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.
How best to redirect URL from expired classified ads?
-
We have problem because our content are classifieds. Every ad expired after one or two mounts and then ad becomes inactive and we keep his page for one mount latter like a same page but we ad a notice that ad is inactive. After that we delete the ad and his page but need to redirect that URL to search results page which contains similar ads because we don't want to lose the traffic form that pages.
How is the best way to redirect ad URL?
Our thinking was to redirect internal without 301 redirection because the httacces file will be very big after a while and we are thinking to try a canonicalization because we don't want engine to think that we have to much duplicate content.
-
If your classifieds are categorized in any way then after a listing is expired I would always 301 redirect it up to the relevant category, but I think it would be more relevant to 301 it to the relevant category than trying to decipher a similar specific listing. I would find a way to dynamically after a listing expires it implement a 301 redirect. I don't believe canonicalization is going to help here unless you have other duplicate content issues with the site. I would not worry about the size of an .htaccess file because it doesn't impact anything negatively.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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 301 redirect the only way when using Vanity URLs?
We have been using vanity urls for some of our pages. Mostly the pages that have a vanity URL have a long URL length. But now the problem is, the vanity URL is getting displayed on the search engine when the particular keyword related to the page is entered. I checked the google search console, the vanity URL is indexed and the original URL remains unindexed. What should I do? Is adding 301 redirect to the vanity URLs are solution? Since some of vanity URLs are not redirecting to the original. Some of the original pages are not getting traffic. Also, can using canonical tag help?
Technical SEO | | tejasbansode0 -
Topic Cluster: URL Best Practices
I'm trying to be mature and employ the Topic Cluster strategy to my content. In doing so I realized there are a few URL options. Some more difficult to execute than others. -Is it important to call out the Pillar Topic in your subtopic URL?
Technical SEO | | dkellyagile
-Does the Pillar Topic need to have its own landing page? (As opposed to just being part of the blog.) Here's an Example: My Pillar is: Inbound vs. Outbound
My subtopic is: Marketing Platforms Here are the URL options I can think of... Option 1: https://pipelineinbound.com/blog/inbound-vs-outbound-marketing-platforms/ Option 2: https://pipelineinbound.com/blog/which-marketing-platforms/ Option 3: https://pipelineinbound.com/blog/marketing-platforms-inbound-vs-outbound/ Option 4 (Hardest): https://pipelineinbound.com/inbound-vs-outbound/marketing-platforms/ Are there some fundamental best practices for URL structure and Link Building as it pertains to Topic Clusters? Thanks!0 -
Best way to change URL for already ranking pages
Hello. I have a lot of pages that I'm optimising. The ones I'm focusing on right now is already ranking, but the URLs could be better (they don't include the keywords right now). However I'm worried that if I change the URLs they will drop in rankings or have to start over. I would of course set up 301 redirect, but is there more I need to do? What is the best way to change URL for already ranking pages?
Technical SEO | | GoMentor0 -
Url folder structure
I work for a travel site and we have pages for properties in destinations and am trying to decide how best to organize the URLs basically we have our main domain, resort pages and we'll also have articles about each resort so the URL structure will actually get longer:
Technical SEO | | Vacatia_SEO
A. domain.com/main-keyword/state/city-region/resort-name
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village_ _ domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature _
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village/kid-friend-pool_ B. Another way to structure would be to remove the location and keyword folders and combine. Note that some of the resort names are long and spaces are being replaced dynamically with dashes.
ex. domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village_ _ domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature_
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village-kid-friend-pool_ Question: is that too many folders or should i combine or break up? What would you do with this? Trying to avoid too many dashes.0 -
Redirect URLS with 301 twice
Hello, I had asked my client to ask her web developer to move to a more simplified URL structure. There was a folder called "home" after the root which served no purpose. I asked for the URLs to be redirected using 301 to the new URLs which did not have this structure. However, the web developer didn't agree and decided to just rename the "home" folder "p". I don't know why he did this. We argued the case and he then created the URL structure we wanted. Initially he had 301 redirected the old URLS (the one with "Home") to his new version (the one with the "p"). When we asked for the more simplified URL after arguing, he just redirected all the "p" URLS to the PAGE NOT FOUND. However, remember, all the original URLs are now being redirected to the PAGE NOT FOUND as a result. The problems I see are these unless he redirects again: The new simplified URLS have to start from scratch to rank 2)We have duplicated content - two URLs with the same content Customers clicking products in the SERPs will currently find that they are being redirect to the 404 page. I understand that redirection has to occur but my questions are these: Is it ok to redirect twice with 301 - so old URL to the "p" version then to final simplified version. Will link juice be lost doing this twice? If he redirects from the original URLS to the final version missing out the "p" version, what should happen to the "p" version - they are currently indexed. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
URLs in Greek, Greeklish or English? What is the best way to get great ranking?
Hello all, I am Greek and I have a quite strange question for you. Greek characters are generally recognized as special characters and need to have UTF-8 encoding. The question is about the URLs of Greek websites. According the advice of Google webmasters blog we should never put the raw greek characters into the URL of a link. We always should use the encoded version if we decide to have Greek characters and encode them or just use latin characters in the URL. Having Greek characters un-encoded could likely cause technical difficulties with some services, e.g. search engines or other url-processing web pages. To give you an example let's look at A) http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%95%CE%BB%CE%B2%CE%B5%CF%84%CE%AF%CE%B1which is the URL with the encoded Greek characters and it shows up in the browser asB) http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ελβετία The problem with A is that everytime we need to copy the URL and paste it somewhere (in an email, in a social bookmark site, social media site etc) the URL appears like the A, plenty of strange characters and %. This link sometimes may cause broken link issues especially when we try to submit it in social networks and social bookmarks. On the other hand, googlebot reads that url but I am wondering if there is an advantage for the websites who keep the encoded URLs or not (in compairison to the sites who use Greeklish in the URLs)! So the question is: For the SEO issues, is it better to use Greek characters (encoded like this one http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%95%CE%BB%CE%B2%CE%B5%CF%84%CE%AF%CE%B1) in the URLs or would it be better to use just Greeklish (for example http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvetia ? Thank you very much for your help! Regards, Lenia
Technical SEO | | tevag0 -
How long will Google take to stop crawling an old URL once it has been 301 redirected
I need to do a clean-up old urls that have been redirected in sitemap and was wondering about this.
Technical SEO | | Ant-8080 -
Why is a 301 redirected url still getting indexed?
We recently fixed a redirect issue in a website, and although it appears that the redirection is working fine, the url in question keeps on getting crawled, indexed and cached by google. The redirect was done a month ago, and google shows cached version of it, even for a couple of days ago. Manual checking shows that its being redirected, and also a couple of online tools i checked report a 301 redirect. Do you have any idea why this could be happening? The website I'm talking about is www.hotelmajestic.gr and its being redirected to www.hotel-majestic.gr
Technical SEO | | dim_d0