Is it worth changing our blog post URL's?
-
We're considering changing the URL's for our blog posts and dropping the date information.
Ex.
http://spreecommerce.com/blog/2012/07/27/spree-1-1-3-released/
changes to
http://spreecommerce.com/blog/spree-1-1-3-released/
Based on what I've learned here the new URL is better for SEO but since these pages already exist do we risk a minor loss of Google juice with 301 redirects? We have a sitemap for the blog posts so I imagine this wouldn't be too hard for Google to learn the new ones.
-
I did it to two client sites and neither lost any rankings. I used the Change Permalink Helper plugin, which made the redirects seamless. The most unfortunate thing about changing URL permalinks is the fact that if you have social sharing buttons on your posts, all the counts get reset to zero.
I must add that just because I didn't lose rankings doesn't mean there's not a chance, albeit a small one, that you will.
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
-
Question on Google's Site: Search
A client currently has two domains with the same content on each. When I pull up a Cached version of the site, I noticed that it has a Cache of the correct page on it. However, when I do a site: in Google, I am seeing the domain that we don't want Google indexing. Is this a problem? There is no canonical tag and I'm not sure how Google knows to cache the correct website but it does. I'm assuming they have this set in webmaster tools? Any help is much appreciated! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | jeff_46mile0 -
Is it a Panda/Penguin hit? Or it's just a natural ranking drop?
My traffic comes from google. This is the traffic profile. Does it look like a Panda or Penguin hit? I have a hard time determining it myself. Thanks. ne0r7kg.png
Technical SEO | | ChelseaP0 -
301ing 404's
Hey guys, I am currently in the process of redirecting some of my 404 pages to pages like my home page. Before I do that, I am assessing the link value of the 404 pages. My question is what do you do with the 404 pages which appear to have low quality links, do you really want to redirect them to an important page on your site? What should I do with these 404 pages? CheersAdam
Technical SEO | | Adamshowbiz0 -
Canonical Tag on Blog - Roger says it's incorrect?
Hi I have just released a post on my blog and I wanted to check my primary keyword for the post to make sure the page scores well. However when I did the page report it showed the Canonical Rel tag was incorrect. example of link the blog is http://www.example.com/Blog/post-comment/ The Canonical tag is below What am I doing wrong, as it looks correct to me?
Technical SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Rel = Canonical in Blog Posting
Hello, I keep coming back to rel=canonical issues! I noticed when I "view pagesource" that my drupal blog posting automatically creates link rel="canonical" href="/sample-blog-title" /< pattern (with the > reversed) in the source code. I'm getting a lot of Rel=Canonical warnings and double content warnings from Seomoz so I've been trying to insert link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/blog/my-awesome-blog-post"< but the page won't retain the code for some reason. I'm entering the code in Plain Text, but saving the document as Full HTML. Is there a better piece of code I can put in to demonstrate that the original blog page is the original source? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | OTSEO0 -
Wordpress New Category URL's
Were just about to redesign our site and put all the blogs over to the new site. Previously most blogs have been added to the uncategorised section of the blog and I'm now weighing up the benefit of sifting through all the blogs and changing them to relevant categories. From an SEO perspective would it be better to Leave them in their current category but start afresh with all new blogs by adding them to relevant categories? Work out which blogs should go in which new category and 301 all previous URL's to the new one. Obviously number one will take a lot more time than number two.
Technical SEO | | acs1110 -
How Best to Handle 'Site Jacking' (Unauthorized Use of Someone else's Dedicated IP Address)
Anyone can point their domain to any IP address they want. I've found at least two domains (same owner) with two totally unrelated domains (to each other and to us) that are currently pointing their domains to our IP address. The IP address is on our dedicated server (we control the entire physical server) and is exclusive to only that one domain (so it isn't a virtual hosting misconfiguration issue) This has caused Google to index their two domains with duplicate content from our site (found by searching for site:www.theirdomain.com) Their site does not come up in the first 50 results though for any of the keywords we come up for so Google obviously knows THEY are the dupe content, not us (our site has been around for 12 years - much longer than them.) Their registration is private and we have not been able to contact these people. I'm not sure if this is just a mistake on the DNS for the two domains or it is someone doing this intentionally to try to harm our ranking. It has been going on for a while, so it is most likely not a mistake for two live sites as they would have noticed long ago they were pointing to the wrong IP. I can think of a variety of actions to take but I can find no information anywhere regarding what Google officially recommends doing in this situation, assuming you can't get a response. Here's my ideas. a) Approach it as a Digital Copyright Violation and go through the lengthy process of having their site taken down. Pro: Eliminates the issue. Con: Sort of a pain and we could be leaving possibly some link juice on the table? b) Modify .htaccess to do a 301 redirect from any URL not using our domain, to our domain. This means Google is going to see several domains all pointing to the same IP and all except our domain, 301 redirecting to our domain. Not sure if THAT will harm (or help) us? Would we not receive link juice then from any site out there that was linking to these other domains? Con: Google will see the context of the backlinks and their link text will not be related at all to our site. In addition, if any of these other domains pointing to our IP have backlinks from 'bad neighborhoods' I assume it could hurt us? c) Modify .htaccess to do a 404 File Not Found or 403 forbidden error? I posted in other forums and have gotten suggestions that are all over the map. In many cases the posters don't even understand what I'm talking about - thinking they are just normal backlinks. Argh! So I'm taking this to "The Experts" on SEOMoz.
Technical SEO | | jcrist1 -
What's the best free tool for checking for broken links?
I'm trying to find the best tool to check for broken links on our site. We have over 11k pages and I'm looking for something fast and thorough! I've tried Xenu and LinkChecker. Any other ideas?
Technical SEO | | CIEEwebTeam0