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.
Old URL redirect to New URL
-
Alright I did something dumb a year a go and I'm still paying for it. I changed my hyphenated URL to the non-hyphenated version when I redesigned my website. I say it was dumb because I lost most of my link juice even though I did 301 redirects (via the htaccess file) for almost all of the pages I could find in Google's index.
Here's my problem. My new site took a huge hit in traffic (down 60%) when I made the change and even though I've done thousands of redirects my old site is still showing up in the SERPS and send much if not most of my traffic. I don't want to take the old site down in fear it will kill all of my traffic.
What should I do? Is there a better method I should explore then 301 redirects? Could the other site be affecting my current rank since it's still there? (FYI...both sites are built on the WP platform). Any help or ideas are greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
Joe
-
Oh, got it - so this is a standard 301-redirect scenario, but Google just isn't honoring it for some reason. That's unusual, certainly. Have you checked the headers? I use the SEOBook tool, for example?
http://tools.seobook.com/server-header-checker/
I don't mean this to be in any way condescending, but I always double-check them, across a variety of URLs. You have to make sure that the redirects are working the way you think they're working (and aren't chained to other redirects, etc.).
Did you redirect page-by-page, in the sense that every old URL has a new URL? Sometimes, the home-page or main-page redirects work, but deeper redirects fail (due to minor changes or incomplete .htaccess code).
Did anything else happen during the change? Did you change the URL structure, design, etc.?
Did the "new" (to you) domain have any existing history? Is it possible you inherited a problem, like bad links or a bad history?
-
No I did not change them multiple times. When I launched my redesign on a new domain name (without dashes) I did a change of address within Google Webmaster tools then proceeded to create 301 redirects to direct the old url's to the new site. The site is still showing up in the SERPS so I'm trying to find another way if at all possible.
-
Can you clarify - did you change them and then change them back? I'm not sure if we're dealing with one set of 301s or two sets, sequentially over time. Changing and changing back can get dicey.
Another option would be to use canonical tags - sometimes, if 301s aren't working (especially if you've changed them a couple of times), switching signals can help. I think Google starts ignoring certain signals at times, especially if things are changing too often. Using another signal (like rel-canonical instead of or in addition to 301s) can kick them back into gear.
-
Rather than remove the old URLs, why not just go into Google Webmaster Tools and give them a change of address?
-
Thanks Ankit Maheshwari for your help. I will give that a try.
-
Google is really giving troubles in identifying 301 these days and persists showing old URL's. Here is a suggestion that you can work with:
First make sure that you have 301 redirect all old pages to respective new URLs.
Do a quick check using the Fetch as Googlebot to see the response code of old URLs OR see the cache of old URL's which should show corresponding new URL and its data.
If all is well technically, I recommend that use the remove for Google Index feature of Webmaster tool and remove one of the old URL's that is currently ranking. Monitor the change over a couple of weeks to see if new URL start to appear in rankings or for fluctuations in traffic (for old and new URL from your analytics report)
If this approach works, then repeat it for other URL's.
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
-
Redirection chain and Javascript Redirect
Hi, A redirection chain is usually defined as a page redirecting to another page which itself is another redirection. URL1 ---(301/302)---> URL2 ---(301/302)---> URL3 But what about Javascript redirect? They seem to be a different beast: URL1 ---(301/302)---> URL2 ---(200 then Javascript redirect)---> URL3 From what I know if the javascript redirect is instant Google counts it as a 301 permanent redirection, but I'm still not sure about if this counts as a redirection chain. Most of the tools (such as moz) only see the first redirection. So is that scenario a redirection chain or no?
Technical SEO | | LouisPortier0 -
301 redirect from dynamic url to static page
Hi, i want to redirect from this old link http://www.g-store.gr/product_info.php?products_id=1735/ to this one https://www.g-store.gr/golf-toualetas.html I have done several attempts but with no result. I anyone can help i will appreciate. My website runs in an Apache server with cpanel. Thank you
Technical SEO | | alstam0 -
What to do with old content after 301 redirect
I'm going through all our blog and FAQ pages to see which ones are performing well and which ones are competing with one another. Basically doing an SEO content clean up. Is there any SEO benefit to keeping the page published vs trashing it after you apply a 301 redirect to a better performing page?
Technical SEO | | LindsayE0 -
I have multiple URLs that redirect to the same website. Is this an issue?
I have multiple URLs that all lead to the same website. Years ago they were purchased and were sitting dormant. Currently they are 301 redirects and each of the URLs feed to different areas of my website. Should I be worried about losing authority? And if so, is there a better way to do this?
Technical SEO | | undrdog990 -
Can you 301 redirect a page to an already existing/old page ?
If you delete a page (say a sub department/category page on an ecommerce store) should you 301 redirect its url to the nearest equivalent page still on the site or just delete and forget about it ? Generally should you try and 301 redirect any old pages your deleting if you can find suitable page with similar content to redirect to. Wont G consider it weird if you say a page has moved permenantly to such and such an address if that page/address existed before ? I presume its fine since say in the scenario of consolidating departments on your store you want to redirect the department page your going to delete to the existing pages/department you are consolidating old departments products into ?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
We have set up 301 redirects for pages from an old domain, but they aren't working and we are having duplicate content problems - Can you help?
We have several old domains. One is http://www.ccisound.com - Our "real" site is http://www.ccisolutions.com The 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain works. However, the 301-redirects for interior pages, like: http://www.ccisolund.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators do not work. This URL should redirect to http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators but as you can see it does not. Our IT director supplied me with this code from the HT Access file in hopes that someone can help point us in the right direction and suggest how we might fix the problem: RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST} ccisound.com$ [NC] RewriteRule^(.*)$ http://www.ccisolutions.com/$1 [R=301,L] Any ideas on why the 301 redirect isn't happening? Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | danatanseo0 -
How long will Google take to stop crawling an old URL once it has been 301 redirected
I need to do a clean-up old urls that have been redirected in sitemap and was wondering about this.
Technical SEO | | Ant-8080 -
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