Should I set 301 Redirects or keep old permalinks?
-
I just built a new site for a client and the new site has pretty links like domain.com/about-us. The old site has been around for a VERY long time and had links like domain.com/aboutus. I want to do 301 redirects because from my understanding, it minimizes the negative SEO impact. But the client wants to keep the permalinks without the hyphens to match the old links. What is the best route, considering SEO? BTW, the site is still on the same domain.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Neik
-
As per Moon Boot, I would certainly offer a 301 redirect to the new page, otherwise visitors will be potentially getting a 404 and thus have a negative experience upon arrival to the site.
In your .htaccess - **redirect 301 /aboutus /about-us **
Cheers
Tim -
Hello Neik,
It is considered best practice to optimise the link structure as you propose, about-us as opposed to aboutus. But that is only a minor change and may not have all too much of an effect in terms of SEO. There is a wonderful Moz guide on URL best practice here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/url
It is also worth considering that 301 redirects in the htaccess file can potentially slow down the load speed of your website, albeit by a small amount, but this may negate any positive effect from the changes you're suggesting.
I hope that helps.
Richard
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
-
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 back to original domain
We have a site, domainA.com and we split part of the site off into it's own site a couple of years ago as domainB.com. All urls from DomainA were 301 redirected to DomainB, but with a different folder structure. For business reasons, we now shuttering domainB and rolling it back into domainA. For the 301 redirects for urls that were on the original domainA, should I overwrite them to the new folder structure directly from the original urls? In other words: 301 redirect domainA.com/oldstructure to domainA.com/newstructure rather than: Existing 301 redirect domainA.com/oldstructure to domainB.com/newstructuretopic with a new 301 redirect to domainA.com/newstructuretopictopic
Technical SEO | | ang0 -
301 redirect: canonical or non canonical?
Hi, Newbie alert! I need to set up 301 redirects for changed URLs on a database driven site that is to be redeveloped shortly. The current site uses canonical header tags. The new site will also use canonical tags. Should the 301 redirects map the canonical URL on the old site to the corresponding canonical for the new design . . . or should they map the non canonical database URLs old and new? Given that the purpose of canonicals is to indicate our preferred URL, then my guess is that's what I should use. However, how can I be sure that Google (for example) has indexed the canonical in every case? Thx in anticipation.
Technical SEO | | ztalk1120 -
301 redirect from Blogger
Hello, I have a client with a Wordpress network of blogs, each blog is owned by a different blogger. Many of them were migrated time ago from Blogger. I have seen that the way used to redirect them is a meta refresh, so no authority is being passed. I cannot find any reliable way of making a 301 from Blogger, There are some plugins, but I'm afraid of using them. Any of you have experience with this situation please? I have even thought about placing a global rel canonical before the meta refresh, but I think that here the problem is the meta refresh itself.... Thank you in advance
Technical SEO | | Juandbbam0 -
Need Help writing 301 redirects in .htaccess file
SEOmoz tool shows me 2 errors for duplicate content pages (www.abc.com and www.abc.com/index.html). I believe, the solution to this is writing 301 redirects I need two 301 redirects 1. abc.com to www.abc.com 2. /index.html to / (which is www.abc.com/index.html to www.abc.com) The code that I currently have is ................................................... RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | WebsiteEditor
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^abc.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.abc.com/$1 [R=301,L] Redirect 301 http://www.abc.com/index.html http://www.abc.com ...................................................... but this does not redirect /index.html to abc.com. What is wrong here? Please help.0 -
Delete 301 redirected pages from server after redirect is in place?
Should I remove the redirected old pages from my site after the redirects are in place? Google is hating the redirects and we have tanked. I did over 50 redirects this week, consolidating content and making one great page our of 3-10 pages with very little content per page. But the old pages are still visible to google's bot. Also, I have not put a rel canonical to itself on the new pages. Is that necessary? Thanks! Jean
Technical SEO | | JeanYates0 -
301 Redirecting weird URLs with % in them
I've been working on redirecting links reported as 404 in Google webmaster tools. I've stumbled upon 41 URLs that Google is reporting as 404 that include a '%' in the URL, but I don't know how to redirect. Here is an example: URL: bond_information.htm%20Surety%20Bond%20Information,%20with%20FAQ Attempted redirect: redirect 301 /bond_information.htm%20Surety%20Bond%20Information,%20with%20FAQ http://www.mysite.com/ Unfortunately, after implementing the redirect, http://www.mysite.com/bond_information.htm%20Surety%20Bond%20Information,%20with%20FAQ still resolves a 404 error. Anyone successfully fix these errors using Apache .htaccess?
Technical SEO | | TheDude0 -
Redirect from old wordpress site to new php site? Best approach
Hi I have two websites one legacy site done in wordpress the other in php. However I would like to merge the two together and remove the wordpress site. However it has a good link profile and the pages rank well. What is the best approach to do a 301 redirect from the old site with all its pages pointing to the homepage of the new site? If so what's the best way to do this in wordpress? Many thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0