Changing URLs? How It Will Change Your SEO

SEO Traffic Changes When URLs Change

You may have noticed that we recently updated Practical Ecommerce with a fresh, new design. Behind the scenes, a lot of things changed as we moved to a new platform, but the primary URLs stayed exactly the same. And that has made all the difference for organic search-referred traffic.

URL changes are a common byproduct of redesigns, especially when a platform change is included. Unfortunately, the importance of these changes to SEO is often overlooked in the process.

URLs and navigation form the road map that search engines use to crawl and index a site. When URLs change, organic search performance changes — often for the worse.


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Originally posted on Web PieRat.

URLs & SEO: What’s the Relationship?

Excerpts from my latest article at NBC 5 Chicago’s Inc. Well blog: “How URLs Impact SEO.”

If networks of links are the road map that search engines use to crawl the web, URLs are the street names that give that map meaning and consistency. As such, URLs affect search engine optimization in a couple of important ways: relevance and consistency.

Relevance is what most people think of when they think about URLs and SEO. Keyword relevance in URLs is like the street names that give maps their meaning. Using relevant keywords in URLs passes a keyword signal that search engine algorithms can use to boost your rankings slightly.

Optimal URLs will also be as short as possible, however. It’s important to balance keyword use with length for two reasons….

Read the article in full at Inc. Well » “How URLs Impact SEO.”


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Optimizing URLs for Ecommerce and SEO

Excerpts from my latest article at Practical eCommerce: “SEO: Optimal Ecommerce URLs.”

The ecommerce platform that hosts a site determines the URL structure, which in turn can have an impact on the site’s search engine optimization. Each platform creates URLs according to its own rules, but nearly all can be modified for greater SEO and brand recognition.

In years past, URLs with lots of folders and parameters posed major crawl issues for the search engines. In some cases the “spider traps” created by complex ecommerce URLs would even prevent the engines from indexing a site, effectively cutting off the flow of organic search customers.

Google and Bing are much more capable of crawling or intelligently ignoring parameters and long, scraggly folder paths in URLs today, but optimal URLs do play a role in SEO. Using descriptive words in URLs gives the search engines yet another algorithmic insight into the types of searches the page would be relevant for. In addition, customers reviewing their search results can see the URL displayed and gain or lose confidence in that page’s ability to fulfill their need.

What makes an ecommerce URL optimal? Read on to find out.

Read the article in full at Practical eCommerce »


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Originally posted on Web PieRat.

Creating an SEO Redesign Launch Plan

Excerpts from my latest article at Practical eCommerce: “SEO: Launching a Redesigned Site.”

Editor’s Note: This is part two of a two-part series on identifying, assessing, and mitigating the risk of site redesigns on organic search traffic. Part one, “SEO: Identifying the Impact of a Site Redesign,” we published last week.

Launching a redesigned site is filled with potentially high risks and rewards for organic search traffic. Regardless of whether the risks outweigh the rewards in the end, the weeks following a redesign typically produce unstable organic search traffic patterns and may include some nail-biting days. In “SEO: Identifying the Impact of a Site Redesign,” part one of this two-part series, I discussed how to predict which areas of the site were most likely to be impacted in the redesign.

In this second installment, I will focus on how to identify the scale of the risk to organic search traffic as well as how to create a plan to mitigate that risk. The full article includes the following sections:

  • Organic Search Risk and Reward
  • Calculating the Risk
  • Mitigating Organic Search Risk
  • 301 Redirect Plans
  • Closely Measure Afterwards

Read the article in full at Practical eCommerce, “SEO: Launching a Redesigned Site.”


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Originally posted on Web PieRat.

SEO: Identifying the Impact of a Site Redesign

Excerpts from my latest article at Practical eCommerce: “SEO: Identifying the Impact of a Site Redesign,” part one of a two-part series on identifying, assessing, and mitigating the risk of site redesigns on organic search traffic.

Site redesigns can create a period of intense instability for organic search traffic. Predicting which areas of the site will be most vulnerable to that instability and creating an SEO launch strategy to mitigate the risk in those areas decreases both the length and the intensity of the disruption to organic search traffic.

Hasbro’s anxiety-laden board game “Perfection” comes to mind when I think of redesigns. The game features a spring-loaded playing surface and a variety of plastic shapes. To begin playing, you push the blue, spring-loaded tray down and set the embedded timer. Then you have 60 seconds in which to accurately place all of the little yellow pieces into the matching holes in the tray. If you fail to place them all in 60 seconds, the tray springs up with an awful suddenness, spraying plastic pieces all over the place. I hated that game.

A redesign is not unlike that moment of sudden change at the end of the game Perfection. When a site redesigns, a number of elements that search engines use to determine the relevance and authority of the pages on a site tend to change suddenly and all at the same time. The world of a site as the search engines know it is suddenly different and must be carefully reindexed and analyzed algorithmically to determine its place in the rankings.

URLs typically change as pages are added and deleted, content is merged or split into new pages. The URLs that existed previously had some amount of authority and link popularity associated with them. When the URLs change, how that change is handled matters a great deal to the search engines, and thus to the organic search traffic the pages will drive after the redesign goes live.

Navigation is another major disruptor when a redesigned site launches. In addition to the URL changes that tend to accompany navigational changes, the flow of link juice throughout the site can be dramatically altered by just a few changes to the links included in the navigation. Categories may be merged together or split apart. Links to subcategory pages may be added or removed based on design constraints. Navigational labels may change so that the anchor text for the navigational links is different, sending different keyword signals across the site post-launch.

Keep in mind that not all navigation is found in the header and footer. Cross-linking features like tagging and related products also serve as navigation. Be sure to analyze changes to these features as well.

Finally, content that was plain text may be reworked into a less indexable format like images or video. Text is a dying component in modern web design, much to the detriment of organic search traffic. Designers and brands prefer the clean look of image-based content where fonts and other design elements can be controlled more easily. Unfortunately, without space in the template for a couple of lines of plain textual content, many sites risk becoming nearly mute in the redesign process, unable to send strong keyword relevance signals.

All of these changes, very common in site redesigns, send extremely disruptive signals to the search engine. The marketing and development teams have been planning the redesign for months, but literally overnight Googlebot and Bingbot are surprised with an entirely new site without any advanced warning. Helping the bots understand the changes quickly is the secret to mitigating the risk to the site’s organic search traffic.

Read the full article for tips on what questions to ask designers and developers, how to identify the SEO-critical changes in a redesign project and more at Practical eCommerce: “SEO: Identifying the Impact of a Site Redesign.”


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Originally posted on Web PieRat.