Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Drupal URL Aliases vs 301 Redirects + Do URL Aliases create duplicates?
-
Hi all!
I have just begun work on a Drupal site which heavily uses the URL Aliases feature. I fear that it is creating duplicate links.
For example:: we have http://www.URL.com/index.php and http://www.URL.com/
In addition we are about to switch a lot of links and want to keep the search engine benefit. Am I right in thinking URL aliases change the URL, while leaving the old URL live and without creating search engine friendly redirects such as 301s?
Thanks for any help!
Christian
-
You're most welcome!
Have a good weekend too and lots of success with the cleanup -
Thank you so much for the clarity Yannick! Lots of site cleanup to commence...
Have a good weekend,
Christian -
You should indeed create 301 redirects from the old redirects to the new aliases. People could have linked to those url's, so you want to keep benefitting from those links and built up value over the years.
url.com/index.php and url.com are 2 different url's in the eye's of SE's so you should redirect that 2. Basic rule is: 1 unique page should be available on 1 url.
Good luck redirecting!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What is the difference between 301 redirects and backlinks?
i have seen some 301 redirects on my site billsonline, can anyone please explain the difference between backlinks and 301 redirects, i have read some articles where the writer was stating that 301 are not good for website.
Technical SEO | | aliho0 -
Sudden drop in Rankings after 301 redirect
Greetings to Moz Community. Couple of months back, I have redirected my old blog to a new URL with 301 redirect because of spammy links pointed to my old blog. I have transfer all the posts manually, changed the permalink structure and 301 redirected every individual URL. All the ranking were boosted within couple of weeks and regained the traffic. After a month I have observed, the links pointed to old site are showing up in Webmaster Tools for the new domain. I was shocked (no previous experience) and again Disavowed all links. Today, all the positions went down for new domain. My questions are: 1. Did the Disavow tool worked this time with new domain? All the links pointed to old domain were devaluated? Is this the reason for ranking drop? Or 2. 301 Old domain with Unnatural links causes the issue? 3. Removing 301 will help to regain few keyword positions? I'm taking this as a case study. Already removed the 301 redirect. Looking for solid discussion.Thanks.
Technical SEO | | praveen4390 -
Creating a CSV file for uploading 301 redirect URL map
Hi if i'm bulk uploading 301 redirects whats needed to create a csv file? is it just a case of creating an excel spreadsheet & have the old urls in column A and new urls in column B and then just convert to csv and upload ? or do i need to put in other details or paremeters etc etc ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Remove html file extension and 301 redirects
Hi Recently I ask for some work done on my website from a company, but I am not sure what they've done is right.
Technical SEO | | ulefos
What I wanted was html file extensions to be removed like
/ash-logs.html to /ash-logs
also the index.html to www.timports.co.uk
I have done a crawl diagnostics and have duplicate page content and 32 page title duplicates. This is so doing my head in please help This is what is in the .htaccess file <ifmodule pagespeed_module="">ModPagespeed on
ModPagespeedEnableFilters extend_cache,combine_css, collapse_whitespace,move_css_to_head, remove_comments</ifmodule> <ifmodule mod_headers.c="">Header set Connection keep-alive</ifmodule> <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews</ifmodule> DirectoryIndex index.html RewriteEngine On
# Rewrite valid requests on .html files RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}.html?rw=1 [L,QSA]
# Return 404 on direct requests against .html files RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .html$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !rw=1 [NC]
RewriteRule ^ - [R=404] AddCharset UTF-8 .html # <filesmatch “.(js|css|html|htm|php|xml|swf|flv|ashx)$”="">#SetOutputFilter DEFLATE #</filesmatch> <ifmodule mod_expires.c="">ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 years"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 years"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 years"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 years"
ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 years"
ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 years"
ExpiresByType text/x-javascript "access 1 years"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access 1 years"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 1 years"</ifmodule> <files 403.shtml="">order allow,deny allow from all</files> redirect 301 /PRODUCTS http://www.timports.co.uk/kiln-dried-logs
redirect 301 /kindling_firewood.html http://www.timports.co.uk/kindling-firewood.html
redirect 301 /about_us.html http://www.timports.co.uk/about-us.html
redirect 301 /log_delivery.html http://www.timports.co.uk/log-delivery.html redirect 301 /oak_boards_delivery.html http://www.timports.co.uk/oak-boards-delivery.html
redirect 301 /un_edged_oak_boards.html http://www.timports.co.uk/un-edged-oak-boards.html
redirect 301 /wholesale_logs.html http://www.timports.co.uk/wholesale-logs.html redirect 301 /privacy_policy.html http://www.timports.co.uk/privacy-policy.html redirect 301 /payment_failed.html http://www.timports.co.uk/payment-failed.html redirect 301 /payment_info.html http://www.timports.co.uk/payment-info.html1 -
Wordpress Redirect Plugin Vs Manual .htaccess?
Hi everyone, I need to 301 redirect my old pages to new ones but i am confused between whether to choose plugin for this or i should manually rewrite the code on .htaccess file. Please give your suggestion and if you think i should use plugin then which one?
Technical SEO | | himanshu3019890 -
Changing title tags, do we need 301 redirects
I found many duplicate title tags and I'm in the process of changing it Do I need 301 redirects in place when I switch it? I am only changing the title tag. Also, we are switching over to a new site very soon, I am worried that we might be using too many 301 redirect "hops" because we are doing a lot of optimization as well. (video from matt cutts describing 301 redirects and hops: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA. Does anyone have any experience in doing too many redirect hops that it affected your rankings? Any good ideas to avoid this?
Technical SEO | | EcomLkwd0 -
301 redirect from Blogger
Hello, I have a client with a Wordpress network of blogs, each blog is owned by a different blogger. Many of them were migrated time ago from Blogger. I have seen that the way used to redirect them is a meta refresh, so no authority is being passed. I cannot find any reliable way of making a 301 from Blogger, There are some plugins, but I'm afraid of using them. Any of you have experience with this situation please? I have even thought about placing a global rel canonical before the meta refresh, but I think that here the problem is the meta refresh itself.... Thank you in advance
Technical SEO | | Juandbbam0 -
How best to redirect URL from expired classified ads?
We have problem because our content are classifieds. Every ad expired after one or two mounts and then ad becomes inactive and we keep his page for one mount latter like a same page but we ad a notice that ad is inactive. After that we delete the ad and his page but need to redirect that URL to search results page which contains similar ads because we don't want to lose the traffic form that pages. How is the best way to redirect ad URL? Our thinking was to redirect internal without 301 redirection because the httacces file will be very big after a while and we are thinking to try a canonicalization because we don't want engine to think that we have to much duplicate content.
Technical SEO | | Donaab0