Adding new languages and changing urls - will we lose page rankings?

[cypher6x]

Hi

We have a website that is currently in one language and built using CMS Made Simple. We are looking to expand to three languages very shortly but we want to make sure any page rankings we have will not be lost as we may have to change urls.

The current urls are

domain.com/product.html

The new urls looks like they will be

domain.com/en/product.html
domain.com/ru/product.html

For the new languages this will not be a problem but we are worried about the existing english web pages losing ranking.

Our CMS is alias based so the new /en/ url will work just fine as pages are identified by the alias which is "product" in this case.

So a few questions,

1) Has anyone done this before and can share their experience?
2) Will we lose page ranking on google as our pages and the canonical url will have changed?
3) Is there and example .htaccess rule that can change the url from old to new and issue a 301 redirect so google knows it is the same page but new url?

Many thanks for your help

[Tiggerito]

If the product pages just disappear then you will lose PageRank due to breaking the backlinks that help you.

If you can, try and change the CMS so English stays on the root level folder and nothing changes.

If not, setting up 301s via the .htaccess is the next best solution. I'm on the road at the moment so I can't easily put together an example. If no one else provides an answer PM me in a few weeks and I'll work on one.

I'd suspect the solution would first ensure the rule ignores all URLs that already contain a language subfolder (folder consisting of two characters). It would then add en/ to the base of the path.

You would also need to indicate what other files do not get languagified, and what URL structure they have. Include files and images are common cases.

[cypher6x]

The aliases will remain so effectively /en/product.html will still resolve to /product.html but the url will be whatever the user types in. /rubbish/product.html will also work.

The canonical url will be updated to /en/product.html and that is what we are worried about as google might index that and notice the url from it's index is different and possibly duplicate the page in its index or down rank it.

Having the english as a special case is proving to be more complicated than anticipated and as a result I think we need to have the .htacceess solution. We have a know list of languages we will implement and the basic premise would be:

If (no laanguage code) {
assume english and rewrite url
}

something like

RewriteRule ^(?!.*zh-cn|?!.*ru)/(.*$) /en/$1 [R=301,NC,L]

but this does not work at all.

Any help would be appreciated.

[DMN Webmaster]

3) Is there and example .htaccess rule that can change the url from old to new and issue a 301 redirect so google knows it is the same page but new url?

Many thanks for your help

Put this in your htaccess

Edit
RewriteRule ^product\.htm$ http://www.domain.com/en/product.html [R=301,L]


This will transfer nearly 100% of pr, but not 100%. I really wouldn't be to stressed over pr tho. It really isn't as important as you may think. The important thing is making sure your IBL's go to the correct page, which this will do.

Edit
Since all languages except english are new only redirect the english pages.

[cypher6x]

Put this in your htaccess

Edit
RewriteRule ^product\.htm$ domain.com/en/product.html [R=301,L]


This will transfer nearly 100% of pr, but not 100%. I really wouldn't be to stressed over pr tho. It really isn't as important as you may think. The important thing is making sure your IBL's go to the correct page, which this will do.

Edit
Since all languages except english are new only redirect the english pages.

Thanks. That solution would require us adding more rewrite rules than we would like. We have multiple products and generis pages like about-us and contact-us so we would need to add

RewriteRule ^product\.htm$ domain.com/en/product.html [R=301,L]

RewriteRule ^product1\.htm$ domain.com/en/product2.html [R=301,L]

RewriteRule ^product3\.htm$ domain.com/en/product3.html [R=301,L]

etc

We need a rule that will apply to all existing pages and add the /en/ if there is no identifiable language code already in the url after the domain and TLD.

[DMN Webmaster]

We need a rule that will apply to all existing pages and add the /en/ if there is no identifiable language code already in the url after the domain and TLD.

I think what you want is

RewriteRule ^prod ([^/\.]+)/?$ http://www.domain.com/en/$1 [R=301,L]

This should redirect all pages with prod in thier url

[cypher6x]

I think what you want is

RewriteRule ^prod ([^/\.]+)/?$ http://www.domain.com/en/$1 [R=301,L]

This should redirect all pages with prod in thier url

Thanks for your suggestions. All the urls won't have prod in them so I will clarify what we have now and what we want going forward.

Current urls are in the fortmat

domain.com/about-us.html
domain.com/product1.html
domain.com/service/sub-service.html
domain.com/contact-us.html
etc....

What we need going forward is adding an /en/ e.g.

domain.com/en/about-us.html
domain.com/en/product1.html
domain.com/en/service/sub-service.html
domain.com/en/contact-us.html

But we will also be adding new languages at the same time using the format

domain.com/ru/about-us-ru.html
domain.com/de/product1-de.html
domain.com/zh-cn/service/sub-service-zh-cn.html
domain.com/es/contact-us-es.html

I obviously don't want to add a /en/ to urls that already have a language identifier i.e /de/ (German). I am quite happy to have the identifiers in the .htaccess file.

Effectively

[CODE]
Rewrite anything that does NOT have the listed language identifiers to include an /en/ issuing a 301 redirect
[CODE]

[DMN Webmaster]

I obviously don't want to add a /en/ to urls that already have a language identifier i.e /de/ (German). I am quite happy to have the identifiers in the .htaccess file.

Effectively

[CODE]
Rewrite anything that does NOT have the listed language identifiers to include an /en/ issuing a 301 redirect
[CODE]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !/../
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com/en/$1 [R=301,L]

This would imply, rewrite all urls that don't have
www.yourdomain.com/??/ as the first part of the url
Try that....

If that doesn't work you have exhausted my ability to help you. Sorry

[cypher6x]

I worked this out after some trial and error but not had time to post my solution. Thanks to everyone who offered assistance.

RewriteRule ^(?!zh-cn|zh-tw|ru|en|news)[/]?(.*) en/$1 [R=301,NC,L]

Negative lookaheads were the solution in the end and I managed to add the extra requirment so no trailing trash is needed and it still resolves to the right url.

domain.com/product -> domain.com/en/product
domain.com/zh-cn/product -> NO CHANGE
domain.com/zh-cn/ -> NO CHANGE
domain.com/zh/product -> domain.com/en/zh/product