Should I stop redirectin 301, sometime?
-
Dear All,
I work for a southamerican ecommerce, I would like to know if you can help me out with the following.
This site is full of 404, more than 45K, so we are doing 301 to corresponding pages. The development team is asking me if we could stop doing the 301 in some time...In order to do this search engines should index only the url we are redirecting to, and not the one that is redirecting to the new one.
Currently they are redirecting in the HTML no by htaccess, so this means they have one page for each URL that needs to be redirected, and this is not efficient.
Bests,
Pablo
-
I would just setup wild card 301 redirects via htaccess. Allows you to establish rules to redirect whole directories to new pages: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6877486/how-can-i-use-htaccess-to-redirect-paths-with-a-wildcard-character
-
Meta noindex + the URL Removal Tool would work to get rid of them. I would also try and make sure any old links internally on your site that may point to these pages get removed, if that is the step you are going to take. What will the user see when they land on these old URLs?
-
Hi Jazom,
Errors are hard 404. I like what you say, but I would like to know if it would be better to erase indexed pages from index.
Bests,
Pablo López Carrara
Cinepapaya
-
Hi Russ,
Tnks, I like this kind of segmentation by inbound links and traffic, let me quote you
"Chances are, most of those pages neither receive traffic nor have inbound links. Go ahead and drop the 301 redirect for all of those" I think you mean (Im Argentine) I should use redirect for these URLs. which I dont think it make much sense since these are not the most valuable pages. I got your general idea, but let me know if you made I mistake when you wrote it.
I like what you said in general, but I wouldn´t like leaving 404 (even though they got no traffic or links) with out treating. So...questions...Meta no-index, does it work for already indexed pages? What do you think about using no-index + deleting these urls from index using webmaster tools.
Bests,
Pablo López Carrara
Cinepapaya
-
Hi Pablo,
What report are you using to find the 404 pages? Are they soft 404 or hard 404s? A lot of reports may return a 404 response for something like a failed file request which does not really impact usability.
If you have a consistent page name for your 404 pages, look under Analytics site content and filter by page title then search for your 404 page title - this will give you the actual failed page requests, you can then narrow down if they are internal page links or external.
It may be worthwhile checking what links are pointing to your 301 redirects and if there are links you want to keep, dropping them could have a negative impact on your site.
Regards,
Jason
-
This is a good and common question. There are two reasons why you would want to keep the 301 redirect in place
- Usability: Users are still trying to reach this now defunct page
- Inbound Links: There are external links that are pointing to this page.
The best thing to do is first narrow down the pages for which you have no reason to keep 301s in place. Open up your analytics platform and look to see which of those 45K pages have received no traffic in the last 30 days. Then use a tool like Open Site Explorer or Google Search Console to see if any of those 45K pages have inbound links. Chances are, most of those pages neither receive traffic nor have inbound links. Go ahead and drop the 301 redirect for all of those.
Then, prioritize the remaining pages. The ones with the most links and most traffic should probably retain a 301 redirect for the long run. Those near the bottom you might choose to drop.
Finally, with that many 404s, make sure that your 404 page is useful. Create a custom 404 page that helps direct users to their correct location or provides an easy search mechanism to find it themselves.
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 redirects and impact on page authority
I need to restructure a section of my website, changing some page titles and moving some pages to other sections. This will then change the URLs but the CMS I use will automatically create 301 redirects so the old URLs still work. The question is, will this have any negative impacts on page authority/page rank? From what I've read, it seems having 301's used to have a negative impact but doesn't anymore?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ciehmoz0 -
410 or 301 after URL update?
Hi there, A site i'm working on atm has a thousand "not found" errors on google console (of course, I'm sure there are thousands more it's not showing us!). The issue is a lot of them seem to come from a URL change. Damage has been done, the URLs have been changed and I can't stop that... but as you can imagine, i'm keen to fix as many as humanly possible. I don't want to go mad with 301s - but for external links in, this seems like the best solution? On the other hand, Google is reading internal links that simply aren't there anymore. Is it better to hunt down the new page and 301-it anyway? OR should I 410 and grit my teeth while google crawls and recrawls it, warning me that this page really doesn't exist? Essentially I guess I'm asking, how many 301s are too many and will affect our DA? And what's the best solution for dealing with mass 404 errors - many of which aren't attached or linked to from any other pages anymore? Thanks for any insights 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fubra0 -
Penalty after 301 redirect?
We run a training center. We had 1 main website and 2 dedicated websites to certain themes. The 2 dedicated websites are older and the main website is about 6 months old. The 2 dedicated websites had a top 5 ranking for their most important keywords. 2 weeks ago we imported all the content from the dedicated websites into the main website. Then immediately after we did a perfect 301 redirect of these websites to the main website. 2 SEO companies checked it for us and so I'm very sure this is done right. Google immediately caught this up and gave the main website a boost. We where in the top 10 for many important keywords for 1 week. The next week all our rankings dropped. We only have a top 50 ranking for 10 keywords. Before it was 75 keywords in the top 20. Do you know what could have caused this? Any suggestion, thought, ... is welcome!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wellnesswooz0 -
301 Redirect from now defunct website?
Hi guys Quick question about 301 redirection between domains. I currently manage a website, lets call it website A. Website A sells a particular product range, however the decision has been made by the powers that be to pull the plug on the business and sell the products previously sold via Website A via another website within the parent companies control.....lets call it Website B. I need to make it clear to customers of Website A that the company no longer operates but want to pass the SEO equity that has been built up over time to the relevant pages on Website B. My plan was to 1. 301 Redirect all key landing pages on Website A to the most relevant pages on Website B 2. Initially keep the website A homepage live but change the message to say "Website A no longer operates, but Website B can help etc. etc." Remove all sub links from navigation. 3. Monitor referral and direct traffic levels and consider 301 redirecting website A homepage to Website B homepage in the long term. My questions: Does this sound like the best approach? If not, what alternatives are there? Will Website A look like a link farm for Website B? I dont want this obviously!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DHS_SH0 -
Removing 301 redirect from 2.5 yr old domain
Hello, Need Advise. We are in Automobiles We have an Automotive site - build 3 yrs back - which is our main site (Site A) We built a separate niche site on Used cars 2.5 yrs back (Site B - url http://www.usedcarindelhi.com) - did seo - promote it for a year and later on in feb 2013 - did 301 domain redirection to Site A Now - we thinking to rebuild Site Site B again and remove redirection Will there be any harm on Site A, as we have now removed the redirection or shall we pass on link from home page of Site B to Site A i.e say Powered by Site A (on Top) or at all no direct linking is actually needed. PS :- Also - can anyone let know the backlink quality of www.usedcarindelhi.com. Its PR 3, DA - 18, Majestic Citation Flow - 18, Trust Flow - 11 . Pl advise
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
How to handle the 301 of a complete domain on URL level
We will be shutting down an old website with many (good) links, since the site has no strategic relevance anymore. We do have many other sites, but none of them has exactly the same content/topic. Nonetheless, I would like to keep the juice and redirect the site to another newer project. However, I want to redirect certain URLs of the old site to probably even different domains, depending on which content matches best with the alternative newer site. Does this make sense? Or would youjust redirect the whole domain to one other domain although they don't really have the same topic And how would you handle the URL redirects if the old site has more than 50k URLs? Because that is the case. Thanks for any advice
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Windex0 -
Is it possible to 301 re-direct an entire subfolder on a subdomain?
So, for example, subdomain.domain/folder subdomain.domain/folder2 Is it possible to set up a 301-re-direct for an entire folder on a subdomain? If so, how? What is the correct code for this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
301 Redirect With A Message And Delay
Hello, I'd like to sell a site I own. I'd like the site to be redirected to the buyers site with a 301 redirect. But I'd like the viewer to be informed that the site was purchased by this company and they will be redirect in 5 seconds.I'd like for the redirect to be a complete 301 and pass as much linklove as possible. Are you familiar with how to do this? Thanks, Tyler
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tylerfraser0