Switching forum software - 301 redirects?
-
Hi everyone
I'm working on a successful Wordpress site that also has a forum attached. The forum currently uses YAF forum software, which requires Windows hosting.
The site owner wants to switch to Linux hosting. This is not a problem for WP, but it does mean that we'll need to transfer the forum to Xenforo or something similar that runs on Linux. We're OK with the technical side of this, but we're worried about the SEO implications.
The URL for every forum post (more than 50,000 of them) is going to change during this transfer. It seems completely impractical to 301 each of those, so should I just 301 the URLs that have inbound links? Also, what is google's algo going to think when we suddenly have ~50,000 404s?
Many thanks in advance!
J
-
Run your site through SEM Rush. It's generally pretty accurate if you need a better understanding of what pages draw traffic and for which queries. After that, it's a good idea to use your analytics tools to identify pages that draw traffic.
One really good link may be driving a ton of traffic to a specific page, but it may not necessarily rank very well. The site might lose a significant amount of referrals due to that link. So make sure to check where your referral sources go as well.
When all of that is said and done, it's time to look at links. Use a few different sources such as Webmaster Tools (Google and Bing), Majestic SEO, Ahrefs and OSE. Majestic and Ahrefs are the favorites, as far as percentage of links and freshness.
When you have the Keep and Cull list, make sure to redirect the keepers to relevant pages. If the page was about donuts, send it to the new donuts page. Don't send it to the bagels page. Google dislikes that. Blanket redirects are generally sub-optimal.
As for the culled pages, you might try to offer a useful 404 page. Something that helps them find something similar to the topic of the page that went away. When all of the dust clears, 410 the culled pages. Alternately, you can skip straight to a 410 if you're only worried about bots wasting crawl budget on a bunch of 404 results.
-
Hi Jennifer
Thanks for your thoughts. As I said this is a 50,000 post forum so I definitely won't be adding 301s for all of them.
I think this is what we'll do:
- Use OSE and the google 'site:' operator to identify the most valuable posts in the forum and 301 redirect them to the the new URL for that post
- set up a general 301 redirect to redirect all other URLs to the forum homepage '/forum/'
If anyone has any other thoughts, I'd love to hear them!
J
-
I would definitely avoid leaving a bunch of URLs as 404s. Even though it would be time consuming I would really try to 301 redirect all of the old pages to the most relevant current page. That would definitely be the best long term move. If you really can't do that you can 301 redirect all of the old forum pages to the new forum. Instead of redirecting to the most relevant post you can put them to the beginning directory of the new forum so at least they aren't receiving a 404 and can hopefully search for their issue there. If you do leave thousands of URLs with 404 errors I would continuously check Google and Bing Webmaster Tools for crawl errors. The webmaster tools will identify URLs they have crawled and found issues with and at that time I would just start fixing them one by one and redirecting to the most relevant URL. That way, over time, the URLs will eventually be corrected. Hope this helps.
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
-
HTacess 301 redirect with special characters
Hello moz community ! I would to make a special 301 redirection through my htaccess file. I am a total noob concerning regexp and 301 redirection. I would like to redirect(301) this url : http://www.legipermis.com/stages-points/">http://www.legipermis.com/stages-points/</a></p>; yes yes it's in the index of google, this strange url includes the last ; to http://www.legipermis.com/stages-points/ I have already include a canonical tag by security, i would like to remove url with a 301 redirection and by remove this url through GWT (but the removal tool can't "eat' this kind of URL) Please consider the fact that i am not an expert about 301 redirections and regexps. No 301 redirect generator works properly for such a strange URL (which triggers content duplication corrected anyway with canonical tag). Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | LegiPermis0 -
Will a timed 301 redirect work for Googlebot?
Our client is changing brand names and domain names. We know we need to 301 redirect the old domain, but for marketing reasons we want people to see a short message saying that the brand has changed and that they will be redirected. Example: | | Our concern is how, or if, Googlebot will intepret the redirect. Will this accomplish our SEO objective of moving the value of the page to the new domain, or do we need to do just a plain old fashioned 301 redirect and not even let the page load? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | GOODSIR0 -
How many steps for a 301 redirect becomes a "bad thing"
OK, so I am not going to worry now about being a purist with the htaccess file, I can't seem to redirect the old pages without redirect errors (project is an old WordPress site to a redesigned WP site). And the new site has a new domain name; and none of the pages (except the blog posts) are the same. I installed the Simple 301 redirects plugin on old site and it's working (the Redirection plugin looks very promising too, but I got a warning it may not be compatible with the old non-supported theme and older v. of WP). Now my question using one of the redirect examples (and I need to know this for my client, who is an internet marketing consultant so this is going to be very important to them!): Using Redirect Checker, I see that http://creativemindsearchmarketing.com/blog --- 301 redirects to http://www.creativemindsearchmarketing.com/blog --- which then 301 redirects to final permanent location of http//www.cmsearchmarketing.com/blog How is Google going to perceive this 2-step process? And is there any way to get the "non-www-old-address" and also the "www-old-address" to both redirect to final permanent location without going through this 2-stepper? Any help is much appreciated. _Cindy
Technical SEO | | CeCeBar0 -
Is Buying Domains Good For SEO? Can I 301 redirect domains to an Original website?
I have a friend that purchased multiple domains related to their website. Each of these domains have the back ground of the original website and irrelevant content on them. Is is possible to redirect the various domains to certain pages on the original website. For example if the website is www.shoes.com and they purchased domains such as www.leathermensshoes.com and a few others related to the website. Is it SEO friendly to link the domains purchased to the original website?
Technical SEO | | TSpike10 -
Redirects
If I redirect page A to page B does page A need to exist before Google sees the redirect. Or can I just put up a redirect and delete page A. If the page doesn't need to exist: You have all your redirects in place for a website. You want this website to redirect to another website. You completely delete the website and put up the htaccess, there should be no problem with this, because the redirects are in place correct? Thanks
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
Is my 301 redirect working?
Very simple question here . I've redirected a bunch of older pages with decent ranking to some newer pages on my site, using the Thesis theme's built-in redirect function. However, in the SERPS, the older pages (and, importantly, older titles) still show up. When clicked on, they redirect to the new page, but it's still irritating because the older titles make the site look out of date. Is this Working As Intended, or have I or my theme done something wrong? And if it's the latter, what's the best way to achieve a redirect, preferably with a Wordpress plugin?
Technical SEO | | Cairmen0 -
Double 301 redirect
Hi together, due to some technical reasons I have redirect (301) an existing link two times. Example: www.mydomain.com/root/site.html > 301 > www.mydomain.com/site.html > 301 www.mydomain.com/site_new.html Is there anybody how has got some experience like doing a double redirect? What about link juice? Best regards Steffen
Technical SEO | | steffen_0 -
301 redirects and old domain names
Thanks to the great advice i've received on this forum, I'm combining 50 different truck sites into a single, ultimate truck website. So my question is how long should I make a website 301 redirect to the appropriate page on my new website? My thought is that if it works well to have a single website, it might be nice to eventually sell off some of the old domain names that I won't be using anymore. Thanks! Andy
Technical SEO | | daenterpri0