Changing permalinks, 301 nightmare
-
I would like to change some of permalinks on our website. I have created new posts with new permalinks and the old ones I have redirect by using yoast seo plugin.
Today I have opened a category and I have realized that there are of course the post with new permalinks, but also the old once!
What should I do with the old posts?
-
Sunny greetings from Diani beach Dan! Thank you very much! I wish you very nice day
-
Awesome! Thanks for letting me know it worked and thanks for trying that 'good answer' button a few times
If you ever have any more trouble with anything on Moz - email help@seomoz.org
-
now it just worked...I am cursed:-(
-
Thank you so much Dan for all the explanation! All clear now! I have now manged to do redirect in .htaccesses file. All links are running well now. Thank you so much!
Iam trying to give you the good answer and it is bringing me to Not Found page:-(
I believe I might be cursed by computers and our site will never rank:-(
-
Hi July
This is really three separate things here, so I see why it's giving you trouble.
- Changing permalinks
- Changing what category a post belongs to
- Redirects
When you do one of the above, it does not do the others automatically - for example, changing a permalink will not change the category or add a 301 redirect (by default - although some systems might add the 301 automatically).
So let me explain each one step by step. Realize they are three separate things normally.
1. Changing The Permalink
This is changing the URL. If you wanted to change for example
That's one step. Now. Some plugins may add a redirect for you. So. When you change your permalink
- try visiting the old permalink
- if it redirects - you're all set - you don't need to do a redirect yourself.
- if it does not redirect, you either need to use the redirection plugin or write the redirect in the .htaccess file.
2. Changing What Category The Post Belong To
Note, this is entirely different from just changing a permalink. You need to go to edit that post itself and select your preferred category for that post. This is assuming your not creating any new categories or deleting old categories. You're just moving posts around to different categories.
Then, when you move a post into a different category and remove it from the old one, it will show up under the new category archive.
3. Redirects
As mentioned - these may or may not happen automatically when you change a permalink. I usually prefer them to NOT happen automatically.
This is why it's best of course to decide the final permalink for a post before you hit publish as it's much easier to not have to go back and edit it.
Please let us know if you're still having trouble - thanks!
-Dan
-
Hmmm.Yes, I would try the www in case your server doesn't handle that redirect automatically.
If you can't get it to work, I would remove the 301 redirects you added to the .htaccess file. Again, I would suggest you use the Redirection Plugin:
-
So and now i have pasted redirects of some posts and I am going to check and I can't axes the site! It says Internal server error. And now I am dead:-(
-
Thank you Jeff very much,
But we are not using www, do you thing that I have to include it anyway or is this redirect without www correct? Redirect 301 /geography-kenya-map-kenya/ http://villasdiani.com/where-is-kenya/
-
The basic idea for 301 redirects in htacess is:
`Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.yoursite.com/newpage.html` But if you aren't comfortable writing out a line for each page you've deleted and need redirecting, I would suggest the "Redirection" plugin. It's pretty easy to set up.
-
Thank you very much Jeff, I thought that the only option will be to do it in .htaccess file, any idea how to do it?
-
I think the Yoast SEO Plugin assigns 301 redirects to existing pages, so it can't keep the redirect if you delete the old page. It sounds like you need to either add the 301 redirects directly to your .htaccess file (which isn't too tough if you only have a few), or use another plugin for redirects. The plugin called "Redirection" by John Godley does a good job. Good luck!
-
Most of our permalinks are way to long and almost all contain Diani beach, which is a word we wanted rank for and believed we have to write it everywhere....so I need to change them as it is a problem.
Sure I can change the permalink directly for each of the post, but then all the old posts links will be still not found after I change the link...
I thought with yoast plugin it is going to be easy but it does not make sense for me why if I redirect the post it stays in category. What is it for...who wants to redirect a post and then keep it in a category...
I can't find any answer anywhere:-( I am actually getting to the point that I want to just delete them(it is around 30) and wait until google index the new once, but I am afraid of some punishment..
-
Hmm, that is a bother. Are you not able to edit the permalinks directly for each of the posts? Sorry, maybe I'm just not following, but why create whole new posts?
-
Hi Philip, Thank you very much, yest I would love to, but once I delete them and I go to check the redirects, they do not bring me to the new url but the page is not found:-(
-
Hi,
Would it be possible to delete the old pages if they're not serving any purpose?
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
-
301 passing authority?
Does anyone have experience of 301's in connection with SEO or more specifically passing authority? Recently purchased a small business that had three small websites. My main concern is all three websites do rank for some fairly important key phrases, but there is very little direct overlap. I was hoping by using 301's I would be able to refocus the authority to get the main site ranking.
Link Building | | seoman100 -
Sitemap.xml change to anchor links (converter)
Hi all, I would like import the sitemap.xml to an anchorlinks list. List with links navigatetion html ^^. Is there a posibility to use a tool or in excel? Because I will use 5000 products and 1000 brands.
Link Building | | Dreamgame20160 -
MOZ indicates 404 page and 0 backlinks, after 301 redirect. The best redirect solution?
Dear MOZers, I have one concern i would like to ask you.. My website have valuable backlinks to the most important page which is awesome. But, some of those backlinks is old URL which is 301 redirected to the URL I use today. As far as i know 301 redirects pass page rank, so it should be alright. (?) Link i use today: domain.com/awesome-url/ My backlink: domain.com/old-boring-url/ 301 redirected to domain.com/awesome-url/ What bothers me is that in MOZ report (Link opportunities) MOZ indicates my important URL (domain.com/old-boring-url/) return 404. But, it is not true. It is 301 redirected to domain.com/awesome-url/ and it works! I am worried i am losing important link juice here(!?) Also, my On Page Grader tool for domain.com/awesome-url/ reports 0 backlinks. And that is not true! I know exactly which websites are linking back, only problem is that those website are using old URL (domain.com/old-boring-url/) to link back to my website. Am i doing something wrong? Is there a better way to redirect and save valuable link juice for my page? Thank you very much! PS The URL was changed in March 2015.
Link Building | | Chemometec0 -
Is there a downside to "closing" a domain and 301'ing to to your main domain?
We have a domain which was optimized for a specific keyword. It does very well for that keyword, but seems like it has in turn caused our primary domain to be penalized (back to page 3) for that same keyword (We think they've figured out the connection). The optimized domain (only one page) has links on it to our primary domain, so I don't want to delete it as that's where our traffic currently comes from. But if I deleted it and 301'ed it to the primary domain is there a downside? Alternatively I could disavow it, but if the search engines know it's the same owner will they hold that against all domains? Or, alternatively again. Should I turn it into a more substantial website? Which could in turn remove it's "spamminess". Any suggestions are welcomed!
Link Building | | absoauto0 -
301 redirect lost page authority & total links how ensure it passes on.
hello, I recently changed from www to non www. I have redirected my whole website so if I type www. it goes to the non-www page. doing a open site explorer I noticed my www. still has the page authority 14/100 with 6 links. where as the non-www page has 1/100 page authority and no links. how do I get the www. to mirror the non-www links?
Link Building | | finnmoto
eg if you goto http://www.finnmoto.com.au/mens-motorcycle-kevlar-hoodie/ it will goto the non-www version automatically, so why does the non-www replicate the page authority / total links attached picture for reference.
Google webmaster has been selected for non-www, its been about 2 weeks.
my domain authority i think about about 21 or more now its 19 aswell. I have a feeling:
nofollow or rel=canonical has something to do with it but Ill need read into what that does and how to apply. any ideas? uRiJ2Ul.png?10 -
Has anyone changed domain after "unnatural link message" from Google?
We received a "unnatural" email from Google approx 6 months ago and have tried removing all links but it is proving to be near impossible - has anyone undergone a domain change and moved their sites to get rid of the penalty?
Link Building | | jj34340 -
Why is Google not following a 301 redirect on the robots.txt file?
Hi Guys, I recently posted a question on the Google Webmasters Forum http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=683e71557db7fd54&hl=en&fid=683e71557db7fd540004a4b4add8cbb6 and didn't get a satisfactory feedback so I thought I will put this to the SEO gurus on here. Perhaps one of you guys might good buddies with Matt and might be able to ask him directly. I actually posted on Matt's blog but he hasn't got back to me. Basically we did a URL restructure for client and set up 301 redirects and saw a huge drop in rankings over time. The 301 redirects seem to work fine and have been tested by many many people. We suspected that google might be ignoring the 301 redirects or devaluing them and so I reviewed the server log to see what is happening when the googlebot crawls the site and it showed that on many occasions the googlebot did not reload the page after hitting a 301 redirect. Sure.. you might say it probably queues it or Google might just be checking that the 301 redirect is still in place but why check so often (with a few hours to a day on the same URL) it even skips a 301 redirect on the robots.txt file i.e. from http://clientsite.com/robots.txt to http://www.clientsite.com/robots.txt. from non-www to www version. I don't think it is easy to dismiss the skipping of the robots.txt file - this 301 redirect should be loaded immediately to use the instructions the gooblebot requires to crawl the page. Any help will be appreciated. I can sent the server log to anyone personally but I am reluctant to post it on here. Regards, Zan
Link Building | | FRL0 -
Does it pay to change link text internally?
Most of my internal pages have their best links from within our site (of course we are trying to change that). Is it worth the effort to sculpt the link text to show varied text instead of most all showing the same link text? Or is that only important from external links?
Link Building | | joemas990