• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
        4. Mass URL changes and redirecting those old URLS to the new. What is SEO Risk and best practices?

        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.

        Mass URL changes and redirecting those old URLS to the new. What is SEO Risk and best practices?

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO
        4
        6
        1339
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • kirin44355
          kirin44355 last edited by

          Hello good people of the MOZ community,

          I am looking to do a mass edit of URLS on content pages within our sites. The way these were initially setup was to be unique by having the date in the URL which was a few years ago and can make evergreen content now seem dated. The new URLS would follow a better folder path style naming convention and would be way better URLS overall.

          Some examples of the **old **URLS would be

          https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Skates/buying-guide-9-17-2012,default,pg.html
          https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Kids-Inline-Skates/buying-guide-11-13-2012,default,pg.html
          https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Hockey-Skates/buying-guide-9-3-2012,default,pg.html
          https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Aggressive-Skates/buying-guide-7-19-2012,default,pg.html

          The new URLS would look like this which would be a great improvement

          https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Skates,default,pg.html
          https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Kids-Inline-Skates,default,pg.html
          https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Hockey-Skates,default,pg.html
          https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Aggressive-Skates,default,pg.html

          My worry is that we do rank fairly well organically for some of the content and don't want to anger the google machine.

          The way I would be doing the process would be to edit the URLS to the new layout, then do the redirect for them and push live.

          Is there a great SEO risk to doing this? 
          Is there a way to do a mass "Fetch as googlebot" to reindex these if I do say 50 a day? I only see the ability to do 1 URL at a time in the webmaster backend. 
          Is there anything else I am missing?

          I believe this change would overall be good in the long run but do not want to take a huge hit initially by doing something incorrectly. This would be done on 5- to a couple hundred links across various sites I manage.

          Thanks in advance,
          Chris Gorski

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Charles-O
            Charles-O @kirin44355 last edited by

            Hey K.

            Happy you found value in everyone's response here.

            For your URL, I see your structure resemble a blog structure with your subfolder being "learn" instead of "blog". So if it is, your final URL that you described is fine (learn/buying-guide-for-inline-skates).
            As a counterpoint, if you had this content as a hub page (some form of content pillar/topic cluster) for example, it would've been a good possibility to just change the URL structure since you have many Buying Guides. Different types of content, different ways to put it on your site. 
            Like so: /buying-guide/inline-skates

            At the end of the day, the structure needs to be logical and reflective of where your content is. I think you got it right anyway.

            For the execution part;

            1. I would not recommend using the "crawl as Googlebot" function in search console. It would be way too time-consuming for you, and it is not really designed for that kind of work.
            2. Instead, update your sitemap with the final URLs and send it again via SearchConsole / Bing Webmastertools.
            3. Also, don't forget to go ahead and change the internal links pointing to the old URL to point directly to the new ones or else you'll just have a bunch of 301's crawled by Google. Make it seamless.
            4. Monitor. Monitor. Monitor.

            Hope that helped!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • kirin44355
              kirin44355 last edited by

              Thanks all the for responses and I am taking to heart all your suggestions. I will make all the URLs lowercase as this is something I didn't take into account.

              Due to site hosting platform limitation for the URL structure I need to have a value in the bold areas below:

              https://www.inlineskates.com/learn/buying-guide-for-inline-skates,default,pg.html

              The first value "learn" doesn't have to be unique but the 2nd "learn/buying-guide-for-inline-skates" is the driver for the URL and must be unique, so the short URL like https://www.inlineskates.com/buying-guide/Inline-Skates,default,pg.html wouldn't work since I would only be able to use it 1x for inline skates and have several content pieces that I would need to add that to, size guides, charts, etc.

              My main concern is about the process of doing the redirects, say I do 50 in one day, what is my next step? Is there a way to run the fetch as googlebot to a handful of pages as I only see the ability to add 1 URL at a time in the webmaster backend. If I go ahead and do this I just want to do it in the smartest way possible.

              Thanks, Chris

              Charles-O 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Charles-O
                Charles-O @EGOL last edited by

                And to add to that, Moz has a great resource on how to write them (emphasis mine);

                • Keeping URLs as simple, relevant, compelling, and accurate as possible is key to getting both your users and search engines to understand them.

                • URLs should be definitive but concise.

                • When necessary for readability, use hyphens to separate words. URLs should not use underscores, spaces, or any other characters to separate words.

                • Use lowercase letters. In some cases, uppercase letters can cause issues with duplicate pages.

                • Avoid the use of URL parameters, if possible, as they can create issues with tracking and duplicate content. If parameters need to be used (UTM codes, e.g.), use them sparingly.

                Source - https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/learn/seo/url

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • EGOL
                  EGOL last edited by

                  The new URLs seem pretty verbose.

                  If this was my site, I would consider...

                  https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide/Inline-Skates/
                  https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide/Kids-Inline-Skates/
                  https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide/Inline-Hockey-Skates/
                  https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide/Aggressive-Skates/

                  My breadcrumbs would look similar....

                  Home >> Buying Guide >> Inline Skates

                  Charles-O 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • WebElaine
                    WebElaine last edited by

                    I've heard recent claims that you no longer lose link juice when 301ing, but I've also had personal experience with taking a hit to organic traffic when doing this type of major URL restructuring. You're right, in the long run, it does pay off, but you're also right that there may be a ding in the short term.

                    While you're in there, I would highly, highly recommend taking the additional step of removing ",default,pg" from your URLs. There are two problems with that string - one is it contains commas, which can be problematic. Anything other than plain text and hyphens is generally discouraged in URLs. The other problem is that "default pg" part is watering down your URL and does not contribute to making the links short and easy to type and understand for humans. Since you are undertaking such a massive restructuring, now is the time to make these additional tweaks - as it's less painful to do All The Things at once and take one hit, than it would be to take a hit now and another hit later when you tackle that separately. I personally also always use only lowercase characters in my URLs as it's easier to type and depending on the server OS improper capitalization may make it so they don't reach the right page, but that is more of a UX preference than an SEO enhancement.

                    Another couple of tips: I find it extremely helpful to map everything out on a spreadsheet in this type of migration. Helps me make sure I have the old and the new mapped out, and also helps to have a checklist to go through systematically. I also tend to group related pages in batches, as presumably related pages will be linked to each other, and once Google comes crawling back over one page it will see the new URLs and crawl those too, faster than it would crawl unrelated pages. Finally, use a HTTP header check tool (google that and you'll find several) after you add the redirects just to make 100% certain you've set everything up correctly. And where possible, mass-redirect in a single .htaccess rule rather than one by one.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • 1 / 1
                    • First post
                      Last post

                    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.

                    • See all categories

                    Related Questions

                    • Markbwc

                      New Subdomain & Best Way To Index

                      We have an ecommerce site, we'll say at https://example.com. We have created a series of brand new landing pages, mainly for PPC and Social at https://sub.example.com, but would also like for these to get indexed. These are built on Unbounce so there is an easy option to simply uncheck the box that says "block page from search engines", however I am trying to speed up this process but also do this the best/correct way. I've read a lot about how we should build landing pages as a sub-directory, but one of the main issues we are dealing with is long page load time on https://example.com, so I wanted a kind of fresh start. I was thinking a potential solution to index these quickly/correctly was to make a redirect such as https://example.com/forward-1 -> https:sub.example.com/forward-1 then submit https://example.com/forward-1 to Search Console but I am not sure if that will even work. Another possible solution was to put some of the subdomain links accessed on the root domain say right on the pages or in the navigation. Also, will I definitely be hurt by 'starting over' with a new website? Even though my MozBar on my subdomain https://sub.example.com has the same domain authority (DA) as the root domain https://example.com? Recommendations and steps to be taken are welcome!

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Markbwc
                      0
                    • ColesNathan

                      Is it best practice to have a canonical tags on all pages

                      The website I'm working on has no canonical tags. There is duplicate content so rel=canonicals need adding to certain pages but is it best practice to have a tag on every page ?

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ColesNathan
                      0
                    • kayl87

                      Is single H1 tag still best practice?

                      Hi Guys, Is having a single h1 tag still best practice for SEO? Guessing multiple h1 tags dilute the value of the tag and keywords within the tag. Thoughts? Cheers.

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kayl87
                      0
                    • Cin7_Marketing

                      Does changing template for a wordpress site affect SEO

                      Hi I work for an Inventory Management Software company and we already have a WordPress site but I am currently working on re-designing of our WordPress site and in this process, we are looking for moving to a new template. I want to know what will be the impact on SEO performance while taking a shift to a new template.

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cin7_Marketing
                      0
                    • L_M_SEO

                      Deep linking with redirects & building SEO

                      Hi there. I'm using deep linking with unique URL's that redirect to our website homepage or app (depending on whether the user accesses the link from an iphone or computer) as a way to track attribution and purchases. I'm wondering whether using links that redirect negatively affects our SEO? Is the homepage still building SEO rank despite the redirects? I appreciate your time & thanks for your help.

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | L_M_SEO
                      0
                    • BrandBuilder

                      New Site (redesign) Launched Without 301 Redirects to New Pages - Too Late to Add Redirects?

                      We recently launched a redesign/redevelopment of a site but failed to put 301 redirects in place for the old URL's. It's been about 2 months. Is it too late to even bother worrying about it at this point? The site has seen a notable decrease in site traffic/visits, perhaps due to this issue. I assume that once the search engines get an error on a URL, it will remove it from displaying in search results after a period of time. I'm just not sure if they will try to re-crawl those old URLs at some point and if so, it may be worth it to have those 301 redirects in place. Thank you.

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandBuilder
                      0
                    • mdmoz

                      Changing my pages URL name - HELP NEEDED FAST

                      Hello, I need to change the URL name for a few pages on my site. The site was launched just recently, so it has no obvious ranking and traffic. My question is, what is the best practice for changing/deleting the page name? after deleting the page, should I go to Google webmaster tool and use URL Removal and remove the old page? I know that I have to also create a new XML sitemap file, but not sure about the old pages in google search result Thanks!

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mdmoz
                      0
                    • Bio-RadAbs

                      Can you redirect specific sub domain URLs?

                      ello! We host our PDFs, Images, CSS all in a sub domain. For the question, let's call this sub.cyto.com. I've noticed a particular PDF doing really well, infact it has gathered valuable external links from high authoritative sites. To top it off, it gets good visits. I've been going back and forth with our developers to move this PDF to a subfolder structure.
                      For example: www.cyto.com/document/xxxx.pdf In my perspective, if I move this and set up a permanent redirect, then all the external links the PDF gathered, link juice and future visits will be attributed to the main website. Since the PDF is existing in the subdomain, I can't even track direct visits nor get the link juice. It appears in top position of Google as well. My developer says it is better to keep images, pdf, css in the subdomain. I see his point and an idea I have is to: convert the pdf to a webpage. Set up a 301 redirect from the existing subdomain to this webpage Upload the pdf with a new name and link to it from the webpage, so users can download if they choose to. This should give me the existing rank juice. However, my question is whether you can set up a 301 redirect for just a single subdomain URL to a folder structure URL? sub.cyto.com/xxx.pdf to www.cyto.com/document/xxxx.pdf?

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs
                      0

                    Get started with Moz Pro!

                    Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                    Start my free trial
                    Products
                    • Moz Pro
                    • Moz Local
                    • Moz API
                    • Moz Data
                    • STAT
                    • Product Updates
                    Moz Solutions
                    • SMB Solutions
                    • Agency Solutions
                    • Enterprise Solutions
                    • Digital Marketers
                    Free SEO Tools
                    • Domain Authority Checker
                    • Link Explorer
                    • Keyword Explorer
                    • Competitive Research
                    • Brand Authority Checker
                    • Local Citation Checker
                    • MozBar Extension
                    • MozCast
                    Resources
                    • Blog
                    • SEO Learning Center
                    • Help Hub
                    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                    • How-to Guides
                    • Moz Academy
                    • API Docs
                    About Moz
                    • About
                    • Team
                    • Careers
                    • Contact
                    Why Moz
                    • Case Studies
                    • Testimonials
                    Get Involved
                    • Become an Affiliate
                    • MozCon
                    • Webinars
                    • Practical Marketer Series
                    • MozPod
                    Connect with us

                    Contact the Help team

                    Join our newsletter
                    Moz logo
                    © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                    • Accessibility
                    • Terms of Use
                    • Privacy

                    Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.