Our clients Magento 2 site has lots of obsolete categories. Advice on SEO best practice for setting server level redirects so I can delete them?

[WillyGx]

Our client's Magento website has been running for at least a decade, so has a lot of old legacy categories for Brands they no longer carry.

We're looking to trim down the amount of unnecessary URL Redirects in Magento, so my question is:

Is there a way that is SEO efficient to setup permanent redirects at a server level (nginx) that Google will crawl to allow us at some point to delete the categories and Magento URL Redirects?

If this is a good practice can you at some point then delete the server redirects as google has marked them as permanent?

[Suvidit-Academy]

Yes, there is a way to set up permanent redirects at the server level (nginx) that Google will crawl to allow you to delete the categories and Magento URL redirects at some point.

Here are the steps:

• Open your nginx configuration file.

• Add the following code to the file:
  location /old-category {
  redirect 301 /new-category;
  }
  Note:- Replace /old-category with the old URL of the category and /new-category with the new URL of the category.

• Save the file and restart your nginx server.

Once you have done this, Google will crawl the new URLs and update its index accordingly. You can then delete the old categories and Magento URL redirects.

.
Yes, it is a good practice to set up permanent redirects at the server level. This will ensure that users and search engines are always directed to the correct page, even if you make changes to your website's structure in the future.

You can delete the server redirects once Google has indexed the new URLs. However, it is important to wait a few weeks to make sure that Google has had time to crawl and index the new pages.

.
Here are some additional tips for setting up permanent redirects at the server level:

• Use the correct HTTP status code. For permanent redirects, you should use the 301 Moved Permanently status code.
• Make sure that the redirects are consistent. All redirects for a particular page should point to the same new URL.
• Test the redirects to make sure that they are working properly.

You can ensure that your website's redirects are SEO efficient and that they will not cause any problems for your users or search engines.

Warm Regards
Rahul Gupta
Suvidit Academy