How do I handle removing my .HTML extension for SEO?
So I recently removed the .HTML extension from https://www.colorsandfonts.com pages.
I was wondering...
- Should I submit a new XML file without the .HTML and submit it in google search?
- Do I need to ask in google search to index those pages without it?
Thank you so much, everyone.
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I wouldn't worry about the .html extension too much nowadays.
If you really want, you can create a 301 redirect rule with a regular expression on your server and give Google time to reindex everything.
Ahh that's how it is now by now... is just redirected to one without .html
Hey Michael, one small thing, do your pages has canonical url meta tag? It would help Google or other search engine identify your page, no matter what the URL is
You know what's "funny" ?
After a whole year that implement it then I moved to vs code, and it prompted that it was wrong the syntax, so I correct them...
They were between ' ' instead of " " and it had http instead of https...
In conclusion, all my pages has
<link rel=βcanonicalβ href=βhttps://colorsandfonts.comβ />
Should I add the different urls ?
It depends on how fussy you want to get with SEO. In my experience, while Google is the foremost authority on Artificial Intelligence (at least in terms of web pages), if you change one character in your URL, it has no idea what's up.
Depending on how old your site and those pages are, you could just leave it and let Google sort it out. Google (and other search engines... there are other search engines) will eventually figure out what is and isn't a page.
If you wanted to go completely bonkers on it, you could resubmit your sitemap with the current URLs and set up 301 redirects from your old .html pages. That would be the "perfect" way of doing it. But, sometimes, the juice isn't worth the squeeze with newer sites and/or pages.
Hey, thanks for your answer.
Regarding the site I am fussy, is a mirror of me and my work actually.... π
Well, now that you say, the site is hosted on Netlify, so all I had to do were redirects.
Like.
# Redirects from what the browser requests to what we serve
/blog/my-post.html /blog/my-post
So I guess this would be just to do a new sitemap ?
Edit: everytime I added a new page I made a new sitemap too and uploaded it to Google Search..
Based on this (and all of your other answers), it seems to me like you have a pretty good bead on keeping your structural SEO in check. Well done, sir.
Here's a word of advice from one fussy programmer to another: Don't fuss too much. You can lose a lot of valuable time making sure your SEO is "perfect". Myself, I've spent a lot of time perfecting SEO, only to revamp it and revamp it and revamp it down the line. And then, Google never really noticed anyway.
Don't get me wrong; good structural SEO is extremely valuable. But sometimes there is time better spent. First keep the roof from caving in, then maybe polish the silverware.
This is so true, that's what I think when I have to put time on SEO.
I had to learn how to apply SEO on my site because I am alone with the project, ans before it, I couldn't write a line of HTML...
Its been. Wonder, research, learn apply..
Thank you so much, will definately take your advice.
And thank you for the kind words.
I just let google reindex the pages, google seems smart enough to ignore the .html extensions and don't count rankings towards it. But make sure to check your backlinks and that they are not broken!
Hey, thank you for answering.
Good catch,.. well they worked before. When I drop a link without the .html extension its been working...i guess is fine.
Thank you again.
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I am working on careermove.io and have done zero work in regards to SEO.
Can you point me to resources π
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Small but important note: you want a 301 redirect, not a 302. 302 is temporary, 301 is permanent.
Wow, what a long answer, thank you.
Actually, because the site is hosted on Netlify, I did redirects instead of removing them completely.
So that would be like just 302's redirects, right?
I am in first position actually with some keywords, the traffic is mostly direct, then referral then organic...
When you say good names on the URLS,you mean discernible names?
Like.
?
Becuse at the moment the URLS are
I should make change on that...
Oh, absolutely all I did regarding the site is by learning and it will always be like that. I do not see the point to pay someone when I can learn...
That's how the site came up actually...but that's another story.
I am going to check those URLS... thank you so much for taking your time to answer, that was nice.
@ThomasJay200 made a little mistake. In the brackets, he even specified "permanent URL change" but told you to use 302. Actually 302 is code for "temporary" and you need to use 301 if you don't plan to use these old URLs anymore.
You said you already did the redirects through Netlify and usually, the 301 is standard, so you should be okay, but it would be great if you could check with them to make sure they are all 301 redirects.
It looks like they are standard according to this page.
But I think i mistaken on the canonical.
I have used the same canonical in every page.
I can feel it in the traffic...
Don't use canonicals at all - this is not the right place for them. Simple 301 redirect is all you need here if you are just changing the URLs and are not using the old ones in any way.
Well that's how it has been for a year,without canonicals...
I will remove them tonight.
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