301 redirect new site design

[Dan-Lawrence]

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

[RanjeetP]

Strange, I can! May be should try after some time

[Dan-Lawrence]

i cant open it

[Dan-Lawrence]

many thanks

[RanjeetP]

This might help - http://eliteeternity.com/mass-redirections-wordpress/

Thanks,

[Dan-Lawrence]

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

[RanjeetP]

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.

[Dan-Lawrence]

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

[RanjeetP]

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.

[Dan-Lawrence]

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

[AJPro]

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.