Do I need Redirects?
-
I've recently changed my old static website to a WordPress one. I'd like to know what do do (if anything) about my old links.
For example a page on my old site was: www.iainmoran.com/corporate-magician.html - now I'm using WordPress, the url is:
www.iainmoran.com/corporate-magician/My question is, do I need to set up redirects on these old pages (which no longer exist or will Google eventually re-crawl my site and update the links themselves?
I'm using the Yoast SEO Plugin for WP and it creates a sitemap, which of course will have my new pages on. But don't want Google to penalise me for having broken links, etc.
Many thanks,
Iain.
-
Hi Iain- that's what this community is all about isn't it great! I take it the specific urls you mention above you mean is it ok to redirect to a page with a completely different name? The answer is yes if that is the new location of that page then your redirect is absolutely fine.
I have had a quick check and your redirects are setup fine well done - happy seoing
-
I've finished doing the redirects and they all seem to work
When setting them up, I've used the full url (including http://www.) for both the "source" and "target" url's.
I originally had a page: http://www.iainmoran.com/mailing-list.html, but this is now:
http://www.iainmoran.com/newsletter/Hope this was the right way to do it?
Thanks again - it's such a relief knowing there are kind people who are willing to help.
Iain.
-
No problem Iain - firstly I would still create the redirects from your old html pages to their new locations as you rightly say there will be other sites with old links. You wouldn't want potential visitors/customers thinking your site is no longer there or down because they found it via a redundant link..
Secondly I wouldn't worry about doing anything regarding the current redirects - if you type any of your pages without a trailing slash you will see you are redirected to one with a trailing slash essentially reducing duplicate content for you.
Have a look at this article as to why it is something you don't need to worry about changing - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/to-slash-or-not-to-slash.html
-
Thanks so much, Matt & Keri,
I've just installed the plugin and looked in Google to check which of my old (html) pages were indexed and amazingly it appears that there are none. It was a few weeks ago since I launched the new site, but certainly a few of the old pages appeared in Google Search results a few days ago.
I guess it's still worth doing though as there will be other sites with the old links on?
I notice that in my first SEOMoz crawl report it mentions that I have a 301 Redirect (which I didn't set up) going from: http://www.iainmoran.com/close-up-table-magic
To this: http://www.iainmoran.com/close-up-table-magic/
Is this something that I should deal with and if so, how?
The support here is amazing and I'm very grateful to you all.
Iain.
-
Hi Keri - I agree so just added the link to redirection plugin to my reply - should make Iain's life easier..
-
Hi Iain
You don't need to create your old pages again just create 301 redirects in your .htaccess file which can be done using Yoast plugin - http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/#files
Here is SEOMoz's guide to redirection - http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection
Here is a redirection plugin for Wordpress just enter old url and new one you want it to point to and it will do the work for you - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/
-
I'd suggest the redirection plugin for Wordpress. You can easily redirect the missing pages to the correct pages without having to create any pages. It also logs 404s for you, and you can create redirects from the 404 log
-
Thanks Matt,
These pages no longer exist on my server so I should create the pages again - each page just having the redirect code that goes to the new version of each page?
Thank you,
Iain.
-
If you have content that is indexed in Google and has moved to a new location due to a site change such as this then I would recommend that you place 301 redirects from your old pages to the new corresponding ones..
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
-
Redirect Chain Issue
I just found I'm having a redirect chain issue for http://ifixappliancesla.com (301 Moved Permanently). According to Moz, "Your page is redirecting to a page that is redirecting to a page that is redirecting to a page... and so on" These are the pages involved: 301 Moved Permanently
Technical SEO | | VELV
http://ifixappliancesla.com
https://ifixappliancesla.com https://www.ifixappliancesla.com/ This is what Yoast support told me: "The redirect adds the https and then the www, ending at: https://www.ifixappliancesla.com/. You want all variants of your site's domain to end up at: https://www.ifixappliancesla.com/ " - which is totally true. But I would also like not to have the redirect chain issue! Could you please give me an advise on how to properly redirect my pages so I don't have that issue anymore?0 -
Redirect and ranking issue
Hi there - was wondering whether someone might be able to help. For a period of a day and a half, all the traffic to our website's blog articles were mistakenly being redirected to our homepage. A number of these articles ranked in the top 5 in Google worldwide for their targeted keywords, so this was a considerable amount of organic traffic that was instantly being redirected. It was a strange site glitch and our web team rectified the error, but now all these articles have disappeared from Google rankings (not visible anywhere in the first five pages). I'm presuming this must be linked to this redirect issue - we've been advised to wait and see whether Google restores these rankings, but I'm still concerned as to whether this represents a more serious problem? We have re-indexed the pages we are most concerned about, but am not sure whether there is anything else obvious we should think to do. If anyone has any thoughts, I'd be happy to hear them!
Technical SEO | | rwat0 -
SSL redirect issue
Hi guys, I have a site that has some internal pages with SSL. Recently i noticed that if i put https://mydomain.com, this URL is accessible but all the design is messed up. My site is on wordpress and i use "redirection" plugin for all the 301 redirect. So i decided to add a new 301 redirect from https://mydomain.com to my actual URL version of home page http://mydomain.com. After doing that, my home page doesn't load at all. Does anybody know what happens? Thank you for advice!
Technical SEO | | odmsoft0 -
Rebranding / Redirecting
Hi I have a client who wants to re-brand their shopify clothing store under new domain name. Whilst still a clothing store its going to have different department structure and product pages and will hence be a different store/site. Is there anyway to pass any of the history/authority of existing site to the new one such as 301 redirecting the top level pages of existing site to nearest equivalent pages of new site etc or best to just redirect the old site domain to the new ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Geo-Redirection
Our client has two almost identical sites targeting: Australia (www.mysite.com.au) Rest of World (www.mysite.com) Currently they have splash page on www.mysite.com asking users to select: Australia Rest of World (redirects to: www.mysite.com/home) I'm thinking they should get rid of slash page and simply auto detect if user on www.mysite.com is based in Australia and serve a message "Do you want to visit our .com.au site. It's not helped by the fact the .com site appears to get served ahead of .com.au iin australia as both sites are hosted in US. Looking to change this! Thanks in advance for your help!
Technical SEO | | steermoz70 -
Redirect not picking up any link juice
Hi, We recently had a domain name change, as we had an established site we had all pages redirected to the new domain. This was over a month ago but despite the redirect SEOmoz doesn't recognise any links to and from the site. Is this due to simply time duration and SEOmoz can't pick up on any redirected info, or could there be a problem with the redirect? Thanks, Adam
Technical SEO | | adamgthorndike0 -
Redirection in two phases
Hi, One of my client want a website revamp in two phases. The first phase would be to move the CMS from Sharepoint to Drupal keeping the same content and URLs but the page extension will change (it could become php or just the name of the page without any extension) The second phase will be a content revamp with URL change. The first phase will last 3 weeks and then we will push the second phase with the new content and the new URL. Some shortcuts to make it a more readable: old url = OURL old url with new extension = OURLEX new URL = NURL My problem is how can I manage the redirections. Should I: Phase 1: create one rule that will redirect all the OURL to the OURLEX Phase 2: keep the rule I created in phase 1 and add rules for OURLEX to NURL Or Phase 1: create one rule that will redirect all the OURL to the OURLEX Phase 2: keep the rule I created in phase 1 and add redirect OURL to NURL Or Phase 1: create one rule that will redirect all the OURL to the OURLEX Phase 2: remove the rule I created in phase 1 and add redirect OURL to NURL Or Phase 1: create a rules for each OURL that will redirect all the pages to OURLEX Phase 2: remove the rules I created in phase 1 and redirect the OURL to NURL Or Phase 1: create a rules for each OURL that will redirect all the pages to the OURLEX Phase 2: keep the rules I created in phase 1 and add rules to redirect the OURLEX to the NURL Or something else you think is better Difficult to explain, let me know if it's understandable. Thanks for you help! GaB
Technical SEO | | Pherogab0 -
Video Sitemaps - Clarification Needed
I'm trying to make sense of video sitemaps so I can get one up and going but the set up seems unclear. We currently have 7 videos created and up on Youtube. I've got them embedded on the site to a "Video" landing page as well as having these product demo videos embedded on appropriate product detail pages. So when setting up the video sitemap it looks like I'll be using the video:player_loctag as opposed to video:content_locbecause I'm not linking to the file itself but rather a page it's hosted on. Correct? Additionally I'm adding the product detail page url here, not Youtube right? Lastly, do I need to insert an autoplay piece on the videos on the product detail page? I feel that would be an annoying user experience.</video:content_loc></video:player_loc> So part of my sitemap might look like this... <video:player_loc allow_embed="yes" autoplay="ap=[?]">http://website/ProductDetailURL</video:player_loc>
Technical SEO | | dgmiles0