301 redirects - one overall redirect or an individual one for each page url
-
Hi
I am working on a site that is to relaunch later on this year - is best practise for the old urls (of which there are thousands) to write a piece of code that will cover all of the urls and redirect them to the new home page or to individually redirect each url to its new counterpart on the new site. I am naturally concerned about user experience on this plus losing our Google love we currently have but am aware of the time it would take to do this individually. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks
-
Search Office Space's answer nailed it.
-
We have just done this. Not for thousands but for about 800 links.
We matched each category to category, each product type to product type. Each homepage to homepage.
For products we just redirected to the brands main page which contains all products for that brand. Once stock is sold its sold so better to redirect to the brand in case rather than to a homepage or nothing at all.
Extra work but worth it in the end I would say.
-
It might be more work, but as you point out your users would be happier to have a result that better matches their query rather than all going to a home page.
However, I do recognise the work involved here so rather than do each page 301'ed to the new equivalent I would often break the site up into categories or sections and sub-sections, so in that way the most important pages (good link profile, higher PR etc.) are linked to their exact new equivalent, while the majority get a script that redirects them to the most relevant section of the site so that the user is getting a relevant page returned for their query.
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 Redirects
Hi, We have migrated to a new domain name and I wrote my redirects as follows: Redirect 301 / http://www.healthpointe.net Redirect 301 /urgent_care_locations.shtml http://www.healthpointe.net/healthpointe-locations/ Redirect 301 /locations.shtml http://www.healthpointe.net/healthpointe-locations/ Redirect 301 /career_client_relations_rep.shtml http://www.healthpointe.net/careers/ My issue is that when I include the first redirect, which is to the main page of the website that the other redirects stop working. Any idea what the problem could be?
Technical SEO | | healthpointeseo0 -
To 301 redirect or not...
Hi guys i'd like to get your opinion on this. We currently have two sites, site A is the old one with PA44 and DA33. Site B is the new one which is going to replace site A it currently has PA37 and DA24 Our plan for the future is to shut down site A and redirect all pages using 301 to the relevant pages on side B. Currently we have some links in place for a couple of keywords on site A to site B which seems to be working great for our ranking. Now i'm wondering if this is maybe a good option, to give back links from A to B or will i pass through more link juice when redirecting everything? (ps. both are e commerce sites hosted and registred with different companies)
Technical SEO | | Immanuel0 -
My number of duplicate page title and temporary redirect warnings increased after I enabled Canonical urls. Why? Is this normal?
After receiving my first SEO moz report, I had some duplicate page titles and temporary redirects. I was told enabling Canonical urls would take of this. I enabled the Canonical URLs, but the next report showed that both of those problems had increased three fold after enabled the canonical urls! What happened?
Technical SEO | | btsseo780 -
Does it really matter to maintain 301 redirect after de-indexing of old URLs?
Today, I was reading latest blog post on SEOmoz blog about. Uncrawled 301s - A Quick Fix for When Relaunches Go Too Well This is very interesting study about 301 & How it useful to maintain traffic. I'm working on eCommerce website and I have done similar stuff on my website. I have big confusion to manage 301 redirect. My website generates new URLs due to following actions. Re-write dynamic URLs. Re-launch entire website on different eCommerce platform. [osCommerce to Magento Commerce] Re-name category. Trasfer one product from one category to another category. I'm managing my 301 redirect with old practice. Excel sheet data from Google webmaster tools and set specific new URLs for redirect. Hoooo... Now, I have 8.5K redirect in htaccess... And, I'm thinking it's too much. Can we remove old 301 redirect from htaccess or not? This is big question for me. Because, all pages are not hyperlink on external website. Google have just de-indexed old URLs and indexed new URLs. So, Is it require to maintain 301 redirect after Google process?
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
SEOMoz is indicating I have 40 pages with duplicate content, yet it doesn't list the URL's of the pages???
When I look at the Errors and Warnings on my Campaign Overview, I have a lot of "duplicate content" errors. When I view the errors/warnings SEOMoz indicates the number of pages with duplicate content, yet when I go to view them the subsequent page says no pages were found... Any ideas are greatly welcomed! Thanks Marty K.
Technical SEO | | MartinKlausmeier0 -
301 redirect from domain to home.aspx
We have been asked to look at a website and have found a 301 redirect from the domain www.domain.com to www.domain.com/home.aspx. Why would someone do this, this way round? We can't think of a good reason and are wondering if we have overlooked something? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | travelinnovations0 -
301 redirect .htaccess problem
Can anyone explain to me why this doesn't work? Redirect 301 /category/diamond-pendants/nstart/1/start/(.*) http://www.povada.com/category/pendants/nstart/1/start/$1 Im trying to replace everything after /start/ and insert it into the new url. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | 13375auc30 -
301 redirect on the root of the site
Due to some historic difficulties with our URL Rewriter, we are in the position of having the root of our site 301 redirected to another page. So the root of our site: http://www.propertylive.co.uk/ has a 301 redirect to: http://www.propertylive.co.uk/home.aspx We're aware that this isn't great and we're working to fix this completely, but what impact will this have on our SEO?
Technical SEO | | LianWard860