Content Page URL Question
-
Our main website is geared toward the city where we are located and includes the city name in content page URLs. We also have separate websites for three surrounding cities; these websites have duplicate content except the city name:
MainWebsite.com
City2-MainWebsite.com
City3-MainWebsite.com
City4-MainWebsite.comWe're restructuring to eliminate the location websites and only use the main website. The new site will have city pages.
We have well established Google business locations for all four cities. We will keep all locations, replacing the location website with the main website.
Should we remove City-IL from all content page URLs in the new site? We don't want to lose traffic/ranking for City2 or City3 because the content pages have City1 in the URL. Page URLs are currently formatted as follows:
www.MainWebsite.com/Service-1-City1-IL.html
www.MainWebsite.com/Service-2-City1-IL.html
www.MainWebsite.com/Service-3-City1-IL.html
www.MainWebsite.com/Service-4-City1-IL.htmlThanks!
-
Merge the material from the two websites (City2-MainWebsite.com and City3-MainWebsite.com) into the primary website (MainWebsite.com). Make certain that each city has its own dedicated page on the main website to show its location.
URL Restructuring: Change the page URLs on the main website to dynamically incorporate the city name. Instead of utilizing a static city name such as "City1" in the URLs, change them to reflect the city for each page. As an example:
www.MainWebsite.com/Service-1-City2.html
www.MainWebsite.com/Service-2-City2.html
www.MainWebsite.com/Service-3-City3.html
www.MainWebsite.com/Service-4-City3.html
The city name in the URLs will appropriately match the information on each page this way.301 Redirects: Create 301 redirects from the old URLs (for example, www.City2-MainWebsite.com/Service-1-City2-IL.html) to the new URLs on the main website. Any current traffic or search engine rankings for the old URLs will be moved to the relevant pages on the main website as a result. As an example:
www.City2-MainWebsite.com/Service-1-City2-IL.html should be redirected to www.MainWebsite.com/Service-1-City2.html.
www.City3-MainWebsite.com/Service-3-City3-IL.html should be redirected to www.MainWebsite.com/Service-3-City3.html.Change the URLs in your Google business listings for City2 and City3 to connect to the appropriate pages on the main website. This ensures that your Google business locations are linked to the proper website.
You may combine your websites, keep City2 and City3 traffic and rankings, and guarantee a smooth transition to the main website with city-specific content.
Follow me on LinkedIn. Check out my website.
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
-
Do old backlinks still help with new URL with 301 redirect? Also I added the www. How does this affect it all?
I changed my URL from exampledetailing. com to exampleautodetailing. com. It is redirected with a 301. Also, it is on Squarespace AND I opted to add the www. So will the old backlinks of exampledetailing. com still help the new URL exampleautodetailing. com or do I need to try and update all the links? Also, future links, do I need to include the www. or just the root domain of exampleautodetailing. com or even the whole https://wwwexampleautodetailing. com? I believe the www is considered a sub domain and a new entity on Google, so I am not sure how that works. Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | Rmarkjr810 -
Does A Local Therapist Need A Blog, or Should They Focus on Main Service Pages?
Hi everyone! I am just starting to practice SEO by assisting a friend with her local relationship therapy practice, and I'm not sure whether or not she needs a blog. Here's the content they currently have: A page for specific categories within relationship therapy (unmarried couples, marriage, divorce, pre-marital, etc) On each page, she describes what that type of therapy is, what clients can expect, and how she will help them during the process. My question is this: Does it make sense to start a blog, or, is it better to build out the main, static service pages with more content? I'm worried that if she does start a blog, that it could potentially take away from the authority of the main service pages. For example, let's say she writes a highly specific post titled "how to talk to your husband about marriage". Is it better to just incorporate aspects of this post on the main marriage page, or keep it as a blog post? I really appreciate any suggestions and I'm happy to answer any questions.
Local Website Optimization | | onitamara0 -
Home Page Not Ranking for Brand
I've got an odd issue (that I've never encountered in 12+ years in SEO). A client's home page isn't ranking for their brand term. It's a medical spa in Las Vegas, so physical location that takes online appointments. We have an online booking system (which isn't a good one) that originally had a booking page replacing our home page. My thought is that Google associated that page as our home page because it was a stronger domain and the booking page is most used. That tool didn't allow the booking page to be noindexed (I know, crazy)- so I changed the name inside the booking tool away from the brand name as to not have both the site and the booking site optimized for the brand. Other things I've checked: The home page is indexed Home page canonical tag points to itself Title tag contains brand name at front (rest of site it's at the end) Robots.txt is accurate (allows home page) XML sitemap contains home page (and accurate for other pages) To make this even more confusing, if you search the brand name the physical location appears on the right rail with accurate URL. Any other ideas that I may be missing?
Local Website Optimization | | karmadigital0 -
Page optimisation score = 93, but rank on 2nd page?
So, one of my pages has an optimisation score of 93. The DA of the website is 74 and is lower than many of our competitors, but to rank 12th? Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions? All the images are under 100kb, but the page speed isn't great (not something I'm currently able to change). All alt tags are using variations of our keywords.
Local Website Optimization | | SwanseaMedicine0 -
Question about schema.org
Hi guys, I have a website that has many local based pages. In other words we're featuring local businesses in many many cities. So my question is, will it help if i add schema markup to each page while each markup will be appropriate to the city each page belongs to? Will it help with ranking those local pages? Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | odmsoft1 -
How to approach SEO for a national website that has multiple chapter/location websites all under different URLs
We are currently working with a client who has one national site - let's call it CompanyName.net, and multiple, independent chapter sites listed under different URLs that are structured, for example, as CompanyNamechicago.org, and sometimes specific to neighborhoods, as in CompanyNamechicago.org/lakeview.org. The national umbrella site is .net, while all others are .orgs. These are not subdomains or subfolders, as far as we can tell. You can use a search function on the .net site to find a location near you and click to that specific local website. They are looking for help optimizing and increasing traffic to certain landing pages on the .net site...but similar landing pages also exist on a local level, which appear to be competing with the national site. (Example: there is a landing page on the national .net umbrella site for a "dog safety" campaign they are doing, but also that campaign has led to a landing page created independently on the local CompanyNameChicago.org website, which seems to get higher ranking due to a user looking for this info while located in Chicago.) We are wondering if our hands are tied here since they appear to be competing for traffic with all their localized sites, or if there are best practices to handle a situation like this. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | timfrick0 -
Top Pages analysis showing wordpress site pages when it was in a subdirectlry
My word press site used to be at morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding I moved my site from /Wedding to the root domain three years ago where it is currently at www.morganlindsayphotography.com. Top pages in the open site analysis are still finding ONLY my old pages, titles and posts that were in the /Wedding - which are not even on my site anymore. http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/2012/11/04/a-new-product-addition-to-weddings/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/2012/06/22/brittany-reis-jason-mcclaflin-tiffin-ohio-wedding/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/2013/10/06/andy-mallory-cleveland-ohio-engagement/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/category/weddings/ Does anyone know why this could be happening?
Local Website Optimization | | morganlindsaycole0 -
Having portal page that takes you to website with a different url
We are in the planning stages for this. Our client wants his (as yet) domain name to be a portal page for this new campaign. His domain name is a non-keyword company name (i.e. widgetsgalore.com) We already have a website with content tailored to his business ready to go. In fact, we did a campaign back in '06 to '09 that was highly successful. At that time it was just the webpage with a keyword rich url. Now for some reason the client wants his company name url (widgetsgalore.com) to be the portal page (landing page) that once potential clients click on it takes them to the website with the content. What are the pros and cons of doing what client asks about making his widgetsgalore.com a portal page vs. going directly to the url with all the content/forms, etc? This is a local site, with audience limited to southern california.
Local Website Optimization | | Manifestation0