Permanent 301 redirects vs canonical urls?
-
Im moving a website that was .php to wordpress with a few static HTML pages. Which is better use permanent 301 redirects and delte the old pages, leave the old pages and use canonical urls and 301 redirects or something else?
-
As Ryan said, do 301's. You don't want to have the old versions up and canonical them if you don't have to.
Imagine the confusing surfers that land on something because of an old link, and then click around and end up on the new version.
-
Generally speaking, you want to 301 all the old pages to their new pages. 301 redirects are always preferred over canonicals.
I would also recommend using friendly URLs that do not end with .html or any other extension that identifies the coding technology used. This method makes migrating platforms less work and more user friendly.
-
Rand suggests the Cross-Domain Rel Canonical in his WBF vid last May: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday. Go to 4:00 into the vid and I think that is more relevant to your situation. I think the other questions are: Are these old pages ranking well for particular keywords? Do any of these pages still get recent traffic? Do any of these pages have any strong links to them? Those are the ones you want to bring with you.
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
-
Should I resubmit a 301 redirected domain in Webmaster Tools
We recently switched over a .com site to a new server. The .com site had a .co.uk domain redirecting to it previously, but when the switchover happened, the .co.uk was forgotten about. We have now realised what has happened, but not before taking a hit with our rankings. The .co.uk is still indexed in Google and now that we have sorted the redirects they are pointing to the right places. My question now; is there anything further I need to do? I know that the .co.uk will soon be removed from the SERPs, but I just want to make sure I haven't forgotten anything.
Technical SEO | | Ben_Malkin_Develo0 -
DNS vs IIS redirection
I'm working on a project where a site has gone through a rebrand and is therefore also moving to a new domain name. Some pages have been merged on the new site so it's not a lift and shift job and so I'm writing up a redirect plan. Their IT dept have asked if we want redirects done by DNS redirect or IIS redirect. Which one will allow us to have redirects on a page level and not a domain level? I think IIS may be the right route but would love your thoughts on this please.
Technical SEO | | Marketing_Today1 -
Moving Blog and 301 Redirect Advice
Hello Moz Community, We recently moved our blog from its own domain to a directory on our website. We do not plan on moving over all the old blog posts because a majority most of them are based on events or time-sensitive information that has passed. We need advice on what to do with all of the old blog URL's? Should we just 301 all of them to the new blog directory on our website (www.domain.com/blog)? Should we take the time to move over all the old blog content and put the appropriate 301's in place? Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Technical SEO | | All-Star-Vacation-Homes
Best,
Rich0 -
Redirect everything from a certain url
I have a new domain (www.newdomain.com) and and an old domain (www.olddomain.com). Currently both domains are pointing (via dns nameserves) at the new site. I want to 301 everything that comes from the www.oldsite.com to www.newsite.com. I've used this htaccess code RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.newsite.com$
Technical SEO | | EclipseLegal
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newsite.com/$1 [R=301,L] Which works fine and redirects if someone visits www.olddomain.com but I want it to cover everything from the old domain such as www.olddomain.com/archives/article1/ etc. So if any subpages etc are visited from the old domain its redirected to the new domain. Could someone point me in the right direction? Thanks0 -
301 Redirect Properly To Keep the Juice
I have a bunch of WP Blogs and was thinking of taking all linkjuice from these to my main money site. The most of the other WP Blogs is hosted at godaddy.com (domain and site) and I know they have a URL Redirects page in site manager but I`m not sure this is the right way to go. Also I wonder some of these sites have hundreds of blogposts there is no way I can "re-create" those on the money site but I am sure that is not a must-thing to do in order to keep the "juice" right or wrong? Last but not least, I was wondering if you think it would be best to redirect the sites to relevant pages on money sites. For instance if i had a domain called cheap-ties.com with 100 blogposts about this and on money site a webshop with a category called ties, should redirect to this or to main domain or doesnt it matter?
Technical SEO | | fAgBxa8b0 -
301 Redirect Domain or 301 Redirect Domain + Interior Pages
Hello - My company acquired another company in our industry and our IT team immediately set up the acquired companies domain name as a an alias to our site. This created a duplicate version of our website under another domain name and Google started ranking interior pages from the aliased acquired site for several top keywords that were previously held by our real site. Should we 301 redirect just the top level domain name of the acquired site to the real site or 301 redirect the top level domain name and the interior pages on the acquired site to help ensure that our real domain will take back the rankings it once had? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Room2140 -
301 redirects twice
We currently have some 301 redirects set up on our site however sometimes a page will redirect twice before reaching the final location. Is this OK from an SEO perspective to have a page redirect twice or should we concentrate on reducing it to one?
Technical SEO | | JohnHillman0 -
Rel canonical or 301 the Index Page?
Still a bit confused on best practice for /index.php showing up as duplicate for www.mysite.com. What do I need to do and How?
Technical SEO | | bozzie3110