To 301 or not to 301?
-
I have a client that is having a new site built. Their old site (WP) does not use the trailing / at the end of urls. The new site is using most of the same url names but IS using the /. For instance, the old site would be www.example.com/products and the new site, also WP, will be www.example.com/products/.
WordPress will resolve either way, but my question is whether or not to go in and redirect each matching non / page to the new url that has the /.
I don't want to leave any link juice on the table but if I can keep the juice without doing a few hundred 301s that certainly wouldn't suck.
Any thoughts?
Sleepless in KVegas
-
We discussed using the canonical tag but wasn't sure it would be quite as good as using a 301. We will probably go with HT Access method.
Thanks for the quick response, BTW!
Cheers.
Tom V
-
Sorry, Google treats them as different URLs: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/to-slash-or-not-to-slash.html
Play it safe and redirect. You probably don't need to do hundreds of individual redirects though. Try using Regex in the .htaccess file to solve your issue. Might end up being 2 lines of code in a rewrite rule.
You could also implement rel=canonical tags as an alternative.
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
-
Reusing an already 301 redirected URL for a very important keyword
I have a question about reusing an already 301 redirected URL Till now I never reused an URLs that has been already redirected with a 301 redirect. However, I just started working on a website where in past they created a lot of 301 redirects without thinking about the future, and now certain URLs, that are currently redirected with a 301, would be very useful (exact match) and needed (for some of the most important keywords for this specific business), to maintain an optimal, homogeneous and "beautiful" URL structure. Has any of you ever reused a URL that was previously redirected with a 301 redirect? If yes what are your experiences with it? Can content on the reused URL (that was previously 301 redirected and than the redirect removed) normally rank if the page is reestablished and the redirect is removed (and you do great content, on page, internal linking, backlinking, .... ) or is such an URL risky / not recommended / "burned" forever and not recommended to be reused again... especially for very important keywords since it present the exact match ?! Thank you very much for all your help! Regards
Technical SEO | | moz46y0 -
301 Redirects
Hi, We have migrated to a new domain name and I wrote my redirects as follows: Redirect 301 / http://www.healthpointe.net Redirect 301 /urgent_care_locations.shtml http://www.healthpointe.net/healthpointe-locations/ Redirect 301 /locations.shtml http://www.healthpointe.net/healthpointe-locations/ Redirect 301 /career_client_relations_rep.shtml http://www.healthpointe.net/careers/ My issue is that when I include the first redirect, which is to the main page of the website that the other redirects stop working. Any idea what the problem could be?
Technical SEO | | healthpointeseo0 -
What is the best way to change tons of 302 for 301...
I'm doing an audit for a new client and their website has tons of 302... (more than 1000)... What is the best/fast way to change all the 302 for 301...?
Technical SEO | | Felip30 -
Undo a 301 or Starting New Domain?
Hi Guys & Gals, I have a question I'd appreciate your input on. Quick History
Technical SEO | | Nobody1560986989723
When I first started in web design it was just me and a couple of clients. I had a website based on my name on the domain moxby.org.uk. The only 'SEO' work done on it was a bit of on-site work, various links based on forum and blog activity I was involved in (genuine involvement not crappy link building) and of course, building websites with a credit in the footer. When we got serious about the business we considered and finally put in place a new website, new branding and 301'd old URLs to their shiny new location on the new domain: _summitweb.net _(put in place about 12 months ago) Ranks were pretty much maintained and until recently we ranked well locally (still figuring the fallout from the last week or so's changes). The Question I would like to build a personal website, well I'm going to anyway. But as it's a personal/showcase website I need a personal URL for it and my natural choice would be my old url moxby.org.uk. However it is not that simple because summitweb.net is benefitting from redirected links and I don't want to harm our business' rankings just to reclaim a personal URL. So... is there benefit or would it be to my detriment to undo the 301 and build a website on moxby.org.uk or would it, in fact, just make more sense to buy a new domain and have a clean slate?0 -
Increase 404 errors or 301 redirects?
Hi all, I'm working on an e-commerce site that sells products that may only be available for a certain period of time. Eg. A product may only be selling for 1 year and then be permanently out of stock. When a product goes out of stock, the page is removed from the site regardless of any links it may have gotten over time. I am trying to figure out the best way to handle these permanently out of stock pages. At the moment, the site is set up to return a 404 page for each of these products. There are currently 600 (and increasing) instances of this appearing on Google Webmasters. I have read that too many 404 errors may have a negative impact on your site, and so thought I might 301 redirect these URLs to a more appropriate page. However I've also read that too many 301 redirects may have a negative impact on your site. I foresee this to be an issue several years down the road when the site has thousands of expired products which will result in thousands of 404 errors or 301 redirects depending on which route I take. Which would be the better route? Is there a better solution?
Technical SEO | | Oxfordcomma0 -
Can I 301 Re-Direct within the same site?
I have a magento site and would like to do a 301 redirect from page A to page B. Page B was created after Page A but contains the same products. I want page A to be replaced in the search engines with page B while carrying the link juice from page A. Is this possible? Am I better off just blocking page A through the robots .txt file? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
Can I remove 301 redirects after some time?
Hello, We have an very large number of 301 redirects on our site and would like to find a way to remove some of them. Is there a time frame after which Google does not need a 301 any more? For example if A is 301 redirected to B, does Google know after a while not to serve A any more, and replaces any requests for A with B? How about any links that go to A? Or: Is the only option to have all links that pointed to A point to B and then the 301 can be removed after some time? Thank you for you you help!
Technical SEO | | Veva0 -
Worth Changing Redirect From 302 to 301?
Hi, I'm doing an audit on a site that had a redesign in Dec 2009. For some reason I looked to see what kind of redirects were used from the old pages to the current ones, and it looks like they used 302s, which obviously isn't ideal. Given that it's been so long and those pages have looong since been de-indexed, is it worth me suggesting that they change those old redirects to 301s? My thinking is that if those old pages were linked to externally then I should recommend it, but I can't find any link info on Linkscape/OSE, Majestic SEO or YSE. Any comments appreciated.
Technical SEO | | The_Heavies0