How many redirects are too many?
-
Hello Everyone,
I currently have a dynamic site and it is my understanding that switching to a static site would be beneficial.
I already have some 301's in place from when my site had a .php extension to the new extension now with ./?... etc. Is it okay to re redirect them? How many redirects are too many?
Thank you in advance for suggestions. Have a Fabulous Friday!
Sandra
-
I agree with Richard, based on your explanation, this is the proper way to do the 301 redirects. Your plan will work just fine.
GWT is Google Webmaster Tools
-
Based on your clarification above about the redirects, you are okay leaving it as is, as long as everything is redirecting properly. It would still be best practice to change the redirects from page 1 > page 3 and page 2 > page 3, so all old redirects point to their newer counterparts.
-
Thank you - that helps!
Sincerely,
Sandra
-
Hi Richard,
Can you elaborate? I don't know what you mean.
Thank you,
Sandra
-
Hi Monica,
What is my GWT? (I'm not a developer.)
With regards to the redirects, I am referring to Page 1 redirecting to Page 2 then redirecting to Page 3.
Story,
Site was first BASIC static, which was great. Then I was told upgrade it., so I upgraded to somewhat dynamic. (so now Page 1 now redirecting to New Page 1).
Then told, site needs to be upgraded again - guess what, this changes my extension again - wasn't told that was going to happen. So now I need to have old Page 1 redirecting to New Page 1, now re-redirect to newer Page 1 - because these two pages previous pages are indexed and getting a little link juice. NOW, I realize I should have stayed static and never gone dynamic; however, with switching back to static, it won't be the same extension as the first static site Hence, Page 1 now redirecting to New Page 1 to Newer Page and Re Re Redirecting to newest Page 1 because all of the above pages are indexed.
Do I just say FORGET IT, and scratch it all and let me get indexed as site gets crawled, because with all the 'updates' and 'upgrades' I supposedly needed (which I now know I didn't) all of my pages have fallen off of Google Page 1 and I'm lucky with anything is even on Page 2 or 3.
THANK YOU Again!!
-
Hi,
I am quoting you
"I currently have a dynamic site and it is my understanding that switching to a static site would be beneficial. "
My answer would be you can do url rewriting because our purpose to be have static URL e.g example.com/blue-widget not example.com&blue?widget
"I already have some 301's in place from when my site had a .php extension to the new extension now with ./?... etc"
I would not suggest that first of all I don't understand why do you want to redirect from.php to extension with parameters.
How many redirects are too many?
There is no limit but if you are doing chain redirect 2-3 max would be fine not more that that. To more info please watch Matt cutts video on this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA#t=198
Thanks
-
It would be best practice to update the old redirects to the new structure as well.
-
Agree with Monica with a clarification. You shouldn't REmove the the 301 redirects after 6 months if there are incoming links to the old / dynamic URLs UNLESS you've been in touch with link owners and they have agreed to change the link to point to the new permanent URL.
And as Monica states, it's always a good idea to keep your eye on your GWT for 404 errors for any you may have missed.
-
It depends on how the redirects are done. If you do them in the htaccess file and they are dynamic, not manual, you can have thousands. What Kevin is referring to is how many times can you redirect the same page. You can't redirect page 1 to page 2 to page 3 to page 4 then to page 5. But you can redirect multiple pages on you site.
I understand from your previous post you are talking about your blog. You will be fine redirecting these URLs to static URLs. Do them through the HTAccess file. After about 6 months the old URLs should have fallen off and been removed from the index so you can move the 301 redirects. If anything gets missed you will find it in your GWT 404 errors.
-
A couple will be fine. Anything more than that may be problematic. In 2011, Matt Cutts stated anything more than five and Googlebot will not follow it.
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
-
Redirect inbound links to youtube?
I have a website that's been going for 10 years or so, doesn't get huge traffic but it's fairly consistent. About 5 years ago I put the same content on youtube- instructional how to videos. The website offers slightly better content because there are images to accompany the step by step text below the videos. The text is more or less the same on youtube and my website. Recently, youtube has started to vastly out-perform my website. For every page/video on my website, there is a youtube page. They're basically competing against each other. Over the years I have accrued a fair number of links to my website. My question is, should I redirect my inbound links to the relevant youtube pages and sacrifice my website? Thanks! Will
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | madegood0 -
A Really Specific Question about 301 Redirect Strategies
Hi there: As part of a site redesign project, we've been doing a lot of 301 redirects, as we retire old URLs or rename them. My question is: is it necessary to redirect ALL old URLS? What about URLs with no links and low authority? Are these really necessary to redirect, since they're not referenced on the web and there's obviously a global redirect happening at the level of the root domain? Just curious; I'm not sure I've ever really understood this...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
301 redirect impact on ranking
If Website A is ranking 19th position in Google for a specific keyword, and Website B is ranking 30th position for the same keyword, What would be impact after 301 redirect? Will Website A drop to 30th position because of 301 or existing position would improve because of link juice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | riyaaaz0 -
Googlebot being redirected but not users?
Hi, We seem to have a slightly odd issue. We noticed that a number of our location category pages were slipping off 1 page, and onto page 2 in our niche. On inspection, we noticed that our Arizona page had started ranking in place of a number of other location pages - Cali, Idaho, NJ etc. Weirdly, the pages they had replaced were no longer indexed, and would remain so, despite being fetched, tweeted etc. One test was to see when the dropped out pages had been last crawled, or at least cached. When conducting the 'cache:domain.com/category/location' on these pages, we were getting 301 redirected to, you guessed it, the Arizona page. Very odd. However, the dropped out pages were serving 200 OK when run through header checker tools, screaming frog etc. On the face of it, it would seem Googlebot is getting redirected when it is hitting a number of our key location pages, but users are not. Has anyone experienced anything like this? The theming of the pages are quite different in terms of content, meta etc. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sayers0 -
Fetch As Google Redirect from HTTPS to HTTP
Hi Moz Community, We just launched a redesigned site and moved our blog from http://sparkline.motifinvesting.com to https://www.motifinvesting.com/blog. When I went to check the site today I noticed something strange. When I Fetch a Blog URL as Google it is redirecting from https to http AND dropping the / <post-id>from the end of the URL.</post-id> So for the URL https://www.motifinvesting.com/blog/cleantech-obama-romney/1494 I am getting the attached results when I Fetch as Google. When I access the same URL in my browser, I see a 200 status code and no redirect. Why would Google Bot show that the URL is being redirected? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | motif_marketing
Breanna https://www.motifinvesting.com/blog/cleantech-obama-romney/1494 I7yQPza.png0 -
To Redirect or Not
I have a strange situation and looking for advice on how well a permanent redirect of url will work. I have an eCommerce site called twpstain.com. This site sells TWP Deck stain and the URL/Content is fully owned by me. We do not however own the TWP brand and have always operated with permission from the manufacturer as an Authorized dealer. Circumstance have come up where they now want to be in control of all URLS that have the name "TWP" in them. Not sure if they legally can do this but they can cut me off with product if I do not comply. My options are: 1. A permanent redirect of entire site to new URL that does not have the word "TWP" in the url. 2. Give them the URL but they are willing to have me use the URL as I have in the past. A contract for this would be drawn up to cover me for years to come and possibly offer compensation if they decide not to renew. My concerns are numerous but the question for the Moz community is to how well the 301 redirect will work and will I lose my rankings? I currently dominate the rankings for my site and I very concerned that there will be major loss of sales and traffic. Any help or opinions on this would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dogtopiamichigan0 -
Question about 301 redirect for trailing / ?
I am cleaning up a fairly large site. Some pages have a trailing slash on the end some don't. Some of the existing backlinks built used a trailing slash in the url and some didn't. We aren't concerned with picking a particular one but just want to get one set and stick to it from now on. I am wondering, would I clean this up within the same redirect in the htaccess file that takes care of the www and non www? example RewriteEngine On
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PEnterprises
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.domain.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com$1 [L,R=301] I currently use that to redirect the www. to the non www as you can see. However here is what I was confused about. Would this code be enough to redirect ALL pages with a / to the ones without? or would I also need to add another code (so there is 2) to my htaccess like below? RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com$1 [L,R=301] RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.domain.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com$1 [L,R=301] That way, now, even the non www pages with a trailing slash will redirect to the non www without the trailing slash. Hopefully you understand what I am getting at. I just want to redirect EVERYTHING to the non www WITHOUT a / Thank you Jake0 -
Subdomains and SEO - Should we redirect to subfolder?
A new client has mainsite.com and a large numer of city specific sub domains i.e. albany.mainsite.com. I think that these subdomains would actually work better as subfolders i.e mainsite.com/albany rather than albany.mainsite.com. The majority of links on the subdomains link to the main site anyway i.e. mainsite.com/contactus rather than albany.mainsite.com/contactus. Having mostly main domain links on a subdomain doesnt seem like clever link architecture to me and maybe even spammy. Im not overly familiar with redirecting subdomains to subfolders. If we go the route of 301'ing subdomains to subfolders any advice/warnings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean0