301's, Mixed-Case URLs, and Site Migration Disaster

[yogitrout1]

Hello Moz Community,

After placing trust in a developer to build & migrate our site, the site launched 9 weeks ago and has been one disaster after another.  Sadly, after 16 months of development, we are building again, this time we are leveled-up and doing it in-house with our people.

I have 1 topic I need advice on, and that is 301s.  Here's the deal.  The newbie developer used a mixed-case version for our URL structure.  So what should have been /example-url  became /Example-Url on all URLs.  Awesome right?  It was a duplicate content nightmare upon launch (among other things).

We are re-building now.  My question is this, do we bite the bullet for all URLs and 301 them to a proper lower-case URL structure?   We've already lost a lot of link equity from 301ing the site the first time around.   We were a PR 4 for the last 5 years on our homepage, now we are a PR 3.  That is a substantial loss.   For our primary keywords, we were on the first page for the big ones, for the last decade.  Now, we are just barely cleaving to the second page, and many are 3rd page.   I am afraid if we 301 all the URLs again, a 15% reduction in link equity per page is really going to hurt us, again.   However, keeping the mixed-case URL structure is also a whammy.  Building a brand new site, again, it seems like we should do it correctly and right all the previous wrongs.  But on the other hand, another PR demotion and we'll be in line at the soup kitchen.

What would you do?

[Sarbs]

I would recommend trying to get things right and going to the lower case format. As you mention it will save you headaches further down the line by keeping to a simple convention.

You can reduce the impact of the redirects by amending your previous ones to point to the new directories, this will prevent a redirect chain and you will lose less. You should then additionally redirect the new URLs of course.

Dependant on the types of inbound links your site has (and volume) it may also be worth a little outreach to other sites asking them to amend to the new final destination format.

Good luck however i know what a pain it is, I've done many site migrations myself.

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

Hi Kristin,

Sounds like a bit of a nightmare.  Personally, I would go ahead and set the URLs to lowercase in the new design.  I would also take a closer look at what's going on with your site's pages.  I've moved lots of sites with changing URLs and I typically don't see that kind of dramatic rankings drop if the optimization is maintained and the pages are properly redirected.  So, there may be something else going on.

As for the switch back, did you create redirects from the old lowercase URLs to the new capitalized URLs?  If so, be sure to removed those 301's when you launch the new site.  You can also setup new 301s from the capitalized URLs to the lowercase versions using the .htaccess file (if your using an apache server).  The following link may help you in setting up the redirects:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19464217/htaccess-how-to-redirect-uppercase-and-accented-letters-to-unaccented-lowerca

Also, I wouldn't worry about the Pagerank.  It's not reliable.  Better to pay attention to your rankings, traffic, and links.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

[eTundra]

Going through an entire site update and switching all of your URLs is always tough, but to launch with mixed case hits you in the stomach, doesn't it!  Instead of going through yet another site update, I'd start with medicating the new site and getting it back in working condition.  There are 2 things you can do with your mixed case URLs at this point:

1. 301 redirect the upper case to the lower case and add rel=canonical's to all of your pages for the URL you prefer.
2. If it's easier to stick on the rel=canonical now, as you work through the 301s, then do that first.  The rel=canonical will help protect you against multiple mixed case issues that you may of not found quite yet.  It also helps protect your content.

I'd be wary of doing an all new site re-haul again, because you may be down for longer that you want to be.

Other things to do:

• Monitor Google Webmaster like your life depends on it - your sites life definitely needs it right now!
• Look for other opportunities where there are quick fixes in helping to improve the site - look at the site errors in Moz and in Google Webmaster.  If you're seeing dupe issues (beyond what you already know about) or missing meta, fix those.
• Instead of focusing on PR, I'd look at your domain authority, homepage authority, MozRank, and MozTrust.  You need to establish a base so that you can monitor the trend line - while you're at it, go ahead and keep record of your competitors too.
• Look at your top links in OSE and make sure that any that are pointing at older URLs are pointing at the new URLs - it's better that your top links go to the right place, rather than being 301'd.

[impactpro]

Any updates on your site migration?