirect all old URL's to a new URL? If so, what is the best way to find all of the URL's?
Yes, you do. Otherwise it's not gonna be working (or you gonna have 404s). To determine which pages are not being redirected - use 404 checker - there are whole bunch free ones on the mighty internet.
P.S. I'm a little confused about the way you're doing redirects etc. At least from what I understand from your questions. It seems that in some questions you're actually talking about changing links from pages, not doing redirects. If so, please, clarify. If not, then I need more details (or clearer questions).
Hope this make sense and 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
-
May Faceted Navigation via ajax #parameter cause duplicated content issues?
We are going to implement a faceted navigation for an ecommerce site of about 1000 products.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Faceted navigation is implemented via ajax/javascript which adds to the URL a large number of #parameters.
Faceted pages are canonicalizing to page without any parameters. We do not want google to index any of the faceted pages at this point. Will google include pages with #parameters in their index?
Can I tell google somehow to ignore #parameters and not to index them?
Could this setup cause any SEO problems for us in terms of crawl bandwidth and or link equity?0 -
Change domain.com to www.domain.com - influence on linkbuilding, seo, etc.
Hello, Do you know what can happen when i change domain.com to www.domain.com? Will it have an influence to my link-building portfolio (external links to domain.com), position on google search, etc. Thank you for help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Reyzer0 -
Pagination loading with using AJAX. Should I change this?
Hello, while I was checking this site; http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html I found that the pagination is working this way http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html#/page-2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html#/page-3 and content is being loaded using AJAX. So, google is not getting the paginated results. Is this a big issue or there is no problem?
Should I create a link for See All Products or there is not a big issue? Thank you!0 -
Switched to HTTPS, now Google ALWAYS changes Page Title & Meta in SERPs
Wordpress website using Yoast. Website switched over from HTTP to HTTPS successfully about 6 months ago. Noticed after the fact that Google almost never displays the Page Title or Meta Description I've created in Yoast. Yoast is the only SEO plug-in enabled. Yoast is set to Force Rewrite the Page TItles. The Page titles & Meta Descriptions are always within the character limit. They also contain either an exact or partial match the queries in which Google shows a different Page Title & Meta Description. For some Queries, Google will display the URL as the Page Title for certain queries. Concrete example, search for: public administration jobs Screenshot of results attached. First time working with HTTPS. The redirects appear to be have done correctly. I'm not sure what the issue is. uOnFjNt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 2uinc0 -
Redirect old broken link or ask for HREF change?
found some broken links from 2007 to our site pointing to a url that needs a redirect. Obviously I am going to set that up (in-case there are others out there i don't find pointing to the same URL) but should i also reach out to the webmaster and ask him to update the link, or will the redirect suffice? I don't want it to look like a paid link when in fact it is completely natural 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imageworks-2612900 -
An Infrastructure Change for a Large eCommerce Site - Any advice?
Hello Mozers, We're currently under going quite a large infrastructure change to our website and I wouldn't to hear your thoughts on the type of things we should be careful of. We currently have close to 4,000 individual products each with their own page. The seo work is then driven behind certain pages which house a catalog display of groups of products. The groups are done by style. An example is we have a page called "Style A" which displays 8 different colours of style A. We then seo the style A page and the individual items received minimal seo work. The change would involve having one individual product page for each style but on that page the user would have the ability to purchase the different colours/variations via menus. This will result in approximately a %70 reduction in the size of our site (as several products will no longer be published) The things we are currently concerned with are: 1. The lose of equity to those unwanted 'style A' pages - I think a series of careful planned 301s will be the solution. 2. Possible loss of long tail traffic to the individual products which might not be caught by one individual page per style. 3. Internal link structure will need to be monitored to make sure that we're still highlight the most important pages as well, important. Sorry for the long post, it's a difficult change to explain without revealing the clients name - any other things we should be thinking about would be greatly appreciated! Thanks Nigel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NigelJ0 -
How can I change my website's content on specific pages without affecting ranking for specific keywords?
My client's website (www.nursevillage.com) content has not been touched for 4 years and we are currently ranking #1 for "per diem nursing". They do not want to make any changes to the site in fear that it might decrease our rankings. We want to try to use utilize that keyword ranking on specific pages (www.nursevillage.com/nv/content/careeroptions/perdiem.jsp ) ranking for "per diem nursing" and try redirecting traffic or placing some banners and links on that page to specific pages or other sites related to "per diem nursing" jobs so we can get nurses to apply to our new nursing jobs. Any advice on why "per diem nursing" is ranking so high for us and what we can change on the site without messing up our ranking would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ryanperea1000 -
URL Length or Exact Breadcrumb Navigation URL? What's More Important
Basically my question is as follows, what's better: www.romancingdiamonds.com/gemstone-rings/amethyst-rings/purple-amethyst-ring-14k-white-gold (this would fully match the breadcrumbs). or www.romancingdiamonds.com/amethyst-rings/purple-amethyst-ring-14k-white-gold (cutting out the first level folder to keep the url shorter and the important keywords are closer to the root domain). In this question http://www.seomoz.org/qa/discuss/37982/url-length-vs-url-keywords I was consulted to drop a folder in my url because it may be to long. That's why I'm hesitant to keep the bradcrumb structure the same. To the best of your knowldege do you think it's best to drop a folder in the URL to keep it shorter and sweeter, or to have a longer URL and have it match the breadcrumb structure? Please advise, Shawn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Romancing0