Navigational Changes
-
Need some advice on when to use canonical vs. redirects for navigation changes to a website. However, if there are other options i am open to them as well.
- We are consolidating some navigational paths and moving others
- We are renaming product pages (therefore creating new product pages, CMS platform requirements)
- Keep in mind we have desktop domain and a mobile domain
Questions
- Do we redirect old URL's to the new product page URL's?
- Do we redirect old mobile URL's to new mobile URL's or to the desktop equivalent?
- Do we redirect all old product page URL's containing navigation elements to the new product page URL?
- If we have a category page being added to two different sections how do we determine the right canonical URL? (the URL will be different because the customer paths will be different)
- Do we need to make sure and redirect all old URL's to a new URL? If so, what is the best way to find all of the URL's?
-
So, do I just put in a redirect from the old t-shirt page to the new (demoted) t-shirt page? The old one has built up value so I wasnt sure.
Yes, you do redirect. It doesn't matter that page has built up value. If people come to it and it's not what they expect - they gonna be bouncing like crazy. If you think that it's the same or very similar, then you can leave without redirect, but I wouldn't do it.
But more importantly do I need to redirect every single navigational URL for the old URL's and redirect them to a new page?It seems a bit unnecessary.
So, how would you handle it? Leave them be as 404s?
-
To clarify
Example situation
Current Site Taxonomy
- Section: Men's
- Category: T-Shirt
- Sub-Category: Long Sleeve
New Site taxonomy:
- Section: Men's
- Category: Shirts
- Sub-Category: T-Shirts
In new taxonomy the following is happening:
- T-Shirts is being demoted to a sub-category
- Long Sleeve is going away
- Shirts is becoming a brand new category
So, do I just put in a redirect from the old t-shirt page to the new (demoted) t-shirt page? The old one has built up value so I wasnt sure. But more importantly do I need to redirect every single navigational URL for the old URL's and redirect them to a new page? It seems a bit unnecessary.
-
Hi seo32!
Did Dimitrii's answer help? Or do you have more information for us?
-
Hello, my friend.
Do we redirect old URL's to the new product page URL's?
If you keep the product and just changing URL - yes.
Do we redirect old mobile URL's to new mobile URL's or to the desktop equivalent?
So, the whole mobile URL is different? you actually have domain.com/mobile-version-url and domain.com/desktop-version-url, not m.domain.com/all-version-url and domain.com/all-version-url? if first option, then yes, mobile to mobile, desktop to desktop, if second option - then redirect everything to desktop version. However, it does depend on how exactly you're handling mobile version requests. Basically, if it's completely two different static, physically existing pages for mobile and desktop versions, then they need separate redirects.
Do we redirect all old product page URL's containing navigation elements to the new product page URL?
I'm not understanding the question completely. Are you saying if you have a link on page to old url, then should you redirect to new url? If so, then yes, you should change the link.
If we have a category page being added to two different sections how do we determine the right canonical URL? (the URL will be different because the customer paths will be different)
Again, not understanding the question. The same category page will be in two different places? Anyway, canonicalize it to the page, which you prefer to rank.
Do we need to make sure and redirect all old URL's to a new URL? If so, what is the best way to find all of the URL's?
Yes, you do. Otherwise it's not gonna be working (or you gonna have 404s). To determine which pages are not being redirected - use 404 checker - there are whole bunch free ones on the mighty internet.
P.S. I'm a little confused about the way you're doing redirects etc. At least from what I understand from your questions. It seems that in some questions you're actually talking about changing links from pages, not doing redirects. If so, please, clarify. If not, then I need more details (or clearer questions).
Hope this make sense and helps.
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
-
Is it a good idea to create a faceted navigation on your footer?
Hey everyone, I am curious to know if anyone has tried to implement faceted navigation on the footer's website. I am asking because top navigation is a sensitive topic and can't be touched. Please share if this is something that works or not? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ty19860 -
May Faceted Navigation via ajax #parameter cause duplicated content issues?
We are going to implement a faceted navigation for an ecommerce site of about 1000 products.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Faceted navigation is implemented via ajax/javascript which adds to the URL a large number of #parameters.
Faceted pages are canonicalizing to page without any parameters. We do not want google to index any of the faceted pages at this point. Will google include pages with #parameters in their index?
Can I tell google somehow to ignore #parameters and not to index them?
Could this setup cause any SEO problems for us in terms of crawl bandwidth and or link equity?0 -
Domain Change Before or After Site Revamp?
In the last year traffic to our site has dropped in half and ranking has dropped significantly. Very little no content has been added in that time. We would now like to improve ranking by adding new content. 2 domains effectively exist for the site. The existing domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. But www.metro-manhattan.com redirects to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Our company is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc.. We registered www.metro-manhattan.com and created the redirect to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com in 2012. www.nyc-officespace-leader.com was registered in 2006. Many links to the site show www.metro-manhattan.com and I believe this may be a source of confusion for Google. Would it be best to make the domain consistent at this time by redirecting it once and for all and to do so before adding new content? If this is done correctly can we avoid taking a hit on ranking? Note: -www.nyc-officespace-leader.com is the old domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
-www.metro-manhattan is the new domain but has existed since 2012 and has been redirecting to the old domain since then
-The company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space (similar in branding to the new domain) Am I correct in assuming that having the 2 domains may be causing issues with Google involving domain authority? Change the domain before adding content or add content before?0 -
404 Pages. Can I change it to do this without getting penalized ? I want to lower our bounce rate from these pages to encourage the user to continue on the site
Hi All, We have been streaming our site and got rid of thousands of pages for redundant locations (Basically these used to be virtual locations where we didn't have a depot although we did deliver there and most of them was duplicate/thin content etc ). Most of them have little if any link value and I didn't want to 301 all of them as we already have quite a few 301's already We currently display a 404 page but I want to improve on this. Current 404 page is - http://goo.gl/rFRNMt I can get my developer to change it, so it will still be a 404 page but the user will see the relevant category page instead ? So it will look like this - http://goo.gl/Rc8YP8 . We could also use Java script to show the location name etc... Would be be okay ? or would google see this as cheating. basically I want to lower our bounce rates from these pages but still be attractive enough for the user to continue in the site and not go away. If this is not a good idea, then any recommendations on improving our current 404 would be greatly appreciated. thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
WIX? How to change URLS and is it any good for SEO
I have Wix website and want to change its url structure, but not able to do so, any one know how to do so?. Does below URLs work for SEO? And Is Wix is good for SEO or not? abc.com/#!how-it-works/c46c abc.com/#!party-event/c1lzb
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dan_Brown10 -
Improve change my Meta Description shows in SERP
I feel my meta descriptions are descriptive and fairly represent the info on each page of my site. However, Google frequently includes this "20+ items" in front of the snippet. I run a job site and each page list 20 jobs. What if I include a bit of coding in the Meta Description to include "Latest Jobs Posted TODAY's DATE" - since the jobs listed on the page will include a date. On each page there is also option to "Create Email Alert" and "save Jobs" maybe I should include writing about that as well? I have read all Google's documents on the importance of making Meta Des relevant for the page etc, so any good insight how increase my chances of getting the meta des displayed in the SERP would be appreciated. thank you, Kristian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
Our URLs have changed. Do we request our external links be updated as well?
Hello Forum, We've re-launched our website with a new, SEO-friendly URL structure. We have also set up 301 redirects from our old URLs to the new ones. Now, is there any benefit to asking those external websites that link to us to update their links with our new URLs? What is the SEO best practice? Thanks for your insight.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pano0 -
SEO for Global Navigations
I did my first SEO audit from the book SEO Secrets by Danny Dover on my new website at http://melo4.melotec.com:4010/ In the book he says to disable Javascript and see if the global navigation still works. So when I did that the dropdown menus in my navigation don't show. I'm assuming this is a problem but when I check the cache text only version of the site, the dropdowns are in the text only version. Are their any experienced SEO's out their who can weigh in on this issue? Should I have my developer redo the navigation without any javascript? Thanks, Shawn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Romancing0