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
-
Old domain to new domain
Hi, A website on server A is no longer required. The owner has redirected some URLS of this website (via plugin) to his new website on server B -but not all URLS. So when I use COMMAND site:website A , I see a mixture of redirected URLS and not redirected URLS.Therefore two websites are still being indexed in some form and causing duplication. However, weirdly when I crawl with Screaming Frog I only see one URL which is 301 redirected to the new website. I would have thought I'd see lots of URLs which hadn't been redirected. How come it is different to using the site:command? Anyway, how do I move to the new website completely without the old one being indexed anymore. I thought I knew this but have read so many blogs I've confused myself! Should I: Redirect all URLS via the HTACESS file on old website on server A? There are lots of pages indexed so a lot of URLs. What if I miss some? or Point the old domain via DNS to server B and do the redirects in website B HTaccess file? This seems more sensible but does this method still retain the website rankings? Thanks for any help
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Redirect 'keyword-url' to improve ranking?
I was wondering if a good url, with a keyword in it, can help you improve the position of that certain keyword by redirecting that url to your website. To make it clear: We run the website www.terello.nl, and have the possibility to let the url www.iphonereparatie.nl (translation: iphonerepair) redirect to our website. Would this help us to rank for the keyword 'iPhone reparatie'? I hope that I made myself clear this way:) Otherwise i'm more than happy to clearify myself!
Technical SEO | | Jan-Peter0 -
Responsive web design has a crawl error of redirecting to HTTP instead of HTTPS ? is this because of the new update of google that appreciates the HTTPs more?
We at yamsafer.me are using a Repsonsive web design! A crawl errors occured which redirects the hompage to an HTTP version instead of HTTPS? Any ideas on why this happened?
Technical SEO | | Yamsafer.com0 -
Best way to redirect friendly URL in direct mail ?
Hi, When we do direct mail to our customers talking about a specific product we sell we usually put a link in the letter so the customer can go directly to the product just by typing a short link, something like:
Technical SEO | | BigJoe
www.example.com/blue-widget This link will then re-direct to:
www.example.com/shop/product/brand-name-big-blue-widget-with-green-ends-200m-50diameter.php Which we are happy with at the moment but I want to check we are doing it correctly in terms of redirects, we currently re-direct it using .htaccess like:
Redirect /blue-widget http://www.example.com/shop/product/brand-name-big-blue-widget-with-green-ends-200m-50diameter.php This re-directs it as a 302 but should it be done as a 301 ? I am not sure why we did 302's to start with but I am thinking they should be 301's, I think it might have been because the URL we were redirecting from was imaginary ? Also should we use the Redirect line in the .htaccess or should we do each one with a RewriteRule ? Thanks BigJoe0 -
Should we 301 redirect our old domain to the new domain
We have a product that when started was under the domain appnowgo.com. We've since changed the name and the domain is now knackhq.com. The latter domain doesn't rank nearly as well as the former for many of the keywords we are targeting. For example... "online database builder" and "web app builder" are two of those keywords. Obviously having app in the domain is not a bad thing but it is our old name. The question is, should we 301 the appnowgo.com domain to knackhq.com? Or should we use that better rank and just link users to knackhq.com from the appnowgo.com site until we can increase our ranking for knackhq.com? We don't plan to update the content on appnowgo.com anymore and we obviously don't want to drop off rank if at all possible. Thanks! Eric
Technical SEO | | sitestrux0 -
Does it really matter to maintain 301 redirect after de-indexing of old URLs?
Today, I was reading latest blog post on SEOmoz blog about. Uncrawled 301s - A Quick Fix for When Relaunches Go Too Well This is very interesting study about 301 & How it useful to maintain traffic. I'm working on eCommerce website and I have done similar stuff on my website. I have big confusion to manage 301 redirect. My website generates new URLs due to following actions. Re-write dynamic URLs. Re-launch entire website on different eCommerce platform. [osCommerce to Magento Commerce] Re-name category. Trasfer one product from one category to another category. I'm managing my 301 redirect with old practice. Excel sheet data from Google webmaster tools and set specific new URLs for redirect. Hoooo... Now, I have 8.5K redirect in htaccess... And, I'm thinking it's too much. Can we remove old 301 redirect from htaccess or not? This is big question for me. Because, all pages are not hyperlink on external website. Google have just de-indexed old URLs and indexed new URLs. So, Is it require to maintain 301 redirect after Google process?
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
301 redirects and Dynamic URLs
I just ran my first diagnostic and one of my primary immediate problems are duplicate titles and duplicate content. My guess it that because the root URL http://sitename.com (which has not yet been redirected to www...) has generated an entire tree of content which is identical to the tree rooted at http://www.sitename.com. QUESTION: Do I need to do a redirect simply for the root url (sitename.com -> www.sitename.com) or do I now need to develop specific 301 redirects for each of the sub-nodes/pages? ie sitename.com/?q=about-us -> www.sitename.com/?q=about-us sitename.com/?q=our-team -> www.sitename.com/?q=our-team etc.
Technical SEO | | Barrycliff680 -
Is there actual risk to having multiple URLs that frame in main url? Or is it just bad form and waste of money?
Client has many urls that just frame in the main site. It seems like a total waste of money, but if they are frames, is there an actual risk?
Technical SEO | | gravityseo0