Maintaining Seo-friendly Slug Structure During Site Reb...

At a glance

The community member is rebuilding a website with Relume and is facing an issue with the URL structure. The original site had a direct slug structure (e.g., www.example.com/pagename), but the new site will have a different structure (e.g., www.example.com/page/pagename). The community member is concerned about the impact on SEO and is looking for a better solution.

Other community members suggest using 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones, as this is a common and recommended approach for such migrations. They note that while a website migration will always have some impact on SEO, the 301 redirects are generally safe and the best way to handle the situation. The community members also emphasize the importance of setting the right expectations with the client about the potential short-term SEO impact and the long-term benefits of the new website structure.

ÁÁdám Simon

I'm currently rebuilding a site with Relume from scratch. Everything is pretty neat so far but there is one thing I'm not sure how to resolve. I have a solution but I'm interested if there's any better one.

So the original site made without client first and it's CMS is not well thought through. The startup can't allow to mess up SEO right now so I have to keep all the slugs.

The original slug structure is directly nested under the domain. So the site is www.example.com/pagename. But in the new site I'd prefer to generate new pages from CMS but that's only possible with this slug structure: www.example.com/page/pagename

I can obviously create new pages manually and attach their links under the CMS nav elements. But that's slightly less convenient. Is there a better solution?

5 comments

SSofian Bettayeb

, Already got the same issue...
I solved it with 301 redirect from www.example.com/pagename to www.example.com/page/pagename

For my clients, I made a redirect wild card on my server.

If you find a better way, would love to hear it

ÁÁdám Simon

Thanks I thought about 301. My client concerned about messing up the seo with it. Is it safe? What's your experience?

SSofian Bettayeb

Based on Google documentation, this is one typical case where 301 makes sense.
For SEO, the 301 is generally safe and the recommended method.

However, migrating a website will impact your SEO anyway. The best you can do is to set the right expectations and highlight the long-term benefits of the new website.

Personally, I do the 301. Once your server is set, you don't have to worry much anymore

MMatt Johnson

agree with all of the above - want to highlight what Sofian is saying about setting the right expectations - just keeping the CMS the same but rewriting all of the content across the rest of the website, will have an effect on SEO. Even changing its layout could have an effect on SEO. So I think you'll want to be sure to let the client know that a dip or dropoff in SEO should always be expected when redesigning a website and that it will pay off in the future to have the right structures out of the gate.

ÁÁdám Simon

Thanks Matt, The new site is done by the book, so it will be a huge change structurally by it's class names etc. I'm even putting it together in a new Webflow project and transfer the site plan to this. Maybe the 301 links will be the closest thing to the previous site. 😄

Add a reply

Community forum for knowledge and support

Maintaining Seo-friendly Slug Structure During Site Rebuild