How long keep 301 redirects?
-
Our site has been updated twice in the past 6 years with new, better urls.
Initially we did 301 redirects 3 years ago for the url redirects.
Recently some of those redirected pages have been redirected again.
Question: How long before it's time to have the old, original urls removed through Google?
And, once that is done, how long to wait before removing the older redirects from the htaccess file?
Appreciate any feedback/insights on this matter.
-
Amazing, thanks for the information and the attached article. It's more than useful.
Thanks for sharing
-
Most of the traffic is from organic and craigslist. Some of the original pages were redirected over 3 years ago, so removing them now won't be a problem.
Thanks
-
Well if the internet was a static entity than leaving the original urls in place is an option. The original urls were optimized using the guidelines of the day ... today, however, they would be considered spam ... hence the change. At least the 404 page gets them back to the site.
Appreciate your input.
-
Hi there
You can also go through old backlinks that point to the old URLs and update those accordingly so that your new URLs are getting the full effect.
Hope this helps - good luck!
-
It really depends on the source of your traffic. If the source of your traffic are old links or direct traffic (i.e. they typed the URL), I'd leave them forever (provided you can't get them updated). It's bad form to drop a redirect from an old page when new users can find old links that appear useful. A good example for me was weather.com, which recently updated their site URL structure and refused to 301 from the old to the new (old page would 404). So for me, who had bookmarked my local weather page, I now had to go back to their home page and search all over again and THEN I was back at my local weather. It was annoying when 301s are cheap and easy.
If all your traffic comes from search engines then I would say you can drop them after a year or so. That's more than enough time for the index to update and the old URLs to fade out.
-
If you remove a redirect for a URL and a link to that URL on another website still points to that old URL, then any visitors who click that link will hit a 404 page. My old redirects will still be there when I attend my funeral. The lesson to learn is don't change your URLs unless absolutely necessary.
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
-
Https://www.fitness-china.com/hip-thrust-machine title too long
https://www.fitness-china.com/hip-thrust-machine title too long But we have two keywords Hip Thrust Machine and Glute Bridge Machine it 's ok?
On-Page Optimization | | ahislop5740 -
Is this method of redirecting of 404 okay?
Hi all, This is my first post at this forum 🙂 I'am running a Opencart shop with a SEO extension installed. This extension has a redirect module which works like this. When visiting the site on 404 url (and if there is setup a redirect for that url). It serves the correct content but on the 404 url with the correct url set in rel canonical. For example: Try visit this url:
On-Page Optimization | | mrmagnecom
https://makitech.no/ventilasjon/ventilasjons-pakketilbud
Here i have setup a redirect to the correct content, which is actually this url https://makitech.no/pakketilbud I am used to use a 301 header redirect so the user get redirected to the correct url. So my question is this. Is it a okay practice to serve the content on the 404 url (it responds 200) when the correct url is set in canonical? Any thoughts?0 -
How long should my website content be (max and min number of words)?
I saw a web site which has been number 1 on Google for a long time, and the home page has 5700 words, but the results show it is not spam, so what would be the recommended word number for a home page?
On-Page Optimization | | Majapopa0 -
Alot of 302 Redirects, what to do?
I'm currently auditing my companies website, and we encountered thousands of 302 redirects. The 302 pages are products page, which is a question and answer module at the bottom of each products page. What best practice should I do to get rid of the 302 redirects? add those pages to the .robots.txt? Or do individually and add a no index? This would help boost our rankings up correct?
On-Page Optimization | | petmkt0 -
Long url links
Just wondering about creating links.
On-Page Optimization | | Robotnik
Is it ok to have very long links?
Like: http://www.robotnik.com/computer-hardware-ram/8gb-ddr3-1600-desktop Is the above too long, is it better for SEO to be more to the point? Also For better SEO, is it better to use hyphens in a domain name or not?0 -
Redirects for new site new urls?
If redoing a site and updating some of the url's for SEO should you do permanent redirects for the old sites url's ? Using WordPress. I saw that the Yoast Pro plugin allows you to do this inside WordPress , is this the best way? Suggestions.? I know there are old articles written out on the web pointing back to the what will be soon old url's so just wondering what's the best way to go about this. Thanks Scott
On-Page Optimization | | scott3150 -
Www to non www redirect
HI there, I was worried that my folder was not being crawled as when I searched for site:www.thekeepsakeco.co.uk/marketplace nothing came up but today I tried site:thekeepsakeco.co.uk/marketplace it does. So it is forwarding the www to the non www. When I do a search on links or analyse the domain it says there is a forwarder in place. My site used to dominate in my niche and now is not doing very well since I moved to the new site. I know I did not handle the move well but wonder what I can do about it and wonder if this redirect is causing issues. So any link building it probably going to www. rather than non www so does that mean they are not counting. What would you do? move everything back to www and could I do a 301 redirect for the whole folder? Any help greatly received! Kindest regards Victoria Thanks Victoria
On-Page Optimization | | vcasebourne0 -
How long can rich snippets be?
How long (how many words) can a description tag of a rich snippets code?
On-Page Optimization | | seoflorida0