Redirect Chains - Accept the 301 chain or link from the original page??
-
Hi everyone,
I have a client that re-launched his site and it's gone from 100 pages to 1000 (new languages/increased product pages etc)
We've used 301's to map the old site to the new database driven site. BUT the new site is creating extremely long URL's:
e.g. www.example.com/example_example_example/example_example_example_example
Obviously I want to change these URL's:
THE PROBLEM.....
I am worried about the Chain Redirects. I know two 301 redirects is okay (although it's not great), but I wonder if there is an alternative:
When I've implemented the new URL structure the chain will look like this:
www.oldsite.com 301 redirects to www.newsitewithdodgyurls.com which then 301 redirects to www.mynewsitewithgreaturls.com
Seeing as the new site has only been live for a month, and hasn't really gained many external links, should I:
301 from the original site (www.oldsite.com) straight to the new site (www.mynewsitewithgreaturls.com)? If so, what would I do with the pages that I have not redirected? Let them 404?
OR
Leave the 301 chain in place?
Your advice, and any other suggestions would be much appreciated
Thanks
-
Thought in general you could use canonical tag cross domain too http://moz.com/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks. I've confused the issue slightly. All these changes have been made on the same domain. It's only the URL structure that is changing. (sorry the examples I've used say something very different to that).
Your logic of finding mapping methods of redirecting is a solid plan though. I will work with the developer to implement it. And for anything I cant find logic for I will either 301 redirect or rel=canonical it.
Thanks again. That's hugely helpful.
-
Solution could therefore be to implement the rel=canonical tag on the intermediary site URL's pointing to the new site URL's
No.
The canonical tag can only be used within a domain.
Since you have determined the URL structure will change, I would recommend finding a logic that would apply to all URLs so you can map from the old site to the new one. Even if each logic piece only applied to 10% of the site, then you can map everything over in a total of 10 redirects.
If your current sites URL is www.oldsite.com/product1 and the new site URL is www.newsite.com/retail/us/stores/items/products/1 you can still use logic to make the conversion IF this same logic can be applied to all, or a worthwhile percentage, of the site.
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks very much for responding in such detail, that's awesome.
Yeah, I think I'm abusing the 404 page a little. The vast majority of the thousand pages on the site will still exist but will be on different URL's (duplicate content ALERT!)
That as you rightly say could cause a problem for people landing on the site, and for duplicate content.
SO...
I don't want to do the thousands of individual redirects due to server load and potential penalties
Solution could therefore be to implement the rel=canonical tag on the intermediary site URL's pointing to the new site URL's, so although the pages aren't de-indexed, the new site URL's will soon be in a dominant position over the intermediary URL's in the serp's.
What do you reckon?
-
Hi James. Please allow me to offer some clarifications:
A. server speed- too many 301 redirects is going to put an unnecessary load on the server and reduce speed =BAD
The concern is HOW the redirects are made. If your client has a URL www.oldsite.com, and he moves his entire 10k page site to a new URL, www.newsite.com, and he keeps his URL structure the same at the new site, then the entire re-direct can be done in a single line. In this case there is absolutely no additional load on the server.
Alternatively, if the new site structure is such that hundreds of rules need to be written to properly complete the re-directs, then yes, your speed can be impacted as each request requires the server to iterate through hundreds of lines of code to seek a match.
You shared there would be a change to the URL structure. Your 301 logic would depend on if the change follows a logical pattern to where a regex mapping can be created in a few rules.
B. being penalised- too many 301 redirects can be viewed as aggressive PR sculpting and your 301's can be devalued
C. Avoiding 301 redirect chains- Matt Cutt's interview with Rand in 2010 said 301 chains are not a good thing as a general rule
This refers to chain 301s, a practice that I do not use and would never advise. Go to the original site and ensure each page is properly directed to it's final location.
You can redirect all 100k pages of site A to site B and that would not be considered "too many redirects" nor page sculpting. When you re-direct from site A to site X to site Y to site Z then to site B (the final destination), that would be considered too many re-directs. This could happen even if the re-directs were within the same couple of sites. Even if the re-directs all worked, each hop is a leak in the link juice pipeline.
404's are not necessarily a bad thing
I agree, but a 301 is far superior IF you are keeping the content.
Let's say someone is looking for an article on the 1982 Corvette Stingray. He locates a search result, clicks on it and is taken to the article on your site. He is a happy search engine user, and now a happy visitor on your site. Everyone wins.
Using the same example, the person gets a 404 page on your site. There is an extremely high chance the user will simply return to Google and move on to the next result. Everyone looses.
404s should be used for content when it is highly unlikely a user will ever look for it in a search result OR if you no longer have the content. You would never want to 404 a link when you still have the content and know where it is located.
With all of the above noted, I agree with your plan. The pages with no value, meaning the pages are not searched for or you no longer have the content, can 404.
-
Hi guys, thank you both for your responses.
I don't think I framed my question correctly though. The 301 redirect issues I am worried about are:
A. server speed- too many 301 redirects is going to put an unnecessary load on the server and reduce speed =BAD
B. being penalised- too many 301 redirects can be viewed as aggressive PR sculpting and your 301's can be devalued )(see here) =BAD
C. Avoiding 301 redirect chains- Matt Cutt's interview with Rand in 2010 said 301 chains are not a good thing as a general rule (no need to watch video, it's in the text below) = BAD
SO....
Ryan K, I agree with you in your decision to direct from old site direct to new site. However, 404's are not necessarily a bad thing (see google's stance)
Ryan P, I agree with your suggestion of a sitemap
** So my plan as far as I see it is this:**
1. 301 redirect all the original site (www.oldsite.com) pages to the new URL's at (www.mynewsitewithgreaturls.com)
2. Any pages on the intermediary site (www.newsitewithdodgyurls.com) that have gained backlinks 301 them to the new site aswell
3. Let pages on the intermediary site with no SEO value 404
4. Create a prioritised sitemap (as per Ryan P's suggestion)
This solves the problem on chaining 301 redirects, it reduces the load on the server, and it avoids penalisation due to too many 301's
That's how I see it going down anyway. Would love to hear if you think that's the right plan of action.
Anyone else feel free to chip in aswell!!
-
With the addition of a sitemap specifying only the great URLs and rel=canonical on those pages you should have the situation cleaned up in a tidy way. It's not uncommon to have to redirect from a few older sources as a website ages.
-
I think the correct thing to do is pretty clear.
301 the pages from the original site to their new URLs directly just as you suggested.
what would I do with the pages that I have not redirected? Let them 404?
The right thing to do is redirect them properly. Why would you leave any pages as a dead end 404?
How much time and resources do you have available for this project. That answer should be balanced with other factors:
Are the existing links worth the effort? Is this an older site with high quality links?
What is your SEO rank worth? Is the site's sales dependent on SERP? Since you are posting here, I would assume the answer is yes.
With only 100 pages involved, I would do whatever it takes to ensure each page is properly redirected to the appropriate page on the new site.
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
-
301 redirect recovery
Hello Please understand that English is poor. I used to run a site called A This time, I am running a site called B. I need to set up a temporary 302 redirect from A to B
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jinseok
I accidentally set a 301 redirect Site A has many spam links
For now I have removed the 301 redirect source to B. Will A's spam links affect site B?
For your reference, Site B is putting a lot of effort into SEO. Help me.0 -
Several 301 Redirects to Same Page
Hi, I have 3 Pages we won't use anymore in our website. Let's call them url A, url B and url C. To keep their SEO strength on our domain, I've though about redirecting all of them to url D. For what I understand, when 301 redirecting, about 85-90% of the link SEO juice is passed. Then, if I redirect 3 URLs to the same page... does url D receive all the link SEO juices for URLs added up? (approximately)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading1
e.g. future url D juice = 100% current url D juice + 85% url A juice + 85% url B juice + 85% url C juice Is this the best practice, or is there a better way? Cheers,0 -
Should I remove pages to concentrate link juice?
So our site is database powered and used to have up to 50K pages in google index 3 years ago. After re-design that number was brought down to about 12K currently. Legacy URLs that are now generating 404 have mostly been redirected to appropriate pages (some 13K 301 redirects currently). Trafficked content accounts for about 2K URLs in the end so my question is should I in context of concentrating link juice to most valuable pages: remove non-important / least trafficked pages from site and just have them show 404 no-index non-important / least trafficked pages from site but still have them visible 1 or 2 above plus remove from index via Webmaster Tools none of the above but rather something else? Thanks for any insights/advice!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StratosJets0 -
Rel Canonical Link on the Canonical Page
Is there a problem with placing a rel=canonical link on the canonical page - in addition to the duplicate pages? For example, would that create create an endless loop where the canonical page keeps referring to itself? Two examples that are troubling me are: My home site is www.1099pro.com which is exactly the same as www.1099pro.com/index.asp (all updates to the home page are made by updating the index.asp page). I want www.1099pro.com/index.asp to have the rel=canonical link to point to my standard homepage www.1099pro.com but any update that I make on the index page is automatically incorporated into www.1099pro.com as well. I don't have access to my hosting web server and any updates I make have to be done to the specific landing pages/templates. I am also creating a new website that could possible have pages with duplicate content in the future. I would like to already include the rel=canonical link on the standard canonical page even though there is not duplicate content yet. Any help really would be appreciated. I've read a ton of articles on the subject but none really define whether or not it is ok to have the rel=canonical link on both the canonical page and the duplicate pages. The closest explanation was in a MOZ article that it was ok but the answer was fuzzy. -Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stew2220 -
redirect 404 pages to homepage
Hello, I'm puting a new website on a existing domain. In order to not loose the links that point to the varios old url I would like to redirect them to homepage. The old website was a mess as there was no seo and the pages didn't target any keywords. Thats why I would like to redirect all links to home. What do you think is the best way to do this ? I tried to ad this in the .htaccess but it's not working; ErrorDocument 404 /index.php Con you tell me how it exacly look? Now the hole file is like this: @package Joomla @copyright Copyright (C) 2005 - 2012 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved. @license GNU General Public License version 2 or later; see LICENSE.txt READ THIS COMPLETELY IF YOU CHOOSE TO USE THIS FILE! The line just below this section: 'Options +FollowSymLinks' may cause problems with some server configurations. It is required for use of mod_rewrite, but may already be set by your server administrator in a way that dissallows changing it in your .htaccess file. If using it causes your server to error out, comment it out (add # to beginning of line), reload your site in your browser and test your sef url's. If they work, it has been set by your server administrator and you do not need it set here. Can be commented out if causes errors, see notes above. Options +FollowSymLinks Mod_rewrite in use. RewriteEngine On Begin - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits. If you experience problems on your site block out the operations listed below This attempts to block the most common type of exploit attempts to Joomla! Block out any script trying to base64_encode data within the URL. RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode[^(]([^)]) [OR] Block out any script that includes a
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | igrizo0 -
Question about 301 redirect for trailing / ?
I am cleaning up a fairly large site. Some pages have a trailing slash on the end some don't. Some of the existing backlinks built used a trailing slash in the url and some didn't. We aren't concerned with picking a particular one but just want to get one set and stick to it from now on. I am wondering, would I clean this up within the same redirect in the htaccess file that takes care of the www and non www? example RewriteEngine On
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PEnterprises
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.domain.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com$1 [L,R=301] I currently use that to redirect the www. to the non www as you can see. However here is what I was confused about. Would this code be enough to redirect ALL pages with a / to the ones without? or would I also need to add another code (so there is 2) to my htaccess like below? RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com$1 [L,R=301] RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.domain.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com$1 [L,R=301] That way, now, even the non www pages with a trailing slash will redirect to the non www without the trailing slash. Hopefully you understand what I am getting at. I just want to redirect EVERYTHING to the non www WITHOUT a / Thank you Jake0 -
Can obfuscated Javascript be used for too many links on a page?
Hi mozzers Just looking for opinions/answers on if it is ever appropriate to use obfuscated Javascript on links when a page has many links but they need to be there for usability? It seems grey/black hat to me as it shows users something different to Google (alarm bells are sounding already!) BUT if the page has many links it's losing juice which could be saved....... Any thoughts appreciated, thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TrevorJones0 -
Link anchor text: only useful for pages linked to directly or distributed across site?
As a SEO I understand that link anchor text for the focus keyword on the page linked to is very important, but I have a question which I can not find the answer to in any books or blogs, namely: does inbound anchor text 'carry over' to other pages in your site, like linkjuice? For instance, if I have a homepage focusing on keyword X and a subpage (with internal links to it) focusing on keyword Y. Does is then help to link to the homepage with keyword Y anchor texts? Will this keyword thematically 'flow through' the internal link structure and help the subpage's ranking? In a broader sense: will a diverse link anchor text profile to your homepage help all other pages in your domain rank thematically? Or is link anchor text just useful for the direct page that is linked to? All views and experiences are welcome! Kind regards, Joost van Vught
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JoostvanVught0