Shortened page titles and changed urls to match, will this effect my page rankings?
-
In my recent crawl, I was given a bunch of 200 errors for having titles too long, i rewrote the titles and changed the URLs to match (using wordpress). I was then informed by my boss that changing the URLs like I did (www.website.com/abc ->www.website.com/xyz) may have changed our page rank for those pages and if so i should revert them to the old urls.
There are about 14 titles in total that I made these changes to. Would it be quicker to change the URL's to their old names, or better for me to use 301 redirects to point the old urls to the new ones?
Will either renaming the urls of the new titled blogs with their old titles or using 301 redirects have better SEO results?
Does wordpress automatically make these redirects for me? When I click a link of the old urls I kept saved in a document it still goes to the page.
-
Also, for the future, I recommend using two plugins for WordPress:
- Redirection by John Godley: This plugin lets you set up redirects within the WP dashboard, which means you can keep track of what's being redirected where within your WP administration.
- Yoast SEO by Team Yoast: This plugin lets you add and edit a lot of different SEO-related items, gives you tips regarding keywords you want to focus on, and a lot more. It's incredibly useful.
To be clear, I don't work for or with either of these developers/teams, but they're great plugins that sound as though they'd be especially helpful for you.
-
If I understood what you're saying, it seems as though you may have mistaken page title and URL for the same thing. You can alter a page title without affecting the URL and vice versa. For example, in Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), the blue text shown for each result is the page title, while the URL is in green text.
Now, with that said, page titles shouldn't exceed about 150 characters. This is because after this point, the title will be truncated and the entire title will, therefore, not be shown (only part of it will).
Regarding switching the URLs back to their originals, I'd recommend simply changing them back to what they were rather than redirecting them. Either way, it sounds like this whole endeavor has hurt your SEO, and either method may have implications. When you do this, any URL that is not hardcoded should be fixed by WordPress automatically. What this means is, while links populated internally (ex: in menus, navigation, footer) should be changed by WordPress without you having to do anything - though I'd strongly suggest you double-check these manually. However, the hardcoded links (ex: links in body text, images, some widgets) might not be resolved by WordPress automatically. These you will probably need to tend to on your own. Meaning, if in the second paragraph of blog article A, you link to blog article B: you'll probably need to edit the page for blog article A and replace the old URL with the new.
If you need any clarifications or further help, please ask! And sorry if I mistook anything you'd said.
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
-
Blog hasn't ranked since reposting.
Hey Moz fam! I had a blog that was doing pretty well for the target keyword. Unfortunately, to make a long story short, we had an image in it we weren't supposed to so I unpublished it for a few days while we got that sorted out. Since republishing (with all the same content) it has not gotten a single impression. I inspected the URL and it is totally eligible but nothing in the way of organic traffic. Any ideas on how I can recover?
Content Development | | danieldaher1 -
How Are You Handling Blog Posts/Author Pages when Employees Leave the Company?
What do you believe to be the best approach in handling blog content for employees once they have left the company? We don’t want to remove the blog posts so they need to stay, but then there are the author pages. This gets tricky because the CMS ties the blog post to the author. One approach might be to change the author’s name to the Company’s name to get around author pages for people no longer with the company. It’s kind of tricky because the blog posts won’t have the same credibility if they don’t have a person’s name/photo associated with the post. We could leave the blogger’s page and list him as a “Contributing Author” once he’s left the company. Thoughts?
Content Development | | RosemaryB0 -
Adding too many new pages at once - will it be seen as spammy
I have a database of around 10,000 business I want to list on my directory. My problem has been that my people have been adding to the database for over a year, but due to my hosting limitations adding them, caused my site to crash. I have now got this sorted, would going from 1,000 urls listed to over 11,000 may Google think I am trying to spam them. Would it be worth while dripping them in over time, or just adding them all at once. Any advice appreciated, Thanks
Content Development | | Andy-Halliday0 -
I have a domain with rank no 1 in google web search!
I have a domain with rank no 1 in google web search! When I search for the keyword which are the domainname in google adwords, keyword search I get 1.200.000 searches in that keyword. Our domain have only 10 visitors a day - why is that?
Content Development | | fredrecokonsult0 -
Advice on Title please
<y website="" <a="" href="http://www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk">www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk was number 1 in Google.co.uk for several years for our main search term "nile cruise" until about 4 months ago when we fell to our current position of 4 or 5.</y> I am looking at every aspect of optimising the site and wonder if I am using a good enough title for the home page? At the moment it is titled: Nile Cruise | Nile Cruises | Nile Cruise Bargains I wonder if I should just call it "Nile Cruise"? I alreay have a seperat page entitled "Nile Cruise Bargains" and wonder if having that phrase in the homepage title would have any adverse affects? Earlier this year our site was hacked and we spent 2 weeks with it being unavailable until we had rebuilt and repaired it. After that our position dipped. We have a Blog going back to 2007 and when we repaired the site the Blog was affected in that although we managed to re-install the hundreds of posts they were without all of the SEO tags and categories, etc, etc. I've been slowly adding those but there are still hundreds to do. Could this be affecting our page position? Thanks, Colin
Content Development | | NileCruises1 -
How to handle product pages with similar information
We have thousands of product pages with similar information but differentiating variables such as length/width. Example: http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/2100-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-14-X-74-.aspx http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/2101-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-15-X-76-.aspx http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/2102-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-16-X-92-.aspx http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/2103-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-17-X-92-.aspx We built individual products instead of grouped products because we recommend specific part numbers for specific make, model, year boats through our finder tool. These pages have recently started showing up in SEOmoz as duplicate content and we are looking for solutions to solve it. We have considered creating a "parent page" that lists all sizes and then using a rel canonical on each individual page to tell google that the parent page is the preferred page. Any thoughts or other ideas on this?
Content Development | | ironpac0 -
Why does my lousy little blog Rank number 1 on Google?
Search "Google Places Changes." My Blog, www.salesjumpstart.net/blog is ranked first. Has been for a week. Why? Makes no sense. I have been getting many first page Google results for 3 and 4 word keyword searches. The site or Blog just isn't that strong. http://www.google.com/search?q=Google+places+hchanges&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=uFR&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=Google+places+changes&pbx=1&oq=Google+places+changes&aq=f&aqi=g2g-j1g-b1&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=4293l4293l0l4628l1l1l0l0l0l0l271l271l2-1l1l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=661c0b1152c259b4&biw=1024&bih=583
Content Development | | MBayes0 -
WordPress Rankings ?
It looks for me that WordPress sites get to rank better for some reason ... I dont know wil you will agree with this one with me or not. The question is... do they hold their rankings for the certain keyword with a time? or they lose them as fast as they get them? Shouldn't be content rank the same across all platforms? Content is a content and it dosent matter how it's presented? is it the case with google? For example: Create Wordpress site for only 3 products, provide good content for those 3 products... and sell them with some of shopping cart plugins (any recommendations on the plugin?) Will I get rankings faster and keep them?
Content Development | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0