Switching forum software - 301 redirects?
-
Hi everyone
I'm working on a successful Wordpress site that also has a forum attached. The forum currently uses YAF forum software, which requires Windows hosting.
The site owner wants to switch to Linux hosting. This is not a problem for WP, but it does mean that we'll need to transfer the forum to Xenforo or something similar that runs on Linux. We're OK with the technical side of this, but we're worried about the SEO implications.
The URL for every forum post (more than 50,000 of them) is going to change during this transfer. It seems completely impractical to 301 each of those, so should I just 301 the URLs that have inbound links? Also, what is google's algo going to think when we suddenly have ~50,000 404s?
Many thanks in advance!
J
-
Run your site through SEM Rush. It's generally pretty accurate if you need a better understanding of what pages draw traffic and for which queries. After that, it's a good idea to use your analytics tools to identify pages that draw traffic.
One really good link may be driving a ton of traffic to a specific page, but it may not necessarily rank very well. The site might lose a significant amount of referrals due to that link. So make sure to check where your referral sources go as well.
When all of that is said and done, it's time to look at links. Use a few different sources such as Webmaster Tools (Google and Bing), Majestic SEO, Ahrefs and OSE. Majestic and Ahrefs are the favorites, as far as percentage of links and freshness.
When you have the Keep and Cull list, make sure to redirect the keepers to relevant pages. If the page was about donuts, send it to the new donuts page. Don't send it to the bagels page. Google dislikes that. Blanket redirects are generally sub-optimal.
As for the culled pages, you might try to offer a useful 404 page. Something that helps them find something similar to the topic of the page that went away. When all of the dust clears, 410 the culled pages. Alternately, you can skip straight to a 410 if you're only worried about bots wasting crawl budget on a bunch of 404 results.
-
Hi Jennifer
Thanks for your thoughts. As I said this is a 50,000 post forum so I definitely won't be adding 301s for all of them.
I think this is what we'll do:
- Use OSE and the google 'site:' operator to identify the most valuable posts in the forum and 301 redirect them to the the new URL for that post
- set up a general 301 redirect to redirect all other URLs to the forum homepage '/forum/'
If anyone has any other thoughts, I'd love to hear them!
J
-
I would definitely avoid leaving a bunch of URLs as 404s. Even though it would be time consuming I would really try to 301 redirect all of the old pages to the most relevant current page. That would definitely be the best long term move. If you really can't do that you can 301 redirect all of the old forum pages to the new forum. Instead of redirecting to the most relevant post you can put them to the beginning directory of the new forum so at least they aren't receiving a 404 and can hopefully search for their issue there. If you do leave thousands of URLs with 404 errors I would continuously check Google and Bing Webmaster Tools for crawl errors. The webmaster tools will identify URLs they have crawled and found issues with and at that time I would just start fixing them one by one and redirecting to the most relevant URL. That way, over time, the URLs will eventually be corrected. Hope this helps.
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
-
Where to put 301 redirects in my Wordpress htaccess file?
I have about 25 301 redirects in my Wordpress htaccess file, that look like this: <code>Redirect301/store/index.html https://www.notesinspanish.com/store-home/</code> At the moment they are at the bottom of my htaccess file, below the usual Wordpress rewrite rules: <code># BEGIN WordPress <ifmodulemod_rewrite.c>RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L] # END WordPress</ifmodulemod_rewrite.c></code> So they are below all that. Above my WP rewrite rules I have a number of other rules from plugins (caching, ssl). Are my 301's OK where they are at the very bottom of that file? They are working, and redircting pages correctly. Should they be somewhere else? Many thanks for any help. Thanks for any help.
Technical SEO | | Benspain0 -
To 301 or not to 301?
So, to cut a long story short, on our website we have a /product page that is very similar to our homepage and doesn't really serve much of a purpose. It doesn't really fit in with the rest of the website and our directors want to get rid of it and focus our efforts on our homepage. Problem is, the /product page has a little bit of PA and links to other important pages on the website. I personally don't want to completely cut this page off. Would a 301 redirect to the homepage be a good option or would I be better off redirecting users to our course library page (Our course pages are what bring in most of our organic traffic)? Any help or other suggestions would be appreciated here! http://www.ihasco.co.uk/
Technical SEO | | iHasco1 -
Redirection in .htaccess
Hi All, The problem is with the .htaccess file I have written 301 redirection code for Apache server but once I upload .htaccess file from ftp the website is throwing 500 error. Please help as I'm new to the redirection files.
Technical SEO | | Bharath_ATZ0 -
Should I make a new URL just so it can include a target keyword, then 301 redirect the old URL?
This is for an ecommerce site, and the company I'm working with has started selling a new line of products they want to promote.Should I make a new URL just so it can include a target keyword, then 301 redirect the old URL? One of my concerns is losing a little bit of link value from redirecting. Thank you for reading!
Technical SEO | | DA20130 -
Should I do a 301 redirect
Hi Everyone, Hope you can help me out here. I have .co.uk & .ie website with similar content. On a particular section of the .co.uk website it is updated daily (Q&As, Blog posts etc) .ie does have this section but to a lesser degree, no daily updates etc, I was wondering if we should simply do a 301 redirect when someone is on the .ie website to .co.uk, it means the user is getting a much better experience however not entirely the consequences from search engines on this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Paul781 -
Is 301 redirecting all old URLS after a new site redesign to the root domain bad for SEO?
After a new site redesign ...would it hinder our rankings if we 301 redirected all old URLS that are returning 404 error codes to the root domain (home page) ? Would this be a good temporary solution until we are able to redirect the pages to the appropriate corresponding page? Thanks so much!
Technical SEO | | DCochrane0 -
Redirects
If I redirect page A to page B does page A need to exist before Google sees the redirect. Or can I just put up a redirect and delete page A. If the page doesn't need to exist: You have all your redirects in place for a website. You want this website to redirect to another website. You completely delete the website and put up the htaccess, there should be no problem with this, because the redirects are in place correct? Thanks
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
301 Single Page Redirects in IIS7?
Hey all -- I am working with a client, getting ready to make a full domain level change to a brand new domain. The existing domain has solid domain importance and trust, and the home page has a 5/10 GPR, so the transfer of all existing link juice is very important. Of course, I will be utilizing 301's to permanently redirect all existing pages to their new permanent homes. It will be a 1-1 structure, which I know is also best when possible. My question comes in specific to IIS. There is a wealth of information out there on the net regarding implementing permanent 301's using Apache and .htaccess, but nada when it comes to doing it in IIS7, which is what the client is using. For instance, today I am seeking to help them redirect 2 single pages to new destinations within the same domain, just diffferent folders. When you open up the IIS7 Control Panel (yes, with full Admin access), you can navigate to the directory, but the individual pages that I am looking to redirect with 301's do not show in IIS7, so you can't just right click on each page and choose "A redirection to a URL," etc. Any help on exactly how to redirect a single page using a permanent 301 in IIS 7 would be huge! Thanks guys!
Technical SEO | | Bandicoot0