Page URL history / 301

This topic contains 5 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by  Guust 4 years, 1 month ago.

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  • #533479

    Matthew
    Lifetime Member
    Post count: 178

    Hi Having only relatively recently come over to GeoDirectory, it has taken a long time for me to become familiar with this system, or at least a directory website built on WordPress… and its shortcomings.

    One area that I am particularly concerned about (having been involved in SEO for many years), is that it is very easy for a listing owner (or website manager) to unwittingly change the URL of a place or event listing, simply by changing the category that their listing is applied to.

    When using this software, there is nothing built-in that caters for these broken URLs… and as a result the listings and website will lose traffic and authority, unless an ongoing investment is made to cater for these broken backlinks.

    Had I been aware that there was an option to have all listings adopt a different URL path (one that does not included the region and category) I may well have chosen that.

    I am involved in Ecommerce, and in Xcart 4 this software includes a ‘clean URL’ feature. What this does is to ensure that backlinks are not affected by changes to a product page. So if a product is changed, in terms of its title or Category, the subsequent change in URL (and historical versions of the URL) are addressed in the website and broken backlinks are ‘caught’ forever and redirected to the correct page.

    Please could I suggest this as a feature for the future?

    #533487

    Alex Rollin
    Moderator
    Post count: 27815

    Category in the URL is optional. You can avoid that completely by changing the permalinks structure.

    https://wpgeodirectory.com/docs-v2/geodirectory/settings/permalinks/

    That feature sounds like a good fit for an SEO plugin. I think Yoast now comes with a redirects manager that may have some automatic-ness to it.

    https://wpgeodirectory.com/docs-v2/integrations/yoast/
    https://wpgeodirectory.com/docs-v2/faq/seo/

    #533491

    Matthew
    Lifetime Member
    Post count: 178

    Hi Alex

    Yeah its a bit late for me re permalink structure, I have continued with the setting that was applied when you guys migrated the site for me from PMD. PMD didn’t use the location and cat in the URL it simply use the business name and an ID number.

    If I had been made aware that there was an alternative to the URL structure or been given the choice I would have probably chosen a different option for the permalinks. I assumed thats was just how Geo directory did it.

    So I have now got thousands of listings to 301 redirect, and further damage to SEO since migrating to Geo :-/

    #533500

    Guust
    Moderator
    Post count: 29970

    If a listing’s category is changed, the old URL should still work and redirect to the new URL automatically.
    Have you tested it?

    GD > Settings > General tab > Developer sub-tab > Enable 404 rescue

    Thanks

    #533510

    Matthew
    Lifetime Member
    Post count: 178

    Hi Guust

    That is great to know thanks, does this cater for listing as well as cats do you know?

    #533705

    Guust
    Moderator
    Post count: 29970

    It does work for listings in my tests.
    “This will check 404 pages where a GD CPT is identified and try and redirect to the correct URL. This should help tell search engines about term or post permalink changes.”

    Thanks

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