What to keep in mind: to 301 redirect every page in an entire online store
-
Hello,
I've got to put a 301 redirect on every page in an entire online store. We're moving to a better premade cart. Who has experience with this? How do I not lose traffic, if that is possible? What do I need to keep in mind?
Thanks!
-
Very good, I'll go with the redirect map. Thank you.
-
IF (!!!) everything is tested and prepared correctly there isn't risk. But only building this redirect map can take few days, few days for testing and few days for deploying. And everything dependent from size of shop.
Moving to responsive site or staying in pre made card - isn't decision that i can advise based on actual input data. Probably you can make it since working there and know all details. I also can advise to switch to Volusion too.
Here in Bulgaria we have quote as "the devil is in the little details". This mean that it may sound good/great but something that you didn't think as important initial can ruin everything. One of closest example can be agreements with small fonts underline.
So - i can't advise on eCommerce platform now without knowing all details to your customer, their needs, actual issues with platform, etc. BUT i can advise you for redirect map files. And once you make first map you will see that isn't scary at all.
-
How risky is this Peter, for an intermediate SEO with an intermediate sized online store?
Should we just move to a responsive site and stay with a not-so-good pre made cart?
Or switch to Volusion, which is a lot better?
Your opinion?
-
Building rewrite URLs one-by-one for webserver isn't suitable for your needs. All you need is to use redirect map based on your webserver or use/create CMS redirect map.
If your URLS for redirects around 100 you can use webserver configuration typing all of them in server configuration. But when links become 1000+ then this will slow down webserver and make configuration not-so-simply for changes. This is why almost all of webservers support redirect map:
https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/rewrite/rewritemap.html
https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/modules/lua/
http://www.iis.net/learn/extensions/url-rewrite-module/using-custom-rewrite-providers-with-url-rewrite-moduleThen all you need is to build redirect map for your webserver and do one quick test in dev environment. With many redirects anything can happen - ram or cpu hogging, etc. Once you check and recheck this you should make also CMS redirections with some plugins or write new one. You should keep both (redirect map and CMS redirects) working for some time (6 months or year). Then you can drop redirect map and use only CMS redirects for old bookmarks.
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
-
A 302 Redirect Question | Events Page Updates
Hello Moz World, I have a client that has a TON, like close to a thousand pages that have a 302 redirect set up. After further investigation, I found that every month they update their events page & Demo Request page, and the old events pages still exist but, get a 302 redirect to the updated page. From what I gather, this is a default mechanism set up by the hosting provider. My questions; is this an example of when to use a Rel=canonical? Also, is there a method for integrating this without having to go into every page and integrate the code snippet? And Lastly, How should I go about ensuring this doesn't happen in the future? Thanks ahead of time, you guys rock! B/R Will H.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarketingChimp100 -
What are the effects of having Multiple Redirects for pages under the same domain
Dear Mozers, First of all let me wish you all a Very Happy, Prosperous, Healthy, Joyous & Successful New Year ! I'm trying to analyze one of the website's Web Hosting UK Com Ltd. and during this process I've had this question running through my mind. This project has been live since the year 2003 and since then there have be changes made to the website (obviously). There have also been new pages been added, the same way some new pages have even been over-written with changes in the url structures too. Now, coming back to the question, if I've have a particular url structure in the past when the site was debuted and until date the structure has been changes thrice (for example) with a 301 redirect to every back dated structure, WOULD it impact the sites performance SEOwise ? And let's say that there's hundreds of such redirections under the same domain, don't you think that after a period of time we should remove the past pages/urls from the server ? That'd certainly increase the 404 (page not found) errors, but that can be taken care of. How sensible would it be to keep redirecting the bots from one url to the other when they only visit a site for a short stipulated time? To make it simple let me explain it with a real life scenario. Say if I was staying a place A then switched to a different location in another county say B and then to C and so on, and finally got settled at a place G. When I move from one place to another, I place a note of the next destination I'm moving to so that any courier/mail etc. can be delivered to my current whereabouts. In such a case there's a less chance that the courier would travel all the destinations to deliver the package. Similarly, when a bot visits a domain and it finds multiple redirects, don't you think that it'd loose the efficiency in crawling the site? Ofcourse, imo. the redirects are important, BUT it should be there (in htaccess) for only a period of say 3-6 months. Once the search engine bots know about the latest pages, the past pages/redirects should be removed. What are your opinions about this ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eukmark0 -
301 Redirect To Another 301 Redirect
Hi, We have a client with an old domain that they want to redirect to their primary domain. They also have a few older domains pointing to the old domain. Do you recommend leaving them as redirects that point to the old domain? This will create a redirect to a redirect situation. Or, is it better to go ahead and redirect those older domains to the primary one's, removing one layer of redirect? Thank you! Jessie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JessieT0 -
301 redirections done too late - What do you suggest?
Hi, When pushing our new site live, most of the 301 redirections got done too late for several reasons. Understandably, our site rankings in google have taken a hit now. So far we have just tried to perfectly optimize the pages that used to rank well (They weren't even optimized before and were still ranking) , to get our positions back. But does anyone have an idea about what else we could do? Is there a recommended "action plan" when someone is late with their 301 redirections?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohanMattisson0 -
Redirecting, then redirecting back
Hey, mozzers! My first question ever... I have a client who has (fictitionally) WickerPatioHomeStore.com, which features wicker home decor. Not too long ago, they wanted a shorter, easier URL, so they redirected to another domain they own, WickerPatio.com (again, fictional). They saw somewhat of a drop in traffic, and wonder if there's a correlation with the words "home store" not being in their domain any more. When considering the two, I figure that relevant factors would be age of domains, history of content of the domains, and inbound links to each domain. Any thoughts on other things to consider? Thanks very much!! ~ Scott
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GRIP-SEO0 -
301 redirect for duplicate content
Hey, I have just started working on a site which is a video based city guide, with promotional videos for restaurants, bars, activities,etc. The first thing that I have noticed is that every video on the site has two possible urls:- http://www.domain.com/venue.php?url=rosemarino
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdeLewis
http://www.domain.com/venue/rosemarino I know that I can write a .htaccess line to redirect one to the other:- redirect 301 /venue.php?url=rosemarino http://www.domain.com/venue/rosemarino but this would involve creating a .htaccess line for every video on the site and new videos that get added may get missed. Does anyone know a way of creating a rule to rewrite these urls? Any help would be most gratefully received. Thanks. Ade.0 -
Is there a way to find out how many 301 redirects a site gets?
If you do a search on "personal loans" on Google the first non-local/personal result is onemainfinanical.com. They have far fewer links showing in OSE and YSE than the other sites. I know onemainfinanical.com is a Citbank site so I'm trying to determine if they are ranking so high b/c they are getting 301 link juice from old Citibank.com authority pages. Is there anyway to check to see what sites are sending link juice through a 301 redirect instead of a direct link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fthead90 -
301 Redirect for 2500 pages
Hi, We have an existing site done in DNN and we recreated it on a new platform (EPiServer) and now we're going live. However, there are 2500+ page URLs from the old site which is not exisitng on the new site. What do you reckon is the best way we can address this? Do we create a 301 redirect individually for each of these pages? These 2500+ pages have a domain authority 34-35 and I think it's best that we retain those. We'll be using the same domain name. Suggestions for ways to approach this issue would be greatly appreciated. I have access to the server and IIS. *Also, how do I create a virtual page in IIS? and redirect it to another URL within the site? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter.Huxley590