Hi all I seem to have a problem with some of the pages on our site. Google webmaster tools is showing we have lots of pages with duplicate title and descriptions, but its actually just finding pages that dont need to be there. Example 1: Incorrect URL - /further-info/cars/Vauxhall Zafira VXR 5dr 2.0i 16V Turbo Manual/694/16 Correct URL - /further-info/cars/Vauxhall/Vauxhall Zafira VXR 5dr 2.0i 16V Turbo Manual/694/16 Example 2: Incorrect URL - /further-info/cars/Vauxhall Tigra 1.4i 16v Coupe with metallic paint/263/16 Correct URL - /further-info/cars/Vauxhall/Vauxhall Tigra 1.4i 16v Coupe with metallic paint/263/16 I am thinking this would be best fixed by putting a 301 redirect in so it redirects from the incorrect URL to the right one, just not sure how to do the 301 so it will work for all URLs like this. As it happens with all vehicles listed on the site. http://www.lease-hire.co.uk Cheers John
Both the incorrect and correct URLs resolve to the same content so yes, it needs a fix. Rather than simply do a 301 redirect I'd look at the root cause of those URLs - the write engine of your CMS - Why is it producing 2x URLs for the same content? However, even if you fix this you'll still need to "mop up" the old/incorrect URLs : The simple 301 is redirect 301 /oldpath http://yourdomain.com/newpath Code (markup): I'm sure there is a far more efficient mod_rewrite rule to do this though. Also I'm wondering why your URLs have spaces in them - they look pretty for users in the browser address bar but why were hyphens not used, for instance? Just curious
Ahright only problem is we need to keep the current URL's as they have had promotional work done towards them and are ranking well in search engines, changing the URL's would mean dropping like 500+ pages and waiting for the search engines to find the new url's which would have a bad impact on traffic to the site. So not sure changing the way its coded will work that easy. Hmmmm
I totally appreciate where you're coming from - Some people will say it really doesn't matter as long as you redirect "correctly" but I've seen #1 ranking organic pages plummet on changes. Changed the http://www.is4profit.com/ site 4 years ago when it was u/g'd from flat html to CMS - 2000+ pages were in flux for a while and a few did lose good juice, so it's good to hold fire and consider all the possibilities & outcomes before diving in. You getting good organic traffic for your current setup?
Yeah site is doing really well as it is, am just thinking this would help if we go about doing it the right way.