301 Redirecting from Static to Dynamic URLs. I think we messed up

[Istoresinc]

I'm looking for some guidance on an issue I believe we created for ourselves and if we undo what we did.

We recently added attributed search to our sites. This of course created a bunch of dynamically generated URLS. For various reasons, it was decided to take some of our existing static URLs and 301 redirect them to their dyanamic counterpart.

Ex .../Empire-Paintball-Masks-0Y.aspx now redirects to .../Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles-0Y.aspx?Manufacturer=Empire

Many of these stat URLS had top 3 rankings for their associated keywords. Now, we don't rank for anything. I realize that 301 redirecting is the way to go...if you NEED to. My guess is our drop in keyword ranking is directly tied to what we did.

I'm looking for an solid argument to be made to my boss as to why we should not have done this and that it, more than likely has resulted in dropped keyword rankings and organic traffic.

I welcome any input.

Also, if we decided to revert back (remove all 301 redirects and de-index all dynamic URLS), what is the likely hood we can recapture some of this lost organic traffic? Can I disallow indexing in a robot.txt file to remove, say anything with a '?' in the URL? Would the above URL example (which was ranking in the top 3 in SERPs), have a good chance of finding its way back?

thanks

[FedeEinhorn]

Have you tested the "URL parameters" feature under "Crawl" in Google Webmaster Tools? It let's you set the best way Google should handle them.

Anyway, if your Website's content changes for every parameter, I'm sorry to tell, but the change you did was a bad move. To a Web that is going towards URLs without GET parameters, the way you had it before seemed MUCH better.

Parameters are usually recommended to pages that you don't need indexed, although they WILL still be indexed unless you tell Google otherwise, if the page contents changes based on that parameter (not just ordering results like in a search), then the parameter being part of the URL is a much better solution.

Don't forget that users usually read the URL of the SERPs and if the parameter is at the end of the URL, it might not even show up in the SERPs.

That's ultimately your decision. Just my 2 cents

[Istoresinc]

Thanks for the response Federico.

Do you have any thoughts on maybe trying to salvage some of our lost SEO value by doing a URL rewrite?

Old Static: .../Empire-Paintball-Masks-0Y.aspx

Currently 301s to: .../Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles-0Y.aspx?Manufacturer=Empire

Have it rewrite back to: .../Empire-Paintball-Masks-0Y.aspx

Could this be a possible fix?

[FedeEinhorn]

Well, that's hard as I don't know your URLs and your parameters.

You need to come up with a solution that covers all, but also avoid any duplicate content issues by redirecting the parameter based URL to rewrote ones.

Let's say the file serving paintball masks and goggles is:

Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles-0Y.aspx

The parameter Manufacturer only shows the ones from that manufacturer. But does the naked URL shows all?

If yes, then you have to noindex all of those with the parameter set.

If no, then you can use some URL rewrite rules to make "static/easy to read URLs" using something like this:

RewriteRule ^Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles/(.*)$ Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles-0Y.aspx?Manufacturer=$1 [L]

This means that users accessing to /Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles/Empire will see the same page as /Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles-0Y.aspx?Manufacturer=Empire but on a friendlier way. That is if you have lots of manufacturers for paintball masks and goggles.

Or if you have many manufacturers but not that many products from each, you can also write a different rule like:

RewriteRule ^(.*)/Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles$ Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles-0Y.aspx?Manufacturer=$1 [L]

Which will produce the same effects, but putting the manufacturer name on the from of the URL: /Empire/Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles.

This not only involves creating some set or rewrite rules but also changing the code in your site to use the new URL structure you are creating with the rewrite rules.

If you don't have the knowledge to make this kind of changes, I suggest you contact a web developer to carry on all the necessary steps.

Feel free to private message me if you need more help.