Advice on strange URL problem

[friendlymachine]

I'm considering doing some pro bono work for a local non-profit and upon initial review they have a number of serious issues but there is one in particular I'd like to check my thinking on.

The developer who set up the site some years ago implemented a javascript redirect on their root domain so that it redirects to:

http://domain.com/wordpress

This is wrong for all kinds of reasons and I want to recommend eliminating this redirect and getting rid of the 'wordpress' part of the path altogether. However, the site is quite established with good PR and they would take a hit by changing the path.

I'd do 301 redirects to the new URLs that would not have 'wordpress' in the path in addition to other remediation.

My question - is my thinking here good? It's worth it, right? The other option is just get rid of the weird redirect and keep 'wordpress' in the path but this seems unacceptable to me.

Any opinions?

[AndrewWheeler58]

Hi John,

Using the 'wordpress' name isn't ideal, and I would agree you could make it more user-friendly. Depending on what is actually in the subfolder, a standard 301 redirect from 'wordpress' to 'blog' should do the trick.

However, you could also consider moving the 'wordpress' folder to the root domain and getting rid of the javascript redirect. Then you have the website on the root. Moving Wordpress instances from one directory to another is relatively painless - get back to me if you need advice on that front.

Hope that helps,

Cheers

Andrew

[Highland]

I agree that keeping the original URLs is the better way to go (you'll lose some SEO momentum changing them). I also agree that a 301 from the root to the wordpress directory would be superior to a JS redirect. Googlebot is probably smart enough to figure that one out (especially if the site is indexed) but there's no reason not to do this and make sure.

[friendlymachine]

Thanks, Andrew. Actually the entire site is in the wordpress folder and they don't use the blogging functionality. So if you visit the site with javascript disabled you get a blank page. The home page is actually http://domain.com/wordpress but the root domain (without the 'wordpress' attached) returns a 200 response code. It essentially just contains a javascript redirect. What a mess.

So, I was going to do exactly as you suggest but wanted to make sure it would be worth the hit in the search results and I wasn't just responding emotionally to the poor technical and aesthetic aspects of the set up.

[friendlymachine]

Thanks Highland. Are you saying you think keeping the 'wordpress' in the path is the way to go or would you get rid of it? Not sure what you mean when you say 'original URLs'.

[Highland]

I'm saying keep your URLs. You can move them but there's a short-term penalty for doing so. Proper 301s will keep it from being too bad but, as my mother likes to say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

[friendlymachine]

OK, thanks for your advice.

[AndrewWheeler58]

Hi John,

Agree - sounds very messy!

With regard to any 'ranking drop' I really wouldn't worry about this either. I had the same concerns a few weeks ago when I redirected my entire website (an old keyword loaded domain to acornseo.com).

I did a quick audit of the site using Screaming Frog to get all the links, then 301'd each one individually to the new location. The process was very easy, the time it takes depends on the number of pages your website has.

Looking at the Google results after I made the change, I could see my new links appearing in the results, just below the old ones. After a few days the old ones had disappeared and the new acornseo.com links replaced them completely - in effect I had zero ranking downtime, and haven't seen any loss of position since the change over.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Andrew

[friendlymachine]

Thanks, Andrew! I had done this for handfuls of pages at a time, but not an entire site and it had me concerned. I appreciate the advice!