Do I need to re-index the page after editing URL?

[Chemometec]

Hi,

I had to edit some of the URLs. But, google is still showing my old URL in search results for certain keywords, which ofc get 404. By crawling with ScremingFrog it gets me 301 'page not found' and still giving old URLs. Why is that? And do I need to re-index pages with new URLs? Is 'fetch as Google' enough to do that or any other advice?

Thanks a lot, hope the topic will help to someone else too.

Dusan

[DirkC]

Hi,

You should redirect the old url's to the new ones using a 301 redirect. Normally it's not really necessary to submit for re-indexing, Google is quite good in finding new url's itself.

The fact that Screamingfrog still finds the old url's is a sign that on your site you are still using links to the old url - you should update the internal links to the new url (you can easily get this info from Screaming frog - take the url's that have a 404 - check at the bottom of the page "In Links" - this will give you all the pages where the links need to be updated.

rgds,

Dirk

[TimHolmes]

In your Htaccess file. set up a rule to redirect using 301.

Something along the lines of the below depending on how your file name and links are structured.

redirect 301 /old-url-link/pagename.html     /new-url-link/pagename.html

[Chemometec]

Thank you! It was helpful..