Redirecting a redirect - thoughts?
-
Hi! A client has just had 14k 404s pop up in his WMT. I think this is because a page that they redirected to had moved. My question is, can I clean these up by redirecting the page the original redirect was one? If so, will it have any negative impact?
-
It is usually better to redirect one to one instead of redirecting from a redirect. Where possible it should be avoided because eventually, if you chain too many redirects to redirects, Google will stop caring. There will be no negative impact from changing an old redirect to point at a more relevant page. You may want to double-check that the level of traffic and inbound links pointing to the page is worth going through the trouble of the 301 instead of letting it 404. Sometimes it can be better to just let a page die if no one is clicking through on it.
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
-
Is an iframe redirect on the same Domain bad for SEO
Good morning. We have a vendor that has created a landing page with content that we want to use. Because of the way we built the site, the only way to use the content is to create an i-frame. The i-frame is re-directingon the same Domain. Would we benefit from the SEO Content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jdenbo_edf0 -
301 redirect hops from non-https and www
It's best practice to minimize the amount of 301 redirect hops. Ideally only one redirect hop. It's also best practice to 301 redirect (or at least canonical) your non-https and/or your non-www (or www) to the canonical protocol/subdomain. The simplest (and possibly the most common) way to implement canonical protocol/subdomain redirects is through a load balancer or before your app processes the request. Both of which will just blanket 301 to the canonical domain/protocol regardless if the path exists or not In which case, you could have: Two hops. i.e. hop #1 http://example.com/foo to https://example.com/foo, hop #2 https://example.com/foo to https://example.com/bar 301 to a 404. Let's say https://example.com/dog never existed, but somebody for whatever reason linked to it (maybe a typo). If I request https://www.example.com/dog, the load balancer would 301 to a 404 page. Either scenario above should be fairly rare. However, you can't control how people link to you. Should I care about either above scenario? I could have my app attempt to check if the page exists before forwarding, but that code could be complicated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dsbud0 -
(Urgent) losing traffic after 301 redirect
We face a seo problem of losing traffic after 301 redirect.We have used 301 redirect from a sub-domain url to main domain, after a few month, we discovered that the traffic in google is dropped 40% as well as yahoo dropped 50% without reason, we have updated sitemap already, but we cannot find any reason for the traffic dropped till now..The original url (more then 5000 links)https://app.example.com/ebook Redirected Urlhttps://www.example.com/ebookThank you for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yukung0 -
Redirection not working
http://elmanarah.com/ to http://www.elmanarah.com/ I have mistakenly created 5 databases for one wordpress installation.In order to get rid of them I mistakenly even deleted the right one.Now created the new one but the URL is showing with www Even now if It type in http://elmanarah.com/ it sends me to http://www.elmanarah.com/ I also check in URL D.A and P.A in OSE it shows like I have redirected it fine.Can anyone Check in and guide me either I have done it right and It pass on my previous work effort or it was total loss for me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | csfarnsworth0 -
How to decide on which site to 301 redirect
Hi there I'd like your opinions please! My client currently has their website at not-very-good-url.it which has a really good link profile they also have duplicate sites at: much-better-brand-name-url.it and much-better-brand-name-url.com but both these other sites have only a handful of links in. How important do you think a better brand url is? And therefore do you think it would be better to 301 to a better brand URL and take the risk that the link profile will get hit? Or leave the main site where it is and 301 the other two to it? Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chammy0 -
New to SEO. How do I set up a 301 Redirect? What Else should I do?
Hello, I am new to web design. I designed my own site using dreamweaver and did all my seo on my own, I read a few books. Long story short I rank on the bottom of page 1 just after 3 months and the keywords are highly competitive. Now, I am up against some heavy hitters from national brands versus my local real estate site. I don't have a 301 redirect, and am not sure what else I should be doing to get my site ranked higher. I have back links from various sites, ( non-paid ) so it's what others call white hat. When I grade my site on website grader I get a great score versus the sites that are higher than me. I'm guessing my sites age is an issue. I guess I'm looking for some guidance. Thank you all, Here is my site to view. http://www.bronxpad.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
How long do 301 redirects have to stay in place?
For a large retail site we have plenty of "old" pages that are 2-3 years old and still have 301 redirects to a new page. After a search engine has recognized a 301 redirect and dropped the "Old" URL from the index and started displaying the "New" URL, is it safe to delete that old page and thus remove the 301 redirect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOmoxy0 -
Redirect Help - Domain Change and Website Redesign
Hi there, I've redesigned a website for a client, but we are also changing domains and I'm trying to figure out the best way to set up the redirects from their old domain to the new one. 95% of their search engine traffic originally came through brand related keywords that landed on their homepage, and most of the remaining 15% landed on 3 other pages. The new site has pages to replace these 3 main SEO pages, and I'm about to set 301 redirects from their old domain, but I can't figure out the quickest/best way to do it. Is it possible to set up a specific redirect for the 4 main pages (Home + plus the 3 others) then a "catch all" type of thing for the rest of the pages, that redirect either to the homepage, or some sort of "Check out our new Site" landing page. How do you do this, or is there a better way to set it up? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | timscullin0