Custom URL

This element allows you to customize your URL, for all page templates.

Customizing the URL only amends the part of the URL related to that page. For example, on the page /lenses (brand master page) of Essilor UK, only this part will change :

At first, we'll explain the process to amend the URL. But you mandatory need to read the second part, which informs you about the potential SEO risks related to amending a live URL with children pages particulary !

a) How to amend a URL in the back office.

When creating a new page, the title automatically becomes the page URL extension. For example, content page, "Discomfort while driving at night", is /discomfort-while-driving-at-night:

In the back office :

In the front office :

Now if you want to call this page "Drive a car at night", and see the results, you will need to proceed this way :

1. Edit page
2. Locate 'custom url' field at the bottom of the page.
3. Add page URL extension (include hyphens) eg. /page-for-essilor
4. Publish
5. Check URL tab in page overview

b) Advice and warning about this tool.

You need to be very careful with this feature, because it can have big negative impacts on your SEO if used incorrectly.

Before using the Custom URL mode, ensure you to not have children page. The issue is if you have brand pages and product pages under this page for example, and you want to change the URL of your brand master page, these pages will have their URL change aswell, but won't be redirected. You can lose your SEO.

I've decided to put you an example of bad custom URL to make understand you the stakes :

"Consequences of a URL change without redirection

One of our clients has just changed the URL of his Contact page. The contacts.html page has been replaced by contact.html. The old page generated a lot of traffic, in particular, fed by many reference sites. No redirection was put in place. This old contact page now leads to a 404 error. Traffic is lost. User experience is affected. Partner links are broken. And the entire page search is to be rebuilt."

If you want to choose a new URL for a "parent page" with "children pages", without affecting these ones, you need to follow these steps :

•  choose the new URL that you want, but don't insert it in the CMS.
•  Make a spreadsheet to set up the redirection 301 of your URLs, with old URLs and new URLs of your parent page and of your children pages.

This spreadsheet can be a google spreadsheet. For example, if you want to change the URL of the Varilux X Series page in "Varilux X", you will need to proceed like this :

• Send the spreadsheet to the Europe Digital Team (Adam or Clément), who will send your request to the hosting agency.
• Finally, wait for the greenlight of the Europe team to change the name of the URL from the back office.

 Advise if you custom your URL :

• Put useful keywords in the URL.
• Keep it short.
• Don't use these elements  ( , ; : / & | _  " )
• Don't need to add / at the end of the URL
• Don't put special characters
• Put only Latin alphabetic characters
• Don't use CAPS
• Check if it can impact your internal and external links.