301 rediects - weird characters
-
Hi,
Just cleaning up some 404 errors in my site in GWT and noticed a couple of external links pointing at me that are wrong.
Basically they are from a couple of DIY forum sites (I've not put these links in place myself they are 100% natural) and it appears that the owners of the forums amend the links (inserting characters into link) so they are not quite right.
How would I go about redirecting the following -
www.example.co.uk/blueberry_pie.htm
Whatever I try doesn't work and I always end up with a 404!
Cheers
J -
So was it escaping the special characters that did the trick, Ted?
-
Got it working! Should have cleared my cache first!
Cheers
Ted
-
Hi Paul,
Got it working, should have cleared my cache first! Tried Fetch as Google and it works!
Thanks for your help!
Ted
-
Are you writing the redirects directly into an htaccess file, Teddi? Or into a plugin like WordPress's Redirection plugin?
-
Hi Paul
Just tried and it didn't work, when looking in the html code the link appears as the following
http://www.example.co.uk/blue<u>berry_pie.htm
Would I stick the '' in before each of the % signs?
Cheers
T -
Where are you putting the redirect? The following code should work in your .htaccess file, regardless of the special character:
redirect 301 /blueberry_pie.htm http://www.example.com/new-url.htm
-
Thanks text marketing, the question is how as because of the strange within the link it does not seem to work when I set up the 301 redirect.
-
You're going to need to escape the unusual characters in the URL in order to redirect them, Teddi.
When writing redirects, characters like < and > have special meaning as Regular Expression characters, so your server is trying to process those characters as their special regex functions, instead of just being plain old characters.
The way to turn them back into regular old characters is to place a "****" in front of the special characters.
So... the URL you are trying to redirect should be written as
www.example.co.uk/blue<u>berry_pie.htm</u>
Try that & let me know if it solves your problem.
Paul
-
If you want to get the "SEO juice" from those pages that link to you, you can simple set up a 301 redirect to the page it's supposed to be pointed to. That should work just fine!
Hope that helps!
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
-
Site has 302 redirects for HTTP to HTTPS when it should be 301
Hey all, In the latest Moz crawl, certain pages on our website have shown as having 302 redirects for the http to https, but not all. There should be a 301 solution, but wanted to see if anyone had any advice or guidance. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Julzseo1 -
Will Multiple 301's to the Same URL Cause Issues?
Hey Everyone, We have a client (I don't have permission to disclose) that has just attempted to create better URL's for their site, per our direction. In the process, their website platform kind of took over their renaming attempts and instead of creating the clean, short, descriptive URLs we all wanted, they got convoluted, longer URLs. This all happened within the past 3 or 4 days. So, they went out and got an add-on that's going to help them create better URL's. In the meantime, they now have the original page/URL plus two new ones for a total of three. No 301's have been setup yet. When they create the new and (hopefully) improved URL tomorrow, will it hurt their rankings to have three pages redirected to the new one? Is a 301 redirect the right method for this issue or should they do something different? Thanks in advance, Kirk
On-Page Optimization | | kbates0 -
301 Redirect or landing page
Hi everyone. I'm currently doing some SEO for a client, at the moment he has some landing pages which are categorised, but the category is set as a 302 redirect. I have a dilemma whether to 301 redirect to the landing page or make a page for each category. The link structure is as follows - http://examplesite.co.uk/products/fire/company-1/product/ so currently this is set as a 302 redirect - http://examplesite.co.uk/products/fire/company-1/ Do I make this page a category page and link the page to the children with some on-page optimisation or 301 redirect it?
On-Page Optimization | | Unbranded_Lee0 -
How to 301 redirect, without access to .htaccess and to a new domain
There are few ways to do this and I would like to ask other Mozzers if they have found the best way. We have a site .co.uk and are moving it back to .com. However we do not have any access to the site folders for .co.uk. (We have to move it anyway as our provider is withdrawing their service). We have built our URL 301 redirect file and it is ready to go, but how to impliment it? We can repoint .co.uk to another site, and then redirect all traffic for each URL but this is quite messy, or just forget trying to 301 each page and just rediect the whole site.
On-Page Optimization | | BruceA
the .com has more authority already, but we ready do not want to frustrate visitors who are using a link to reach a product, only to find they hit our homepage and not the product. Your thoughts would be very welcome or other ideas Bruce0 -
Is there a recommended character limit for alt text tags?
I've searched around for a maximum number of characters to use when writing alt tags, but not seeing anything more than "don't keyword stuff." Is there a recommended number of characters?
On-Page Optimization | | KimCalvert0 -
301 redirect www.brandname.com to www.brandname-keyword.com
It seems I've been reading about 301 for hours now, but I still didn't find an answer to my question, so I'm hoping someone can help me out here. I'm starting a new webshop which is relaunching a semi known brand within its specific niche, say kids toys. Now my question is - since the brand name is relatively known and it is only 5 letters short, the website will be www.xxxxx.com. However the brand name itself doesn't say anything about the products we sell, so I was thinking to buy www.xxxxx-toys.com and 301 redirect www.xxxxx.com to this new site, but still use the shorter version in all marketing material since it's a lot easier to type and remember. Apparently Google doesn't give extra juice to sites with keywords in the domain name anymore (?) but it would still say something about site to new customers unaware of the brand name. Any advice? 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | JaneVO0 -
Is it ok to use encoded special characters in meta titles?
I've read blog posts stating that encoding special characters in title tags is both ok and not ok. Any definitive answer out there? Do the extra characters from adding encoding count towards the total number of characters that Google displays in SERPs? Or do they just count as one character?
On-Page Optimization | | BostonWright0 -
Use 301 redirects when deleting old products?
I'm removing old products (wines) from my site, and I've been using 301 redirects for each product page back to the winery page. My question is, am I using best practice? I want people who search for these now nonexistent products to go to the winery page where they will see what is now available. But does google approve? I've also tried leaving the product's page intact but saying that it is no longer available and putting a link in the text that points to the winery page. Which is better, in the eyes of the god google? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | JeanYates0