301 Clean-Up - Best Practices & Procedure?
-
Hello Again,
I have taken over managing a website for about 2 months and have fixed a whole heap of problems. Im now turning my attention to the URL rewrites as there are ALOT of them. I have fixed the most problematic offenders that were blocking products and all sorts of mischief but I now want to clean them up.
The website is on Magento, and there are 240 custom URL rewrites.
Question 1: Am i correct that I should edit the links on my website so that they link directly to the new page instead of utilising the re-direct for best SEO results.
Question 2: If my website doesn't utilise the URL rewrite (fixed in question 1) its only purpose is to transfer link juice from any external link the page had before. If this page didnt have any external inbound links then I can delete the URL rewrite as it serves no purpose.
Question 3: If Q1 and Q2 are correct, what is the quickest way to check the inbound links to a page quickly so I can make a quick decision on if i should remove the re-write.
Many Thanks in advance!
-
Thank you ATP for your answer
+1 thumbs up -
Answer 1 - Yes, you are correct. Update internal links. This is best practice.
Answer 2 - No, this is not correct. If users have a URL stored in a bookmark or someone is linking to it with javascript, in an email, or some way that would not show up in a backlink report the redirect would get them to the right page. Redirects are for more than just passing page-rank.
Answer 3 - Use the Moz toolbar for this on a page-by-page basis, or use OSE for the site as a whole. You should also check Google Webmaster Tools, as they have a fresher database than OSE and may know of new links, or ones that OSE didn't catch.
-
From my understanding it is a disadvantage Adam,
Although a 301 passes link juice it only passes a percentage of it, a little is lost along the way. Also redirects increase the amount of time needed for a page to load after the click as it has to walk down a longer path to reach its destination. Im sure I read somewhere (cant find the source sorry) that too many redirects and redirect "chains" can negatively impact your ranking but it likes redirects that genuinely offer replacement relevant content.
If it were me I would at the very least
Redirect: /this-is-it/ -> /how-nice/ removing a step in that path
Keep: /yep-yep/ -> /how-nice/Then change all links on your website point to /this-is-it/ and /yep-yep/ to /how-nice/
If possible get any backlinks changed to the new url also. -
I would like to add a question to the previous ones I hope that ATP won't mind, Is it a disadvantage in a SEO perspective to have 301-s that for example set for 3 pages and the previous 1 has been deleted already?
Example: /this-is-it/ (deleted old original page) --301--> /yep-yep/ --301--> /how-nice/ (current page)
Cheers,
Adam -
Hi There,
If I understand the first question correctly, Yes you should point all of your links to your new URL/page. 301 the old page and if there are any backlinks ask the webmaster of that page to point to the new URL. There are a few websites that allow you to check backlinks. I like MOZ Open Site Explorer but i've also used Ahrefs.
I hope this helps! Let me know if you have anymore questions.
Be well,
Alex Brown
Del Mar Fans and Lighting
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
-
What is the best practice for h1 titles for products inside categories? long tail or short tail?
Sorry for the title of this, but didn't know the best way to put it. I have a question with category naming for products, To keep things simple, I'll use shoes for this example. Say I have a category, running-shoes, so the url would be, site.com/running-shoes/ and inside this category I have purple-pumas so the url is site.com/running-shoes/purple-pumas/ And I have the title Purple Puma Running Shoes Is that ok, or should I just use the title Purple Pumas ? The breadcrumbs shows Home > Running Shoes > Purple Puma Running Shoes then and I wasn't sure if that would be too much? Or how about using another version of the keyword for the title, like Purple Puma Jogging sneakers? Any ideas? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Determine the best URL structure
Hi guys, I'm working my way through a URL restructure at the moment and I've several ideas about the best way to do it. However, it would be good to get some views on this. At the moment I'm working on a property website - http://bit.ly/N7eew7 As you can quickly see, the URL structure of the site needs a lot of work. Similar websites - http://bit.ly/WXH5WG http://bit.ly/Q3UiLC One of the sites has http://www.domain.ie/property-to-let/location/ And the other has http://www.domain.ie/rentals/location/property-to-let/ I could do with some guidance about the best steps to take with this. I've a few ideas myself but this is a massive project. Cheers, Mark
Technical SEO | | MarkScully0 -
301 and joomla
I was looking at the subpages of my website www.mywebsite.com/my-sub/page.html and i noticed that when I type mywebsite.com/my-sub/page.html ( without the www.) in front it I get re-directed to the homepage. Is that a known issue of joomla and does it mean that google cache both version of my site causing site wide duplicate content ? Thank you,
Technical SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
How do find where a 301 redirect is located
My report says I have http://www.30minuteseder.com/Passover.blog redirected to http://30minuteseder.com/Passover.blog. It is correct, but I can't find where the 301 redirect is located. I looked in my .htaccess file in the root and it's not there. How do I find it so I can change it?
Technical SEO | | Sederman0 -
Rel=cannonical + 301 redirect
Hi All I am currently working on a DotNetNuke site. I have enabled friendly URL's which have changed the url structure from the default setting of TabId=x to whatever the page name is set as. I will use the following page as an example - www.notarealdomain./graphicdesign.aspx Now I would like to know if it would be worth my time to change this to "/graphic-design.aspx through the use of a 301 redirect and/or a rel=can. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | masterpete0 -
Schema.org : reviewCount & ratingValue - best practices for implementation?
I'd like to add our merchant review count and rating to our site and use the schema.org markup to indicate to the search engines what these are. The reason I'd like to do this is so that the star rating pulls through to the organic listing. Check out this example from several UK tight sites. Notice how the organic listings display the star rating... My questions are: Has anyone seen an example of this from Google.com (US site) I heard that you should only add this markup to the homepape - but couldn't find any Google documentation to back this up. Do you know if this can be applied throughout the site w/o penalty? Thanks everyone!
Technical SEO | | evoNick0 -
Double 301 redirect
Hi together, due to some technical reasons I have redirect (301) an existing link two times. Example: www.mydomain.com/root/site.html > 301 > www.mydomain.com/site.html > 301 www.mydomain.com/site_new.html Is there anybody how has got some experience like doing a double redirect? What about link juice? Best regards Steffen
Technical SEO | | steffen_0 -
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