URL 301 Re-direct
-
Hello,
If we publish a blog post with a url which accidentally contains a number at the end (blog.companyname.com/subject-title-0), is it best-practice to update the URL (e.g. to blog.companyname.com/subject-title) and put in a 301 re-direct from the old to the new one or should it simply be left as is?
I've read that 301's lose link equity and relevance so is it really worth re-directing for the sake of a cleaner url?
Thanks for your input!
John
-
Thankyou Soo Much. Great Post
-
Great - thanks for taking the time to respond Roman with this insightful post
-
Well, the post that you are using as a reference makes sense if you have a website running and one of your pages is getting traffic and you don't know how to deal with a URL error.
- If your page is ranking on the first page of SERP
- you have 100 backlinks pointing to your page
- 2000 user coming every day.
Well, in that case, you will need to evaluate which tactics can give you a better result.
- Option - 1 Keep the URL as its right now.
- Option - 2 Replace it with a new one.
You will need to know if your new URL will help to rank for new keywords or put you in a better place in the SERP, also how is performing your competition for that specific keyword, what about the anchor text of your external and internal links.
So you make an analysis to see it is worth the risk. Usually SEO expert deal with URL updates adding value to the page, adding content, graphics, images, text. But as I see that is not your case
In the other hands, if you have just an article, I mean a simple article with a few visitors. Probably you want to rank it, but it has no external links, no traffic at all or insignificant traffic and has a low DA. Well, in that case, forget what I told and simple change the URL and stop worrying about it
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
-
Tool to Generate All the URLs on a Domain
Hi all, I've been using xml-sitemaps.com for a while to generate a list of all the URLs that exist on a domain. However, this tool only works for websites with under 500 URLs on a domain. The paid tool doesn't offer what we are looking for either. I'm hoping someone can help with a recommendation. We're looking for a tool that can: Crawl, and list, all the indexed URLs on a domain, including .pdf and .doc files (ideally in a .xls or .txt file) Crawl multiple domains with unlimited URLs (we have 5 websites with 500+ URLs on them) Seems pretty simple, but we haven't been able to find something that isn't tailored toward management of a single domain or that can crawl a huge volume of content.
Technical SEO | | timfrick0 -
Keywords, when are you overdoing it in the URL?
Hi guys, I'm auditing a site covering compensation for cancer. Keywords could include: Undiagnosed cancer 20 cancer compensation 10 undiagnosed cancer symptoms 10 cancer misdiagnosis claims 20 cancer claims 10 misdiagnosis of cancer 50 cancer misdiagnosis 70 So, when structuring the URL for the category, this was previously selected: www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-misdiagnosis Although sub-pages appear like this: www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-misdiagnosis/breast-cancer-misdiagnosis-claim/ 'Cancer misdiagnosis' as a keyword attracts the most traffic, but if we're using it on sub-pages - is there a need to include it twice on all sub-page URLs? With that in mind, would it be better to follow the following format? www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-compensation www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-compensation/breast-cancer-misdiagnosis-claim/ Or is there a better way to structure this? Thanks in advance guys!
Technical SEO | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
404 and re directs from an old design to a new one
I have a directory that I am redesigning. Currently, the old directory is all 404 pages. I need to use the URL's in the old directory for the new one. Should I redirect all the old pages to the new pages? Or is it better to delete the old pages, let them de index - so that I can use those same URLs? I really need help with this.
Technical SEO | | SwanJob0 -
When to use canonical urls
I will be the first to admit I am never really 100% sure when to use canonical urls. I have a quick question and I am not really sure if this is a situation for a canonical or not. I am looking at a my friends building website and there are issues with what pages are ranking. Basically there homepage is focusing on the building refurbishment location but for some reason in internal page is ranking for that keyword and it is not mentioned at all on that page. Would this be a time to add the homepage url and a canonical on the ranking page (using yoast plugin) to tell Google that the homepage is the preferred page? Thanks Paul
Technical SEO | | propertyhunter0 -
Special characters in URL
Hi There, We're in the process of changing our URL structure to be more SEO friendly. Right now I'm struggling to find a good way to handle slashes that are part of a targeted keyword. For example, if I have a product page and my product title is "1/2 ct Diamond Earrings in 14K Gold" which of the following URLs is the right way to go if I'm targeting the product title as the search keyword? example.com/jewelry/1-2-ct-diamond-earrings-in-14k-gold example.com/jewelry/12-ct-diamond-earrings-in-14k-gold example.com/jewelry/1_2-ct-diamond-earrings-in-14k-gold example.com/jewelry/1%2F2-ct-diamond-earrings-in-14k-gold Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Richline_Digital0 -
Can URL re writes fix the problem of critical content too deep in a sites structure?
Good morning from Wetherby UK 🙂 Ok imagine this scenario. You ask the developers to design a site where "offices to let" is on level two of a sites hierachy and so the URL would look like this: http://www.sandersonweatherall.co.uk/office-to-let. But Yikes when it goes live it ends up like this: http://www.sandersonweatherall.co.uk...s/residential/office-to-let Is a fix to this a URL re - write? Or is the only fix relocating the office to let content further up the site structure? Any insights welcome 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
Strange duplicate url
From your csv report I have this strange issue. This url: elettrodomestici.yeppon.it/climatizzatori/condizionatori-fissi/prodotti/condizionatori-fissi-comfee/ it's a duplicate of this elettrodomestici.yeppon.it/climatizzatori/condizionatori-fissi/prodotti/condizionatori-fissi-comfee/ but the only url that I can see in the website is this one. Why the "-" is transalted some times in "%2D" referrer obviously is elettrodomestici.yeppon.it/climatizzatori/condizionatori-fissi/prodotti/condizionatori-fissi-comfee/solo-disponibili/ I have many duplicate url...Can you help me? Thanks
Technical SEO | | yeppon0 -
301 Redirect Issue
I'm having an issue with 301 redirects: Let's see if I can verbalize my thoughts on this one... So we just recently moved our site to Wordpress. One of our new 301 commands is redirecting oursite.com/news to oursite.com/blog . However there are other links from our previous site that look like oursite.com/news/XYZ and the issue is that, because wordpress structures its links differently, that URL is not equivalent to oursite.com/blog/XYZ. Instead, it might look something more like oursite.com/blog/yaddayadda/XYZ or something. Does that make sense? The issue is that when I find an old link of ours on google that looks something like "oursite.com/news/XYZ" or "oursite.com/news/ABC" it is automatically replacing "news" with "blog". When I try to go in manually and redirect anything that says "/news/XYZ" to "/blog/yaddayadda/XYZ" it still doesn't work. It still just replaces "news" with "blog." Wow I realize that might not make sense to anyone but if it does - please advise!! Thanks!!!!
Technical SEO | | EntrustSEO0