301 redirects- how long to keep and how many are too many?
-
Hi, I was told we have way too many 301 redirects on our site. We have some that have been there for 3 years. Our site is datacard.com . Question- how long should you keep a redirect out there when building a new page and expiring an old page? Is it 6 months, is it a certain time frame? wondering what the best practices are?
Thanks!
Laura
-
It is not unusual to redirect a whole website and all of its pages, so it wouldn't make sense that you could have too many. And you should keep the redirects indefinitely--what if there is a link to the expired page? You do not want to lose that equity by having it go nowhere...
-
Keep the redirects forever unless you want lost value! Too many redirects is subjective and I would recommend determining what you consider to be too many based on how long it takes your server to process the file on each page load with strace. If this number is unacceptable, consider other options besides .htaccess such as moving the redirects to the config file so they are processed on server load rather than each page load.
-
Just wanted to chime in that I've also never heard of too many 301s being a thing.
EDIT: ...unless you mean you have too many redirects in a row, but that's not what it sounds like. Is that what you mean, Laura?
-
I don't think that too many 301's is actually a thing. Seriously, why would you want to put a cap on getting visitors to the right pages? It doesn't make much sense.
However, not all 301s are necessary. If Google has indexed the new URL and the old one doesn't have any valuable backlinks, you can let those 404 with very little risk. But I would only do it if for some weird technical reason you just could not keep the 301.
-
Hi there
Your redirect file shouldn't be changed. Leave that as is.
I would update your internal links and sitemap as soon as possible, especially if they contain redirects.
I would also perform a backlink audit and make sure you update valuable links and remove/disavow irrelevant/toxic links.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
Unsolved Temporary redirect from 302 to 301 for PNG File?
#302HTTP #temporaryredirect
Technical SEO | | Damian_Ed 0
Hi everyone, Recently I have faced a crawl issue with my media images on website. For example this page url https://intreface.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Horion-screen-side-2.png has 302 HTTP Status and the recommendation is to change it 301. I have read the article on temporary redirections here:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection?_ga=2.45324708.1293586627.1702571936-916254120.1702571936
but its not written here how to redirect in my HTML 1 image url not the landing page.
Screenshot 2023-12-15 at 11.02.40.png
I have messaged to MOZ Support but they recommended to go for the MOZ Community!
Screenshot 2023-12-15 at 11.06.02.png Could you assist me wit this issue please? I can reach HTTML of the necessary page and change what I need for permanent redirection but firstly I need to understand how to do that correctly.0 -
Which better to rank with 40 DA domain redirect the domain 301
hello, which better to rank with 40 DA domain redirect the domain 301 to my website or host domain and create posts with my website link + if i do the 301 redirect the Crawl Errors of old 40 da domain will display on my new website or not+how much links can i get from one website pbn
Technical SEO | | cristophare79
+
which better get links for home page or postsbest regards ,0 -
301 Redirect Url Within a Canonical Tag
So this might sounds like a silly question... A client of mine has a duplicate content issue which will be fixed using canonical tags. We are also providing them with an updated URL structure meaning rwe will be having to do lots of 301 redirects. The URL structure is a much larger task that than the duplicate content so i planned to set up the canonicals first. Then it occurred to me id be updating the canonical tags with the urls from the old structure which brings me to my question. Will the canonical tags with the old urls redirect credit to the new urls with the 301? Or should i just wait until we have the new url structure in place and use these new urls in the canonicals? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | NickG-1230 -
Why are my 301 redirects and duplicate pages (with canonicals) still showing up as duplicates in Webmaster Tools?
My guess is that in time Google will realize that my duplicate content is not actually duplicate content, but in the meantime I'd like to get your guys feedback. The reporting in Webmaster Tools looks something like this. Duplicates /url1.html /url2.html /url3.html /category/product/url.html /category2/product/url.html url3.html is the true canonical page in the list above._ url1.html,_ and url2.html are old URLs that 301 to url3.html. So, it seems my bases are covered there. _/category/product/url.html _and _/category2/product/url.html _ do not redirect. They are the same page as url3.html. Each of the category URLs has a canonical URL of url3.html in the header. So, it seems my bases are covered there as well. Can I expect Google to pick up on this? Why wouldn't it understand this already?
Technical SEO | | bearpaw0 -
301 Redirect Clarification: Images, Paramter URLs, etc.
I know that going through a site redesign it's essential to make sure that 301s are implemented for any changed URLs, but I wasn't sure if this was the same for the images on the page and the parameter URLs that are created by marketing campaigns - do those URLs also need to be 301 redirected? For example, this URL: www.mysite.com/32-inch-round-aluminum-table/ Could have a parameter at: www.mysite.com/32-inch-round-aluminum-table/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Social%3A+My_Site And an image at: www.mysite.com/images/32-inch-round-aluminum-table.jpg Would the first two URLs mentioned need to be redirected to the new URL, and the image redirected to the new image URL? Thanks for the help.
Technical SEO | | eTundra0 -
Is 301 redirecting all old URLS after a new site redesign to the root domain bad for SEO?
After a new site redesign ...would it hinder our rankings if we 301 redirected all old URLS that are returning 404 error codes to the root domain (home page) ? Would this be a good temporary solution until we are able to redirect the pages to the appropriate corresponding page? Thanks so much!
Technical SEO | | DCochrane0 -
301 redirect: Old pages to new
Hi, We have recently made some changes to our agency site. Looking in webmaster tools we have identified a number of old pages with existing link juice. Not a great deal mostly 32/100 PA. There are a mixture of URLs "meet the team" and people pages etc. The anchor text on the majority of pages is our brand name. Could we now 301 all these pages to one page, or is this a no no in the eyes of Google? Any help greatly appreciated. Best Regards Sean
Technical SEO | | Yozzer0
