Need some help with a tricky 301
-
I can't find anything online that deals with this issue. I have a page getting indexed by Google at mydomain.com/widgets and I don't know why. No links to it anywhere. The page it is closest to is mydomain.com/reviews/widgets and so I tried to set up a 301 to point one to the other.
The problem is each individual widget review is at mydomain.com/widgets/reviews/products/widget-name and so when I redirect /widgets to mydomain.com/reviews/widgets it also redirects each individual product to mydomain.com/reviews/widgets/reviews/products/widget-name.
Is there some way to just redirect /widgets without having it affect each product review? I cannot change URL structure either, nature of the site. Any ideas?
-
Hi Daniel,
Whenever I hear "Nothing is redirecting when I add this to the .htaccess file" I have one thought:
Is the site using Joomla, Drupal or some other CMS that will overwrite .htaccess rules externally?
Sha
-
Just not happening. I'm just not going to worry about it, thanks for your help
-
Gotcha. Try adding the rewriteengine on line directly above those two rules. That has to be present to trigger the mod_rewrite module. Hopefully that will solve the issue.
-
Yeah I took the ReweriteEngine On line out and just added the RewriteRule line in underneat that one. Although it doesn't say anywhere RewriteEngine On in the .htaccess file already, so not sure how that works.
-
Well, that's no fun. If there is already a line to initiate the rewrite engine, that 2nd 'rewriteengine on' reference could be a problem. I assume you took that out?
-
It is not working for me. Nothing is redirecting when I add this to the .htaccess file. First I added it as you suggested at the bottom of everything. Nothing happened so I added right after another line of code that was already in there that started with RewriteRule. This is the line that was already there:
RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [NC,L]
Any idea what could be going wrong? Thanks in advance!
-
Hi Daniel - Are you using htaccess to handle your redirects. I think you'll need to employ some Regular Expressions to handle what you're trying to accomplish. As a guide, here is a very nice writeup on RegEx from - where else - SEOmoz: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-seos-guide-to-regex
so, in this case, i think what you'll want is:
RewriteEngine On
**RewriteRule ^widgets/?$ reviews/widgets [NC]**so, the caret (^) ensures that the url starts with widgets, while the dollar sign ensures that the redirect rule stops there (eliminating that pesky problem you encountered with the review pages also getting redirected). The ? just means that the trailing slash is optional.Hope that helps. If this solution isn't feasible, you could always hedge with rel="canonical" on the mydomain.com/widgets page and have that point to the proper page. That will at least help with Google.-Jason
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
-
Stuck on the 2nd page of google! Help
I run a McAfee Technical Support website. I has been 2.3 months since I have been practicing seo on it. It was slick until it appeared on the second page of google. But now it doesnt rank up as it's frozen. Can i get any advices and suggestions for my website to break the 2nd page cage. My website:-** mcafee.com/activate**
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | six_figures0 -
Difficulty with Indexing Pages - Desperate for Help!
I have a website with product pages that use the same URL, but load different data based on what's passed to them with GET. I am using a Wordpress website, but all of the page information is retrieved from a database using PHP and displayed with PHP. Somehow these pages are not being indexed by Google. I have done the following: 1. Created a site map pointing to each page. 2. Defined URL parameters in Search Console for these type of pages. 3. Created a product schema using schema.org, and tested it without errors. I have requested re-indexing repeatedly and these pages and images on the pages are still not being indexed! Does anybody have any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jacleaves0 -
URL Too Long vs. 301 Redirect
We have a small number of content pages where the urls paths were setup before we started looking really hard at SEO. The paths are longer than recommended (but not super crazy IMHO) and some of the pages get a decent amount of traffic. Moz suggests updating the URLs to make them shorter but I wonder if anyone has experience with the tradeoffs here. Is it better to mark those issues to be ignored and just use good URLs going forward or would you suggest updating the URLs to something shorter and implementing a 301 redirect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | russell_ms0 -
Help... To Optimize Category Page or Not?
My question is about whether to optimize a category page or not, but it’s a rather odd situation. Here’s a bit of background to start. When we relaunched our site, about six months ago, we had primary, secondary, and tertiary categories created. A user could reach all three levels by clicking through the site. Then we decided instead of linking to the tertiary categories, that we’d turn them into filters which can be applied at the secondary level. Thus, there is not actually a direct link to the 3rd level categories on the site. An important side note, I did check and confirm they are still included in the sitemap file. My initial thoughts were to forget any further optimization of those 3rd level categories, but as it turns out we still have rankings for some of them. Now the question… Because some of these pages are ranking and are found in the sitemap, should I include them in my SEO plan to build up and optimize, or because they are no longer linked to directly on the site will they eventually fizzle out (and I shouldn’t do anything further). This is such a unique situation that I am really looking for some insight from the community. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak0 -
Help: How to optimize my duplicate category pages
Hi all My category pages will showcase the same products how do I go about optimizing these pages so they don't show up as duplicate content? Would appreciate your all feedaback! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
Guru Needed
Hello, We are interested in finding someone experienced in SEO, who is willing to take a look at my work that I am doing for my employer, on an ongoing basis. This would help me ensure that I am on the right track and we are doing the right thing. Even tough I have some knowledge with SEO, I am still novice in the field. I also have background in marketing and management. I believe by having someone to mentor, would help me to grow professionally, as I feel very passionate about SEO, but to also deliver good work to my employer. I believe someone's experience, reviews and suggestions about our campaigns can help, and I would not expect someone to give out their time freely. Therefore, if required we could talk about a financial agreement. Thank you for your time, and looking for your replies. Monica
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monicapopa1 -
404 ? 301 ? What is your opinion ?
Hi, I have a classifieds website and I am wondering about the life of a page with an ad. An announcement has therefore a limited life, so : Is a 404 pages? a 301 redirect to the section? let the content without redirection? What is your opinion? Sorry for my english, i'm french 😉 Thanks. A.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | android_lyon0 -
301 Redirect With A Message And Delay
Hello, I'd like to sell a site I own. I'd like the site to be redirected to the buyers site with a 301 redirect. But I'd like the viewer to be informed that the site was purchased by this company and they will be redirect in 5 seconds.I'd like for the redirect to be a complete 301 and pass as much linklove as possible. Are you familiar with how to do this? Thanks, Tyler
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tylerfraser0