Do I need to do 301s in this situation?
-
We have an e-commerce site built on Magento 2. We launched a few months ago, and had about 2K categories. The categories got indexed in Google for the most part. Shortly after launch, we decided to go with SLI for search and navigation because the native search/navigation was too slow given our database.
The navigation pages are now hosted navigation pages; meaning, the URLs have changed and they are now hosted by SLI.
I have done 301s for the most popular categories, but I didn't do 301s for all categories as we have to go through each category one-by-one and map it to the correct navigation page. Our new category sitemap only lists the new SLI category URLs.
Will the fact that we have not 301'd all of our former categories hurt us as far as SEO? Do I have to do 301 redirects for all former category pages?
-
Nigel,
Thanks for the feedback.
The product pages do not have the categories in the breadcrumbs. It is just home > product.
The thing is, the category pages that were indexed are already deindexed. And, we didn't build any links to the category pages as it was a new e-commerce site. I will try to see if there is a faster way of mapping the native categories to the hosted navigation pages.
Although it is much faster and more user friendly, I do regret using hosted navigation on the site now. Also, I may not use the hosted navigation service at the end of the year. I am wondering if I should hold off on the 301s, as will have to reverse the 301s if we cancel the service. What are your thoughts?
-
Hi Kevin
In short yes you do.
The thing is that if the categories are indexed in Google and someone clicks on one it will 404 which is not a great user experience. Also if those URLs are listed anywhere else in directories, blogs or any other site then visits from those sources will also 404. It's just very bad practice. Can't you just scrape all of the URLs, put them in a csv, add the new URLs and copy to .htaccess as a quick way of doing it?
By the way having navigation pages hosted externally on non-company URLs sounds like an SEO disaster to me. Your site's natural hierarchy from home>cat>product has the cat part on an external server. I can't see how this can possibly be good for SEO. Do your product URLs contain the category?
Regards Nigel
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
-
Breadcrumbs markup need to be fixed
Hi there, Google is up to mass spamming, the latest one refers o an Enhancements > Breadcrukbs report, the message is: "...Google systems show that your site is affected by 24 instances of Breadcrumbs markup issues. This means that your Breadcrumbs pages might not appear as rich results in Google Search. Search Console has created a new report just for this rich result type..." I've used their Structured Data Testing Tool, no errors were highlighted. Can anyone fathom out what they're referring to, please?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasongmcmahon0 -
AU and US site needs Hreflang?
Hi guys, Just want to confirm if we need some SEO actions on two of our sites. Example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brandonegroup
https://www.example.com.au/collections/dresses
https://exampleamerica.com/collections/dresses Will the domain naming will fix the issue of possible duplication?
Do we still need to implement hreflang markups?0 -
International website. Di I need a new website
i am looking to expand from the UK and open a location in the US. i curretly have a .co.uk domain. what would you recommend I do with th website, create a new one wth a .com domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
Im scoring 100% in the page optimization, wht else I need to do, because I rank 7-12 in search results
Hi All, Pls check the below url http://www.powerwale.com/inverter-battery for inverter battery keyword in google.co.in im scoring 100% in the page optimization, wht else I need to do, and also I still rank in between 7 to 12 in search results.. How can be in Top 3 search results.. Pls suggest.. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1191 -
National Company Needs Local (7 Box) Rankings in Test Metros
A lot of pressure on me for this one...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayt
I have a national client with excellent naturals, and a huge PPC budget. Getting killed locally, forcing use below the 7box. I need to find either a definitive way to get into the 7 box in dozens of metro areas, or HIRE a consultant who knows this landscape better.
Any thoughts?
The client serves all 50 states, by phone and online, in a very competitive market. I've killed it for 12 years, and volume has slipped so we need to grab more local.
Complimenting matters, we are currently migrating their main site to CMS (Umbraco).. a little busy!0 -
Does rel canonical need to be absolute?
Hi guys and gals, Our CMS has just been updated to its latest version which finally adds support for rel=canonical. HUZZAH!!! However, it doesn't add the absolute URL of the page. There is a base ref tag which looks like <base <="" span="">href="http://shop.confetti.co.uk/" /> On a page such as http://shop.confetti.co.uk/branch/wedding-favours the canonical tag looks like rel="canonical" href="/branch/wedding-favours" /> Does Google recognise this as a legitimate canonical tag? The SEOmoz On-Page Report Card doesn't recognise it as such. Any help would be great, Thanks in advance, Brendan.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Confetti_Wedding0 -
Do I need a canonical tag on the 404 error page?
Per definition, a 404 is displayed for different url (any not existing url ...). As I try to clean my website following SEOmoz pro advices, SEOmoz notify me of duplicate content on urls leading to a 404 🙂 This is I guess not that important, but just curious: should we add a cononical tag to the template returning the 404, with a canonical url such as www.mysite.com/404 ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nuxeo0 -
Weird situation with our local listing.
A couple of weeks ago I was having problems with my real estate local listing. I made some changes (like removing anything remotely like keyword stuffing and a few other things). Then, we re-emerged. But now, instead of having 4 citations we have 221. It looks like Google has merged our listing with all of the other agents in our office. So, now if you type in to Google: ABC Realty in OurCity the very first listing is a 1-box that has our listing: Jane and John Doe, Sales Representatives, ABC Realty and our phone number. We actually rank higher than the ABC Realty office's own web page. We are getting phone calls from people who think they are calling the main office but instead call us. (This is not at all bad for business...but perhaps there is an ethical issue?) My problem is that if you click on our places listing, there is one photo on there of a realtor who is not us. Additionally, we lost our two reviews that we had, but we have one review for another realtor who is not us. The rest of the listing is totally ours - our photos, our description, our website, our phone number. If I go to edit the listing, the option to remove that photo is not there. So, now we have a conundrum. One one hand, it's great to have this boost. We are appearing #1 for searches for our office and this brings us business. But, I want to be ethical. Realtors can be nasty and I don't want other realtors thinking that I have done bad manipulative stuff to steal other peoples' business. Can anything be done? What would you do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes0