Can multiple redirects from old URLs hurt SEO?
-
We have a client that had an existing site with existing rankings. We rebuilt the site using DNN 7 and created/tested 301 redirects from all the Original URLs to the new DNN URLs which are nasty and have /tabid/1234 and will not allow for dashes (-)'s
We have found a DNN module that will make the DNN 7 URLs search friendly. However, that will cause us to 301 the current DNN urls to the new URLs so in fact the original will redirect to the DNN and the DNN will redirect to the rewritten SEO friendly URLs.
What should we know here before proceeding?
-
Hi TJ,
I have actually made the switch to friendly URLs in DNN, so I know your pain.
Best practice is to make the 301 redirect in one jump. So instead of going from oldsite > dnn > dnn-friendly, you should set up your redirects to perform oldsite > dnn-friendly and dnn > dnn-friendly.
Redirecting with a chain A > B > C can slow your site down for users, as well as slow down the crawlers, which is bad.
Does that answer your question?
Mike
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
-
Our company creates cobranded subdomains for our clients; does that hurt our SEO?
We create cobranded websites for local businesses in many towns throughout the United States, always under a subdomain of our main site (e.g., afcreditunion.teachbanzai.com). Does this hurt our SEO rankings? We have a very specific reason for creating these microsites, because it's a high selling point. I've read and watched the material here on Moz regarding subdomains and subfolders, but it doesn't quite answer my question: since we create all these microsites not with the intent of passing authority to our website but with the intent of making their microsite have their branding.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teachbanzai0 -
International SEO: can I choose only certain pages for subfolder?
For a client we are discussing international SEO options. I have pushed against CCTLD because they do not have the resources to manage multiple sites. Instead we want to go the subfolder route: .com/uk/ My question is whether we can properly create a subfolder version that only includes a handful of pages rather than the whole site - so 5-10 pages vs 4k. Is that possible? I'd love your thoughts. International SEO is not my strong suit. Also - if the subfolder for .com/uk/ content is almost entirely the same as the us-based .com is that a problem? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JBMediaGroup0 -
Does cache-control : private hurt SEO?
Hi, I recently found I can no longer view our web pages in Google's cache. I get 404 errors. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ashop.nordstrom.com%2Fc%2Fwomens-shoes&rlz=1C1GGRV_enUS751US751&oq=cache%3Ashop.nordstrom.com%2Fc%2Fwomens-shoes&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.3575j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 I did a fetch and render in Search Console and found our header includes a "cache-control: private" entry. The 404's started happening recently. Would this response be the culprit? If Google cannot cache the website, is this bad for SEO? On the surface of it, it sounds bad.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shop.nordstrom0 -
If my website uses CDN does thousands of 301 redirect can harm the website performance?
Hi, If my website uses CDN does thousands of 301 redirect can harm the website performance? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
Link backs from same IP? Can it hurt?
We host several client sites on our VPS host. We'd like to add a link back to the footer, however cautious as these are all on the same IP. Will this hurt our SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | idlwebinc
Will Google ignore these link backs?0 -
Is 1:1 301 redirect required on indexed URL when restructing URL even if the new URL is canonicalized?
Hello folks, We are restructuring some URLS which forms a fair chunk of the content of the domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HB17
These content are auto generated rather than manually created unlike other parts of the website. The same content is currently accessible from two URLs: /used-books/autobiography-a-long-walk-to-freedom-isbn
/autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-isbn The URL 1 uses the URL 2 as the canonical url and it has worked allright since Moz does
not show the two as duplicate of each other. Google has also indexed the canonical URL although
there is still a few 'URL 1s' which were indexed before the canonical was implemented. The updated URL structure will look like something like this: /used-books/autobiography-a-long-walk-to-freedom-author-name-isbn
/autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-authore-name-isbn It would be great to have just a single URL but a few business requirement prevents
us from having just the canonical URL only even with the new structure. Since we will still have two URLs to access the same content and we were wondering
whether we will need to do a 1:1 301 redirect on the current URLs or since there will be canonical URL
(/autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-authore-name-isbn),
we won't need to worry about doing the 1:1 redirect on the the indexed content? Please note that the content will still be accessible from the OLD URL (unless 301ed of course). If it is advisable to do a 1:1 301 redirect this is what we intend to do: /used-books/autobiography-a-long-walk-to-freedom-isbn 301 to
/used-books/autobiography-a-long-walk-to-freedom-author-name-isbn /autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-isbn 301 to
/autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-authore-name-isbn Any advice/suggestions would be greated appreciated. Thank you.0 -
301 Redirecting from Static to Dynamic URLs. I think we messed up
I'm looking for some guidance on an issue I believe we created for ourselves and if we undo what we did. We recently added attributed search to our sites. This of course created a bunch of dynamically generated URLS. For various reasons, it was decided to take some of our existing static URLs and 301 redirect them to their dyanamic counterpart. Ex .../Empire-Paintball-Masks-0Y.aspx now redirects to .../Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles-0Y.aspx?Manufacturer=Empire Many of these stat URLS had top 3 rankings for their associated keywords. Now, we don't rank for anything. I realize that 301 redirecting is the way to go...if you NEED to. My guess is our drop in keyword ranking is directly tied to what we did. I'm looking for an solid argument to be made to my boss as to why we should not have done this and that it, more than likely has resulted in dropped keyword rankings and organic traffic. I welcome any input. Also, if we decided to revert back (remove all 301 redirects and de-index all dynamic URLS), what is the likely hood we can recapture some of this lost organic traffic? Can I disallow indexing in a robot.txt file to remove, say anything with a '?' in the URL? Would the above URL example (which was ranking in the top 3 in SERPs), have a good chance of finding its way back? thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Istoresinc1 -
Local SEO (Rankings) + UK-wide SEO (national rankings) - achieving both
Hi All, For clients wishing to sell online / generate leads nationally, yet still want to have a local online presence to attract town / county-wide customers, I've often placed Town / County locations within both the Title Tag (or just County if space is limited) and Meta Description, plus within the Hx headings, Alt-text and within the footer of every page. My question is, does adding the location of the client within these fields really infringe their attempts to rank nationally, as some nationally ranked pages have no mention of location while others have their location (Town, County or Both) shown within them? Any help, insight or feedback greatly appreciated 🙂 Happy New Year Tony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tony-Dimmock0