301 redirect new site design
-
Hi
I'm just setting up some 301 redirects for a new site design about to go live.
The old site structure had some 'overview' pages in the urls (without any content) that just 302'd to a sub page.
Do i need 301 redirect these overview page urls or since they had no content theres no need and I probably shouldn't or should i ?
Also for pages that have no direct equivalent replacement is it still best to 301 to nearest relevant page or just leave it. For example a thank you page that currently shows after user submits email form wont be on new site (since message shows on form page after submission rather than new page). Should i 301 to form page or just leave it ?
Cheers
Dan
-
Strange, I can! May be should try after some time
-
i cant open it
-
many thanks
-
This might help - http://eliteeternity.com/mass-redirections-wordpress/
Thanks,
-
no the overview pages never had any content and have always been 302' which is why im changing to 301 as well as the url structure
its wordpress and just needs a csv file but i just want to know how to set up the csv file, i.e. is it just 2 columns old and new urls or do i need to add column headers etc etc ?
any advice much appreciated ?
cheers
dan
-
Dan, for the old 'overview' pages, if they were indexed or had some content anytime or if you know/feel that they have backlinks, please redirect them as well to the new url. Also, it is not good to have 302s on the URLs unless and untill there is a specific case for it which I doubt will be. Always have 301 redirects.
On bulk uploading, it depends on your CMS, right? How does it support the file format and accepts the protocol is CMS dependent thing.
-
Thanks for your comments Akhil !
Im 301'ing all content pages (yes all indexed previously)
The empty 'overview' pages had no content and were temporarily redirected to a sub page. The sub-page i have 301'd to the new url so i take it i can just leave the old 'overview' pages alone ?
Yes site has authority and is ranking pretty well for all target keywords hence why im concerned about doing the 301's correctly.
What about the csv file for bulk uploading 301's , is it as easy as i have mentioned above or do i need to do more/add more info to the file ?
All Best
Dan
-
Hey Dan - You should be adding 301 redirects if the pages are indexed. But, as a safe route you should be adding a 301 redirect since they were present on the website and can be linked from an external source as well which may lead to its indexation later.
You should redirect all such pages so as to ensure that the search engines do not find 404s on your site or probably you could block them from the robots.txt file.
Also, If the page has some authority in the search engines - authority refers to link juice, sites linking it or rankings or any traffic, best is to redirect it to the alternative or close page so as to pass the authority or if the page does not have any authority and you would want to reduce the 301 redirects on your server, block it! This call would largely depend on the page's value but in any case, do not just delete it.
-
Many Thanks Stefan
the overview page is the empty one and is 302 so presume then i can just leave it/not redirect
also if im bulk uploading 301 redirects what does one need ot do to create a csv file is it just a case of creating an excel spreadsheet & have old urls in colunm A and new in column B and then just convert to csv and upload ? or do i need to put in other details or paremeters etc etc ?
many thanks
dan
-
Hello!
I would just check in Google what pages Google has indexed. Then do redirects from those urls to the new ones. Also check what urls other sites link to and make sure those are redirected to their new urls.
For your overview pages I would redirect the empty page and and the overview page. Just in case you get traffic on both.
Non important pages (like your thank you page) I wouldn't redirect.
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
-
Forced Redirects/HTTP<>HTTPS 301 Question
Hi All, Sorry for what's about to be a long-ish question, but tl;dr: Has anyone else had experience with a 301 redirect at the server level between HTTP and HTTPS versions of a site in order to maintain accurate social media share counts? This is new to me and I'm wondering how common it is. I'm having issues with this forced redirect between HTTP/HTTPS as outlined below and am struggling to find any information that will help me to troubleshoot this or better understand the situation. If anyone has any recommendations for things to try or sources to read up on, I'd appreciate it. I'm especially concerned about any issues that this may be causing at the SEO level and the known-unknowns. A magazine I work for recently relaunched after switching platforms from Atavist to Newspack (which is run via WordPress). Since then, we've been having some issues with 301s, but they relate to new stories that are native to our new platform/CMS and have had zero URL changes. We've always used HTTPS. Basically, the preview for any post we make linking to the new site, including these new (non-migrated pages) on Facebook previews as a 301 in the title and with no image. This also overrides the social media metadata we set through Yoast Premium. I ran some of the links through the Facebook debugger and it appears that Facebook is reading these links to our site (using https) as redirects to http that then redirect to https. I was told by our tech support person on Newspack's team that this is intentional, so that Facebook will maintain accurate share counts versus separate share counts for http/https, however this forced redirect seems to be failing if we can't post our links with any metadata. (The only way to reliably fix is by adding a query parameter to each URL which, obviously, still gives us inaccurate share counts.) This is the first time I've encountered this intentional redirect thing and I've asked a few times for more information about how it's set up just for my own edification, but all I can get is that it’s something managed at the server level and is designed to prevent separate share counts for HTTP and HTTPS. Has anyone encountered this method before, and can anyone either explain it to me or point me in the direction of a resource where I can learn more about how it's configured as well as the pros and cons? I'm especially concerned about our SEO with this and how this may impact the way search engines read our site. So far, nothing's come up on scans, but I'd like to stay one step ahead of this. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | ogiovetti0 -
Building new site on new web host with concerns
Hello, I have a domain with GoDaddy and current site is hosted there as well. I want to leave my domain with GoDaddy and build a brand new site on HostGator. The current website was designed to get us started. Not any significant traffic, backlinks, or SEO. The domain is not really what I want. There are 80 pages including those that are no longer in service. The keywords are not as relevant today. Current site domain is whiterocktech.net The new site will be very much different with SEO leading the way. We have designed it yet have not opened an account yet with HostGator. In addition, we have found a shorter more appropriate domain name. Not ideal but easy to type in yet it has a dash. This site is wr-crm.com. Questions: Does it make sense to "cut bait" from the current site given the lack use? Does it make sense to build the site and still set redirects from the old domain pages to a new one? Given so little traffic, is there really an effect on SEO if we sunset the old domain? Could I strip out the old domain website and just post a message on one page to come to our new site until old domain expires? I appreciate any insights on helping me with this decision. Mike
Technical SEO | | mmcgibbony0 -
Best way to handle 301 redirects on a business directory
We work with quite a few sites that promote retail traders and feature a traders' directory with pages for each of the shops (around 500 listings in most cases). As retail strips, shops come and go all the time, so I get a lot of pages that are removed as the business is no longer present. Currently I've been doing 301 redirects to the home page of the directory if you try to access a deleted trader page, but this means a ever growing htaccess file with thousands of 301 redirects. Are we handling this the best way or is there a better way to tackle this situation?
Technical SEO | | Assemblo0 -
Redirect to a new domain and seo effects
I created a one page blogger with listing of several affiliated websites.It gained some visibility on google but it was very plain so i decided to create a wordpress more complex and fancy and to reach the top of search positions. At the moment i decided to keep the listing on blogger and add some links on the page saying "i've moved to a new website. click for more info" and it redirects to my page. But i dont get many clicks to my new site so i was thinking to maybe create a full redirect from my blogger to my wordpress or a iframe to fetch the wordpress but im afraid it may hurt my seo on my blogger. what should i do? thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | cardealpt0 -
301 redirect Question
Hi all, I have a client who has a domain lets say www.xyz.de which is redirected 301 to www.zyx.de. Now they're working on a relaunch and they want to use the www.xyz.de as their origibnal doman after that. So, at the end the www.zyx.de - which is indexed by Google - should be redirected to www.xyz.de. It vice versa. So the redirect becomes the original and the original becomes the redirect 😕 Is there anything we have to care off? Or will that run into the hell? Thanx. Seb.
Technical SEO | | TheHecksler0 -
Questions about the Sandbox and 301 Redirects
Does the sandbox still exist? What if you have a brand new URL and do a 301 redirect from another website because the name of the service business changed? Thanks for any insight and help.
Technical SEO | | SDSLaw0 -
Simple 301 redirect a subfolder to another subfolder
Hi, I have a number of sub-folders that I have to move, each of which contains a number of files. subfolder A has files a, b & c subfolder B has files d, e & f
Technical SEO | | aactive
subfolder C has files g, h & i A, B & C folders need to be X, Y & Z Will the following work? RewriteRule ^subfolder-A/* http://www.domain.com/subfolder-X/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^subfolder-B/* http://www.domain.com/subfolder-Y/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^subfolder-C/* http://www.domain.com/subfolder-Z/ [R=301,L] will this result in visitors to http://www.domain.com/subfolder-B/f.html being redirected to http://www.domain.com/subfolder-Y/f.html? All on the same domain. in reality we are talking hundreds of sub folders and thousands of files so we don't want to have to reference every file individually in the htaccess. Thanks0 -
Should a 301 from a penalised domain to a new domain be removed?
A business traded on a domain let's say example.COM which was heavily penalised due to non-removable spammy back links. Their previous SEO advised them to set up on example.CO.UK but redirected example.COM to example.CO.UK. Example.CO.UK ranks very poorly, presumably due to being 'tarred with the same brush' i.e. attributed with the ills of example.COM. Will it do any good to remove the redirect or is example.CO.UK now doomed as well?
Technical SEO | | Ewan.Kennedy1