Htaccess - Redirecting TAG or Category pages
-
Hello Fellow Moz's,
We have an issue redirecting some /TAG and /Category pages to inner pages.
As an example we use:
RedirectMatch 301 /category/Sample-Category(.*) https://OurDomain.com.au/New-Page//$1
That works well.
The issue is we have other categories and tags that are named similar to /Sample-Category
As an example, if we try to redirect /Sample-Category-1 to /New-Page-1 - it will not work, and redirects to /New-Page
I assume this is because /Sample-Category is already being redirected, so anything after /Sample-Category like -1 or -2 or -3 etc, will not be recognized.
Anyone know of a workaround?
-
The regex in your RedirectMatch doesn't say what you think it says, Jes
This part (note the bolded part of the expression (.*)
/category/Sample-Category**(.*)**
doesn't actually say "match the URL that is specifically** /category/Sample-Category"**
That**.*** is a wildcard thatmeans "and any other additional characters that might occur here"
So what it's saying is "match the URL /category/Sample-Category _**as well as **_any URLs that have any additional characters after the letter "y" in category. Which is what is catching your -1 variation of the URL (or the -size-30 in your second example).
In addition, that wildcard has been set as a variable (the fact it's in brackets), which you are then attempting to insert into the end of the new URL (with the $1), which I don't think is your intent.
Instead, try:
RedirectMatch 301 /category/Sample-Category https://OurDomain.com.au/New-Page/
you should get the redirect you're looking for, and not have it interfere with the other ones you wish to write.
Let me know if that solves the issue? Or if I've misunderstood why you were trying to include the wildcard variable?
Paul
P.S. You'll need to be very specific whether the origin or target URLs use trailing slashes - I just replicated the examples you provided.
-
It's not as easy as that unfortunately.
I will reiterate.....If we redirect.....
RedirectMatch 301 /category/Blue-Shirts https://OurDomain.com.au**/Blue-Shirts**//$1 - it works, BUT....if we redirect another similar category page to different inner page like....
RedirectMatch 301 /category/Blue-Shirts-Size-30 https://OurDomain.com.au****/Blue-Shirts-Size-30****//$1 - it redirects to the first inner page example above.
That's why I was assuming it's not working because in the second example the sever sees /Blue-Shirts and ignores everything after it i.e the "Size-30".
Hopefully that makes it clearer?
-
If I've understood you correctly, all you need to do is to add a tag with the relevant content same as the old one.
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
-
Will Reducing Number of Low Page Authority Page Increase Domain Authority?
Our commercial real estate site (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) contains about 800 URLs. Since 2012 the domain authority has dropped from 35 to about 20. Ranking and traffic dropped significantly since then. The site has about 791 URLs. Many are set to noindex. A large percentage of these pages have a Moz page authority of only "1". It is puzzling that some pages that have similar content to "1" page rank pages rank much better, in some cases "15". If we remove or consolidate the poorly ranked pages will the overall page authority and ranking of the site improve? Would taking the following steps help?: 1. Remove or consolidate poorly ranking unnecessary URLs?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
2. Update content on poorly ranking URLs that are important?
3. Create internal text links (as opposed to links from menus) to critical pages? A MOZ crawl of our site's URLs is visible at the link below. I am wondering if the structure of the site is just not optimized for ranking and what can be done to improve it. THANKS. https://www.dropbox.com/s/oqchfqveelm1q11/CRAWL www.nyc-officespace-leader.com (1).csv?dl=0 Thanks,
Alan0 -
Category Pages & Content
Hi Does anyone have any great examples of an ecommerce site which has great content on category pages or product listing pages? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Hundreds of 301 Redirects. Remove Pages or Not?
Hi Mozers, I have a website that has literally got hundreds of 301 redirects. I had a close look at these URLs and only some of them have backlinks to it and remaining all of them are not indexing in Google and has got not backlinks at all. Based on what I have noticed experts mentioning, loads of 301 redirects can potentially slow down the site speed. In a case like the website I have, should I completely take off the pages from website to reduce the number of 301 redirects or should I leave 301 redirects? There is no traffic or backlinks coming from these URLs. Malika
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika10 -
Adding hreflang tags - better on each page, or the site map?
Hello, I am wondering if there seems to be a preference for adding hreflang tags (from this article). My client just changed their site from gTLDs to ccTLDs, and a few sites have taken a pretty big traffic hit. One issue is definitely the amount of redirects to the page, but I am also going to work with the developer to add hreflang tags. My question is - is it better to add them to the header of each page, or the site map, or both, or something else? Any other thoughts are appreciated. Our Australia site, which was at least findable using Australia Google before this relaunch, is not showing up, even when you search the company name directly. Thanks!Lauryn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | john_marketade0 -
Keywords going to Subdomain instead of targeted page(general landing page)
Why are some of my keywords going to subdomains instead of the more general/targeted landing page. For example, on my ecommerce website, the keyword 'tempurpedic' is directing to the subdomain URL of a specific tempurpedic product page instead of the general landing page. The product has a page authority of 15 and the Tempurpedic landing pages with all the products has an authority of 31. I have also noticed that my 'furniture stores in houston' keyword directs to my "occasional tables" URL! instead of a the much more targeted homepage. Is there something I am missing here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nat88han0 -
How to conduct catch 301 redirects & have the separate 301 redirects for the key pages
Hi, We've currently done a site migration mapping and 301 redirecting only the sites key pages. However two GWT (Google Webmaster Tools) is picking a massive amount of 404 areas and there has been some drop in rankings. I want to mitigate the site from further decline, and hence thought about doing a catch 301 - that is 301 redirecting the remaining pages found on the old site back to the home page, with the future aim of going through each URL one by one to redirect them to the page which is most relevant. Two questions, (1) can I do a catch 301 and if so what is the process and requirements that I have to give to the developer? (2) How do you reduce the number of increasing 404 errors from a site, despite doing 301 redirects and updating links on external linking sites. Note: The server is apache and the site is hosted on Wordpress platform. Regards, Vahe
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vahe.Arabian0 -
Why are new pages not being indexed, and old pages (now in robots.txt) remain in the index?
I currently have a site that was recently restructured, causing much of its content to be reposted, creating new URL's for each page. To avoid duplicates, all of the existing pages were added to the robots file. That said, it has now been over a week - I know Google has recrawled the site - and when I search for term X, it is stil the old page that is ranking, with the new one nowhere to be seen. I'm assuming it's a cached version, but why are so many of the old pages still appearing in the index? Furthermore, all "tags" pages (it's a Q&A site, like this one) were also added to the robots a few months ago, yet I think they are all still appearing in the index. Anyone got any ideas about why this is happening, and how I can get my new pages indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | corp08030 -
How do I set up a 301 redirect if the default settings for our web servers create multiple URLs for the same page?
How do I set up a 301 redirect if the default settings for our web servers create multiple URLs for the same page but only views it as one page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ibex0