Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Image URLs changed 3 times after using a CDN - How to Handle for SEO?
-
Hi Mozzers,
Hoping for your advice on how to handle the SEO effects an image URL change, that changed 3 times, during the course of setting up a CDN over a month period, as follows:- (URL 1) - Original image URL before CDN:www.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg
- (URL 2) - First CDN URL (without CNAME alias - using WPEngine & their own CDN):
username.net-dns.com/images/abc.jpg - (URL 3) - Second CDN URL (with CNAME alias - applied 3 weeks later):
cdn.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg
When we changed to URL 2, our image rankings in the Moz Tool Pro Rankings dropped from 80% to 5% (the one with the little photo icons).
So my questions for recovery are:
- Do I need to add a 301 redirect/Canonical tag from the old image URL 1 & 2 to URL 3 or something else?
- Do I need to change my image sitemap to use cdn.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg instead of www.?
Thanks in advance for your advice.
-
Sorry I missed this follow-up earlier. Within the site map you'll want to change the http://WWW to http://CDN for these image files. The www version of your site, and the cdn server are on two different IPs / server. You want images to be serving from the CDN one.
For 2, if you do use 301 redirection I'd recommend scripting it so that the script inspects whether or not it's an image file and then applies the cdn change. A pro in your area that works with REgex and htaccess will be able to guide you through that.
The username.net-dns.com thing... That's not your server is it? You can't apply redirects on servers outside of your control. Cheers!
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for your answer - Sorry I didn't mean about the URL for the location of the sitemap - I think my question wasn't clear - may I rephrase it:(1) Inside my image sitemap, the urls serve off the www. subdomain as bolded in the example below (not .cdn). I'm assuming this setup is correct as this was auto-generated by an Image Sitemap Generator - does the below image:loc look correct to you?
<url><loc>http://www.bosphorusyacht.com/yachts/</loc>
image:imageimage:lochttp://**WWW.**bosphorusyacht.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/istanbul-boat-rental.jpg</image:loc></image:image></url>(2) For a 301 image redirect would I set it up like this:
Redirect 301 /wp-content/uploads/2010/09/istanbul-boat-rental.jpg
http://**WWW.**bosphorusyacht.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/istanbul-boat-rental.jpgOR
Redirect 301 /wp-content/uploads/2010/09/istanbul-boat-rental.jpg
http://**CDN.**bosphorusyacht.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/istanbul-boat-rental.jpgOR
How would I 301 this one?: username.net-dns.com/images/abc.jpg
Hope you can advise one last time - thank you!
-
Right. Not everything is going to be served from cdn. It's most likely setup for your images so your sitemap will still reside on www. Make sure to point to the front end files though as those are the publicly accessible ones.
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for your reply and advice. I've read the guidelines and will follow those. But I wonder if you can clarify an issue on implementing them that is not answered there:On my site the images in 'Backend' (edit/admin/code view) start with WWW.mydomain... and in 'Frontend' (actual published view in browser) they start with CDN.mydomain...
So my question is, do I use the Backend or Frontend (www. or cdn.) for the URL in both image sitemaps and in 301 redirect final destination?
My current sitemap for example seems to be using www rather than cdn. : http://www.bosphorusyacht.com/sitemap-image.xml
Thanks for your help!
-
You're on it. Redirecting to the new image source and submitting a new sitemap pointing to the URL 3 location for your images will be big steps in the right direction. Be sure to follow the instructions here for your sitemap: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/178636 as well as reviewing image publishing guidelines: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/114016. Cheers!
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
-
How to Get google to get to index New URL and not the OLD url
Hi Team, We are undertaking a Domain migration activity to migrate our content frrom one domain to another. 1. the Redirection of pages is handeled at Reverse proxy level. 2. We do have 301 redirects put in place. However we still see that google is indexing pages with our Old domain apart from the pages from new domain. Is there a way for us to stop google from indexing our pages from Old domain. The recommendations to have Noindex on Page mete title and disallow does not work since our redirection is setup at RP and google crawlers always discover the new pages after redirection.
Local Website Optimization | | bhaskaran0 -
Can I use Schema zip code markup that includes multiple zip codes but no actual address?
The company doesn't have physical locations but offers services in multiple cities and states across the US. We want to develop a better hyperlocal SEO strategy and implement schema but the only address information available is zip codes, names of cities and state. Can we omit the actual street address in the formatting but add multiple zipcodes?
Local Website Optimization | | hristina-m0 -
How to Handle Franchise Duplicate Content
My agency handles digital marketing for about 80 Window World stores, each with separate sites. For the most part, the content across all of these sites is the exact same, though we have slowly but surely been working through getting new, unique content up on some of the top pages over the past year. These pages include resource pages and specific product pages. I'm trying to figure out the best temporary solution as we go through this process. Previously, we have tried to keep the pages we knew were duplicates from indexing, but some pages have still managed to slip through the cracks during redesigns. Would canonicals be the route to go? (do keep in mind that there isn't necessarily one "original version," so there isn't a clear answer as to which page/site all the duplicated pages should point to) Should we just continue to use robots.txt/noindex for all duplicate pages for now? Any other recommendations? Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | TriMarkDigital0 -
Local SEO - Multiple stores on same URL
Hello guys, I'm working on a plan of local SEO for a client that is managing over 50 local stores. At the moment all the stores are sharing the same URL address and wanted to ask if it s better to build unique pages for each of the stores or if it's fine to go with all of them on the same URL. What do you think? What's the best way and why? Thank you in advance.
Local Website Optimization | | Noriel0 -
Title Tag, URL Structure & H1 for Localization
I am working with a local service company. They have one location but offer a number of different services to both residential and commercial verticals. What I have been reading seems to suggest that I put the location in URLs, Title Tags & H1s. Isn't it kind of spammy and possibly annoying user experience to see location on every page?? Portland ME Residential House Painting Portland ME Commercial Painting Portland Maine commercial sealcoating Portland Maine residential sealcoating etc, etc This strikes me as an old school approach. Isn't google more adept at recognizing location so that I don't need to paste it In H1s all over the site? Thanks in advance. PAtrick
Local Website Optimization | | hopkinspat0 -
Call Tracking, DNI Script & Local SEO
Hi Moz! I've been reading about this a lot more lately - and it doesn't seem like there's exactly a method that Google (or other search engines) would consider to be "best practices". The closest I've come to getting some clarity are these Blumenthals articles - http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/05/14/a-guide-to-call-tracking-and-local/ & the follow-up piece from CallRail - http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/11/25/guide-to-using-call-tracking-for-local-search/. Assuming a similar goal of using an existing phone number with a solid foundation in the local search ecosystem, and to create the ability to track how many calls are coming organically (not PPC or other paid platform) to the business directly from the website for an average SMB. For now, let's also assume we're also not interested in screening the calls, or evaluating customer interaction with the staff - I would love to hear from anyone who has implemented the DNI call tracking info for a website. Were there negative effects on Local SEO? Did the value of the information (# of calls/month) outweigh any local search conflicts? If I was deploying this today, it seems like the blueprint for including DNI script, while mitigating risk for losing local search visibility might go something like this: Hire reputable call-tracking service, ensure DNI will match geographic area-code & be "clean" numbers Insert DNI script on key pages on site Maintain original phone number (non-DNI) on footer, within Schema & on Contact page of the site ?? Profit Ok, those last 2 bullet points aren't as important, but I would be curious where other marketers land on this issue, as I think there's not a general consensus at this point. Thanks everyone!
Local Website Optimization | | Etna1 -
Local SEO: City & County Pages
I'm working on developing some local pages for an HVAC company. They cover two counties, so I was planning on having two county pages, then linking them to individual city pages to keep the menu simpler and not cluttering it up with a couple dozen city pages for people to slog through. Has anybody ever done county pages before for local SEO? Or at least seen them? Just curious to see if there's any real benefit overall for have separate county pages, or if I should just stick to city pages.
Local Website Optimization | | ChaseMG0 -
Does building multiple websites hurt you seo wise? Good or bad strategy?
HI,rategy. So I spoke to a local Colorado seo company and they suggested to find whatever keywords is the most searched under my GWT's and put .com behind it and build other sites for other keywords. I was curious about this type of strategy. Does this work? This seo guy said I could just get a DBA bank account and such for each domain name etc. I am not wanting to mislead anyone, but I am curious if for the sake of promoting other services, if creating other websites with partial and EMD's are worthwhile? Another issue I worry about is if I put my companies phone number, then next thing you know there is 3 or 4 sites that use that same phone number. To me this does not build trust with Google. But being I am learning, maybe this is a common strategy, or doomed from the start. Just curious what you think. Would you build other sites to try and rank for other services? Or keep one sites and maximize it? Thank you for your thoughts. I just do not want to pay $3000 per site if it will hurt not help.
Local Website Optimization | | Berner0