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
-
Can Anyone Recommend a Web Page Automated Tagging Solution for Large Sites?
We're looking for a way to automate content tagging on our site with a pre-existing solution/software/tool. This is mainly for content organization and to better establish internal linking connections for a large site. We work with Adobe Creative Suite.
Content Development | | ari_seo0 -
How to optimize pages in other languages
How to optimize pages in other languages, we have some pages in other languages, such as Italian Spanish French Portuguese. But our budget is limited, and we are not very good at so many languages. How can we achieve better results with only a few pages? Does a link in English work? [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-fr](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-fr) [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-es](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-es) [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-portuguese](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-portuguese) [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-japanese](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-japanese) [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-de](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-de) [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-dutch](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-dutch) [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-italian](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-italian) [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-vietnamese](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-vietnamese) [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-thai](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-thai)
Content Development | | ahislop5740 -
What should my strategy be if I want to rank my website to be like psychologytoday.com?
Hi, I run a psychology blog for millennials and I recently started using MOZ trial. I'm looking for a general blueprint or questions I should be answering as I try to boost my search engine traffic to match up with psychologytoday.com Aside from link building and writing quality content, what are some other strategies that I can implement?
Content Development | | Psych2Go0 -
Page Break
Hey guys, A client has asked us to install a page break function on their Wordpress site in the hope of increasing page count. It's a very common practice but have never used it as part of a strategy. Any thoughts, pros or cons?
Content Development | | wearehappymedia0 -
I want to remove some pages from my site with PR, what should I do with traffic?
I have a section of a site that I want to remove. It has a main page linked from the nav menu, and a half dozen subpages under that. The pages get some traffic and have ranks up to PR3, which is what my site's home page is. I'm no longer want to do these pages as they require tremendous upkeep and I'm not interested in keeping them going. So, I know if I just remove these pages and that's all, I'm going to pay for it somewhere with Google. What else should I do? I do't really have similar pages to direct them too.
Content Development | | bizzer0 -
High Bounce Rate on this Specific Page
Just a quick question...looking more for opinions and suggestions.... The specific page in question is: http://erasedisease.com/2012/04/09/all-natural-alternative-to-beta-blockers-arginine/ We get great traffic to this page specifically for these search terms (and more): natural beta blockers natural alternatives to beta blockers natural beta blocker supplements The bounce rate on this specific page is usually between 75% to 82%. Does anyone have any suggestions as to why this might be (besides the obvious colors/theme of the website)? Thanks!!
Content Development | | Linwright0 -
My WebSite has two sections with overlapping, or redundant articles on the same topics. Google is only listing one or the other article in Search Results. What should I do to have both pages (similiar but unique content ) to be listed?
My Web Site has two sections with overlapping, or redundant articles on the same topics. Google is only listing one or the other article in Search Results. What should I do to have both pages (similar but unique content ) to be listed? Example: http://www.womenshealthcaretopics.com/pregnancy_week_12.htm http://www.womenshealthcaretopics.com/pregnancy_12_weeks.html
Content Development | | docjamesmd0 -
My Blog pages are out ranking my main website
My blog was on wordpress.com for over 18mnths and I have just moved it to my domain - rankings are charging as a result - up and down! My current concern is my google.co.uk search position for garden art - my home page http://www.gardenbeet.com has been number 2 for over 12 mnths - now my blog is number 2 http://www.gardenbeet.com/garden_design_blog/garden-art/ this is not the best landing page to generate sales from my shop - any suggestions?
Content Development | | GardenBeet0