301 redirects- how long to keep and how many are too many?
-
Hi, I was told we have way too many 301 redirects on our site. We have some that have been there for 3 years. Our site is datacard.com . Question- how long should you keep a redirect out there when building a new page and expiring an old page? Is it 6 months, is it a certain time frame? wondering what the best practices are?
Thanks!
Laura
-
It is not unusual to redirect a whole website and all of its pages, so it wouldn't make sense that you could have too many. And you should keep the redirects indefinitely--what if there is a link to the expired page? You do not want to lose that equity by having it go nowhere...
-
Keep the redirects forever unless you want lost value! Too many redirects is subjective and I would recommend determining what you consider to be too many based on how long it takes your server to process the file on each page load with strace. If this number is unacceptable, consider other options besides .htaccess such as moving the redirects to the config file so they are processed on server load rather than each page load.
-
Just wanted to chime in that I've also never heard of too many 301s being a thing.
EDIT: ...unless you mean you have too many redirects in a row, but that's not what it sounds like. Is that what you mean, Laura?
-
I don't think that too many 301's is actually a thing. Seriously, why would you want to put a cap on getting visitors to the right pages? It doesn't make much sense.
However, not all 301s are necessary. If Google has indexed the new URL and the old one doesn't have any valuable backlinks, you can let those 404 with very little risk. But I would only do it if for some weird technical reason you just could not keep the 301.
-
Hi there
Your redirect file shouldn't be changed. Leave that as is.
I would update your internal links and sitemap as soon as possible, especially if they contain redirects.
I would also perform a backlink audit and make sure you update valuable links and remove/disavow irrelevant/toxic links.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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 Backlinks?
I am wondering how many people still getting results from 301 redirects from high authority expired domains..? I read few case studies on detailed dot com where the shared some people still making big bucks from this strategy which i think 10beast also implemented few years back.? Is it worth it to test out 301 redirects to money sites.? How many people on the moz community here have implemented this strategy in practical and can share some insights and pros and cons of doing 301 redirects? Many Thanks.
Technical SEO | | asifseo0980 -
Redirecting 301 or 302?
Hi, I think the part of this question has been already discussed, but not exactly the same, I think. My site requires authentication for member page. When a user try to go to member area, we redirect to 3rd party to do the authentication. 1. user clicks a link to www.mysite.com/member/contents.html
Technical SEO | | HypermediaSystems
2. www.myauthenticate.com/login?h=somehashuniquehash454859428778545 (enters id/pass)
3. login success => redirect back to www.mysite.com/member/contents.html We are doing it 302, temporary redirect. But moz crawler error seems to suggest we should do it 301.
So my question is:
A. Should we do it 301???
B. If we do 301, what happens to myauthenticate.com? since it has hashtag, I am afraid it could create a lot of duplicate contents on myauthenticate.com side... Thank you so much for your help in advance...0 -
Canonicals & 301 Redirects to new Domain
We will be changing our domain name soon and I want to make sure I'm not painting myself into a corner. Of course, I want to transfer as much link equity as possible. Question #1: Do I need to define a canonical from the old domain to the new domain? Question #2: Do I also need to put 301s in place on the pages with link equity, or is there a way to apply 301s across the entire site on all pages? Any input would be appreciated greatly! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | BVREID0 -
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 -
Where to put 301 redirects in Magento?
I will be changing the URL structure in a magento store from "base/category/subcategory/product" to "base/product" which means i have to make over 1000 URL 301 redirects so our old links still work. Should i put the redirects in a .htaccess file so they stay intact no matter what or should i just put them in with all the other rewrites (in Magento 's URL rewrite manager)? Thanks
Technical SEO | | tilenkrivec0 -
Removing 301 Redirects
Is it safe to remove old 301 Redirects from an SEO standpoint and can 301s dramatically affect seo? Prior to switching our old domain over to our new domain, we had (and currently still do) tons of 301 redirects, because of optimizing our file names and structure. Then our old domain was redirected to our new domain in the same redirect file. So that being said, now that our new domain has been up and running for about 3 months, would it be safe for me to get rid of the old 301 redirects and redirect anything that was on our old domain to our new domains home page? This would clean up our redirects tremendously and I hope would help with SEO.
Technical SEO | | hfranz0 -
301 Redirects
Hello, I have a problem with my website. I have a page on my website http://www.ensorbuilding.com/page.php/aboutus but if i type in www.ensorbuilding.com/page.php/aboutus/f8e45e9d9df6140bb5a7ff1173e8d828 or www.ensorbuilding.com/page.php/aboutus/0f0eea5e9ab0a3e8d91fad8fc0d3ce9c it still displays the about us page. Google is seeing this as duplicate content so what I would want to do is 301 redirect anything after www.ensorbuilding.com/page.php/aboutus . How could I implement a 301 redirect in this way?
Technical SEO | | danielmckay70 -
301 Redirect vs Domain Alias
We have hundreds of domains which are either alternate spelling of our primary domain or close keyword names we didn't want our competitor to get before us. The primary domain is running on a dedicated Windows server running IIS6 and set to a static IP. Since it is a static IP and not using host headers any domain pointed to the static IP will immediately show the contents of the site, however the domain will be whatever was typed. Which could be the primary domain or an alias. Two concerns. First, is it possible that Google would penalize us for the alias domains or dilute our primary domain "juice"? Second, we need to properly track traffic from the alias domains. We could make unique content for those performing well and sell or let expire those that are sending no traffic. It's not my goal to use the alias domains to artificially pump up our primary domain. We have them for spelling errors and direct traffic. What is the best practice for handling one or both of these issues?
Technical SEO | | briankb0