ECommerce Platform Switch and SEO Loss
-
Hi -
We're switching eCommerce platforms, and naturally we're worried about losing organic search ranking.
From what I've read on the message boards, I understand it's important to try to minimize as many 301 redirects as possible.
Here's my problem: Our Product URLs are like this (ex: http://www.stupid.com/fun/TOLMG.html). On the new platform, URLs cannot contain capital letters.
According to the new eCommerce platform's design team: "Google and other search engines do not see that as a change in URL, they are not case sensitive and will not affect search listings"
How accurate is this? And how come on our current platform, if I use an all lowercase URL, it get a 401? (ex: http://www.stupid.com/fun/tolmg.html) Will we be fine switching our Product URLs to lowercase on the new platform?
One thing also to note: Our Category URLs will remain the same. Are there any other areas of a typical eCommerce store that I should avoid changing URLs if I want to prevent SEO loss?
Thanks!
-Justin
-
301 redirects still pass link juice, just not quite all of it. If the content of the pages remains the same, you should still be fine, you might see a slight slip but not much.
-
Thanks Matt - I didn't even think about pagination!
-
Thanks Daniel - This is SUPER helpful.
So yeah, now it looks like I have to do tons of redirects, possibly to all my products and categories.
So if I potentially had to do 301 redirects to all my Category and Product pages, would I be risking losing my search engine rankings?
-
Hi Justin,
URLs definitely aren't case sensitive from a Google point of view, although depending how the RewriteRule is set up (I'm assuming your web server is Apache) the e-commerce software itself might require a URL to be typed in the correct case.
I'd advise testing this on a subdomain first though (ie. dev.stupid.com)... but remember to block all search engines using robots.txt so you don't get some accidental indexing!
As for other things to think about, one would be pagination. Make sure the new tool deals with that the same as the old one or you'll end up with a load of broken links to your sub-pages. Static pages are also something to check, particularly if you have landing pages or product reviews posted through there.
I'm sure there'll be something I've missed but that'll give you more than enough to be getting on with
- Matt
-
Minimizing 301 redirects is good. Google is not case sensitive except in file names. So seomoz.org is the same to them as SEOMOZ.org or SeOMOz.org. Doesn't matter. Filenames like TOLMG.html are different than tolmg.html.
Try it. Find an image on your website like img.jpg. Now type in the full URL of that image with IMG.jpg instead of img.jpg at the end. Not the same.
So since you use .html as your URL ending, those are specific files with specific names, and they are case sensitive. You will have to redirect every uppercase file name to its lowercase counterpart when the new site is up. Or find a way to allow uppercase .html file names. That's how I understand things here.
-
It is SEO best practices to be consistent with case use, however upper case and Lower case are interchangeable on some server systems, while they are different/unique on others. If the new system allows for you to use upper and lower case interchangeably, you should not see anything but 200's. If that's true, then you should be okay.
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
-
SEO - New URL structure
Hi, Currently we have the following url structure for all pages, regardless of the hierarchy: domain.co.uk/page, such as domain/blog name. Can you, please confirm the following: 1. What is the benefit of organising the pages as a hierarchy, i.e. domain/features/feature-name or domain/industries/industry-name or domain/blog/blog name etc. 2. This will create too many 301s - what is Google's tolerance of redirects? Is it worth for us changing the url structure or would you only recommend to add breadcrumbs? Many thanks Katarina
Technical SEO | | Katarina-Borovska1 -
Impact of Non SEO Subdomains
My company has several subdomains whose specific purpose is to act as a landing page/site for our paid search and/or email program. One of the things I've noticed on these subdomains is that they are not being excluded from the SEObots. Could the lack of proper SEO techniques on these subdomains impact our main www subdomain? What is the proper configuration we should use to make sure these sites are not considered for SEO?
Technical SEO | | APFM0 -
Site redesign. Possible SEO problems?
Hi! Our website has enjoyed good rankings for lots of our keywords for the past 9years. Over the years the site became heavy, so we want to change the design radically. Content, filenames, titles, urls etc. will all remain identical just the change of a template. The new one is minimalistic and responsive design. We are worrying this may drop our domain or page authority and kill all our past SEO efforts. **How to do this with the least harm to our rankings? Anything we need to avoid?**Articles/advice/suggestions comments on design and SEO would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your help! Alina
Technical SEO | | skalfa0 -
Local SEO - Page Titles
Hi Folks, Complete newbie (well last 12 months) I have recentley added a blog to my site and have been doing quite a bit of quite word researching through google. I have found some good keywords that have up till now escaped me! Heres my question because I trying for local traffic, mainly newcastle durham and sunderlanddo i go with one of the following two options get two very similar keywords in my article and go for both and rely on google to bring up local listings for the end user in my area e.g Small garden design | Garden design from the experts. (keywords bold ) or Garden Design | Newcastle | Sunderland | Durham | so I have geo locations in title either way I will obviously have both keywords and locations in the artcle Help please I dont want to write many hours and find I have missed a trick! Many thank guys n girls!
Technical SEO | | easigrassne0 -
Does bait and switch redirecting affect SEO?
Yeah, the question might be an odd one, but I'm new to SEO. Currently we've been considering creating links to certain pages on our site that instantly redirect to a landing page like this (referring to it as bait and switch redirecting): http://www.ecornell.com/certificate-programs/human-resources-management-training/advanced-certificate-in-strategic-hr-management/crt/ILRASHRC1/?lp=http://info.ecornell.com/executive-certificate-in-hr-leadership%3Fls=xxx%26of=xxx This essentially causes the user to "hop" from the content page directly to the landing page. Now, the content page is indexed otherwise, so I'm wondering if time on page (which is basically 0) or anything else might affect page rank. Also, if this is something we shouldn't do, that'd be great to know too. It feels sort of dirty, but I can't find any resources telling me it's bad, or how it would affect pagerank. I've read about pagejacking, but this doesn't seem to fall into the same category. Thanks! Alan
Technical SEO | | amccarty0 -
SEO with duplicate content for 3 geographies
The client would like us to do seo for these 3 sites http://www.cablecalc.com/ http://www.solutionselectrical.com.au http://www.calculatecablesizes.co.uk/ The sites have to targetted in US, Australia, and UK resoectively .All the above sites have identical content. Will Google penalise the sites ? Shall we change the content completly ? How do we approach this issue ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Javascript bad for SEO?
If we utilize javascript to pull information from a database to display on a site, is that bad for SEO? Can search engines still see the data?
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0