How can I redirect old URLs to new ones?
-
We are trying to optimize our website for search engines and one of the things we have noticed that needs to be changed are the URLs. I know how to modify the URLs but have no idea how I can get the old redirected to the new ones using 301. We have some pages ranking pretty high on Google and we can't loose this traffic.
Our website is hosted on Plesk and it was coded using Cold Fusion. I do have access to the .htaccess file.
Any help would be highly appreciated.
-
Don't forget to escape your hyphens (all of them!) with backslashes:
^pvc-cosmetic-bag-1.html
You will need to escape them before white too:
---white
-
As this URL in particular had a .html extension I thought it was easier to just create a html file and redirect it, so this one is working. But I still would like to know if i had done anything wrong because it didn't work. As most of our URLs don't have a .html extension it would be helpful to create the redirects on .htaccess
-
I just created a .html file for one of the URLs that had this extension thought the system doesn't generate htmls and it worked! Now I need to find a solution to the URLs that don't have an extension...
-
Hi, thanks for your help. The problem with this is that I don't have access to individual pages, the system will load it from the database. I think a .htaccess redirect would be the best solution, the problem is that I don't really know how to do it and how to write a redirect that would work.
Best regards
-
I have tried it but still no luck, I might have done something wrong though.
I need to urgently redirect http://www.personal-products.co.uk/pvc-cosmetic-bag-1.html to http://personal-products.co.uk/resealable-cosmetic-bags---white (I will change this URL in the future too but need it working now...)
I have tried it like this:
RewriteRule ^pvc-cosmetic-bag-1.html /resealable-cosmetic-bags---white [R=301,L]
Is there anything wrong?
Thanks!
-
Hi
maybe this article can help: http://www.quackit.com/coldfusion/tutorial/coldfusion_redirect.cfm
In ColdFusion, redirects can be done via one of two methods. The method you use will depend on the reason for the redirect.
Temporary Redirects (cflocation)
This is the most commonly used of the two - you will probably find yourself using the cflocation tag often.
A temporary redirect is typically used when you need to redirect the user to another page based on some logical rule in your program. For example, straight after they submit a form, the browser might redirect to another page.
ColdFusion includes the cflocation tag for performing temporary redirects. This actually sends HTTP headers to the user's browser indicating a 302 status code, which means "Moved Temporarily".
<cflocation url="/new_location.cfm"></cflocation>
Permanent Redirects
A permanent redirect should be used when a page no longer exists.
Permanent redirects use the 301 HTTP status code, which means, "Moved Permanently". In ColdFusion, a permanent redirect can be achieved using the cfheader tag.
<cfheader statuscode="301" statustext="Moved Permanently"><cfheader name="Location" value="http://www.quackit.com/coldfusion/tutorial"><cfabort></cfabort></cfheader></cfheader>
In case you're thinking, "but users can't see the status code anyway", that's only partially true. The 301 status code can be very useful for search engines. They will actually take notice of your 301 status code and index the correct file.
-
You could try something like this:
RewriteRule ^overnight-toiletry-packs.html /toiletry-travel-bags [R=301,L]
You need to escape the hyphens and periods... and include the switches for the 301 and specify that it's the Last rule.
Let me know how that goes - certainly share some code if you still get stuck.
-John
-
Thanks for your help!
The example would be the same as the one above, do you know what is the best way to do it??
http://personal-products.co.uk/overnight-toiletry-packs.html -> our current url
we have optimized this page to "toiletry travel bags" so i want the url to look something like this:
-
Thanks.. I got that far, but I tried few different 301 redirects and it didn't work.
One example would be this:
http://personal-products.co.uk/overnight-toiletry-packs.html -> our current url
we have optimized this page to "toiletry travel bags" so i want the url to look something like this:
http://personal-products.co.uk/toiletry-travel-bags
I can change the URL manually but I need to create a 301 redirect. Do you have any idea how I can do it? As we use a coldfusion website, the pages don't actually exist, they are all on the database.
i had tried few methods I found on google but no luck =[
-
Hey Flavia-
Check out this article on htaccess magic
http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/list-of-methods-to-redirect-users-to-different-page.html
There is a section on 301 redirects that will get you started. If you want to share any specific examples I'd be happy to help you further.
-John
-
You can do 301 redirects from the old page to the new page using .htaccess..however I would suggest you test the impact by doing it for 1-2 urls first and see if it does indeed help. The reason I am suggesting this is because when you do 301 redirects or canonical urls which also act like 301s, there's a little bit of link juice loss from the old URL. S if you have lots of websites linking to that page, you may loose a little bit of that link juice. Again, you have to do more of a risk/reward analysis and see what makes sense.
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
-
I have a question about the impact of a root domain redirect on site-wide redirects and slugs.
I have a question about the impact (if any) of site-wide redirects for DNS/hosting change purposes. I am preparing to redirect the domain for a site I manage from https://siteImanage.com to https://www.siteImanage.com. Traffic to the site currently redirects in reverse, from https://www.siteImanage.com to https://siteImanage.com. Based on my research, I understand that making this change should not affect the site’s excellent SEO as long as my canonical tags are updated and a 301 redirect is in place. But I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a potential consequence of this switch I’m not considering. Because this redirect lives at the root of all the site’s slugs and existing redirects, will it technically produce a redirect chain or a redirect loop? If it does, is that problematic? Thanks for your input!
Technical SEO | | mollykathariner_ms0 -
Can anyone tell me - in layman's terms - any SEO implications of a Netscaler redirect?
We are in the midst of exploring the best options for developing a "microsite" experience for a client and how we manage the site - subdomain vs. subdirectory... Netscaler redirect vs DNS change. We understand that a subdirectory is best for SEO purposes; however, we anticipate technical limitations when integrating the different hosting platforms and capabilities into the existing site. The proposed solutions that were provided are a netscaler redirect and/or dns changes. Any experience with these solutions?
Technical SEO | | jgrammer0 -
Concerned about Dup content between old and new website
I have an 8 year old plastic surgery website with my name in the url. I have just released a new website with a generic local plastic surgery url without my name. However my google authorship photo is appearing in listings from both sites with different URLs. So far Google is listing pages from both sites on the same google page result for similar search terms. However I am concerned that eventually I may be punished for dup content since I am the same author for both pages?
Technical SEO | | wianno1680 -
Can I Get Penalized for 301 Redirects (Too Many or In Any Scenario)?
A client of ours owns several domain names that are keyword similar to the domain they actually use to run their site. They are asking us if we should 301 redirect all of these websites to the domain they use. However, I don't want this to work against them and their site get penalized later for this. I have heard buying out competitors and redirecting their domain to yours is frowned upon and penalized when you get caught (they did not do this). We are also wondering if there is a limit as to how many domains you can 301 redirect and what type (keyword similar, misspellings, .net's, etc.) and if you are penalized after too many (i.e. >50). All of the domains in question are keyword/brand name similar only and do not exist as actual websites. We just want to do the right thing. Thank you for your help.
Technical SEO | | JCunningham0 -
How do I 301 redirect a number of pages to one page
I want to redirect all pages in /folder_A /folder_B to /folder_A/index.php. Can I just write one or two lines of code to .htaccess to do that?
Technical SEO | | Heydarian0 -
Can URL re writes fix the problem of critical content too deep in a sites structure?
Good morning from Wetherby UK 🙂 Ok imagine this scenario. You ask the developers to design a site where "offices to let" is on level two of a sites hierachy and so the URL would look like this: http://www.sandersonweatherall.co.uk/office-to-let. But Yikes when it goes live it ends up like this: http://www.sandersonweatherall.co.uk...s/residential/office-to-let Is a fix to this a URL re - write? Or is the only fix relocating the office to let content further up the site structure? Any insights welcome 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
Should I be redirecting a .gov.au domain to a .com/.com.au Marketing URL?
Hi everyone, First time post - what a great community! On a trial at the moment but will definitely be signing up to PRO. The situation I'm helping to promote an event in Australia (lets call it "myevent"). The event also goes by a nickname "myev" (which isn't searched as much as "myevent"). The event for the most part is promoted offline as www.myevent.com. As it currently stands (and appears to have been the case for a number of years), www.myevent.com and www.myevent.com.au 302 redirect to www.mylocation.gov.au/myev The event is pretty much number 1 for keywords around "my event" and "myev", despite little attention being paid to on page optimisation and issues around duplicate content which I intend to fix. The domain being indexed by Google is www.mylocation.gov.au/myev . Open site explorer stats Open Site explorer shows www.mylocation.gov.au/myev as having a strong domain authority, and hundreds of backlinks. www.myevent.com and www.myevent.com.au have domain authorities in the 20s and about 30-40 backlinks each. The conundrum I've had a chat with the IT guys running the site(s) and they mentioned they'll be switching the way the redirects work, so everything goes to www.myevent.com NOT the .gov.au URL. I've done a bit of reading on the forums and understand that 301s should be used in order to pass the juice/authority from the existing domain (in this case www.location.gov.au/mye). I understand not all of this will be passed. What I'm not sure about is which URL should be the final preferred destination. I may not have a choice - www.myevent.com has been the preferred URL for a long time - but want to know if this will affect the performance in search results if the .com.au isn't used as the final destination (even though we would be redirecting from it)? Any suggestions / ideas / help would be most appreciated. I hope this all makes sense - I'm relatively new to the whole SEO world! Best wishes and many thanks.
Technical SEO | | hergs0 -
Hosted in the Cloud, my URL is a .com how can I rank in UK SERPS?
Hi Mozzers, I have found an e-commerce SAS solution (USA based) that hosts its platform in the Cloud. Unfortunately my domain is a ,com but I wish to rank & sell within the UK. I realise I can select the UK parameters within GWT, but I am led to believe that this isnt hugely effective. Other than choosing another eCommerce platform, could anyone please assist me in identifying a solution? Thank you in advance.
Technical SEO | | eppleston0