Redirect chains from switch to HTTPS
-
Hi,
We have a client who recently switched their site to https://
The rule to force redirect non-secure URLs to https is in their .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine on
if non-SSL and one of these, redirect to SSL
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.clientdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]However, they also have simple redirects below this rule that redirect one page to another, such as:
Redirect 301 /old.php https://www.clientdomain.com/new.php
This is causing redirect chains like this:
(A) http://www.clientdomain.com/old.php > (B) https://www.clientdomain.com/old.php > (C) https://www.clientdomain.com/new.php
Is there any way to rewrite the rules in .htaccess to get rid of these redirect chains? So that URL A goes directly to URL C?
Thank you!
-
Hi,
We are still waiting for the developer to make the change. I will certainly post the answer when we know for sure!
Thanks
-
Hi was this ever resolved as this would help many people?
-
Thank you!! Just sent it
-
Yes - of course. Happy to take a look.
-
Hi Will,
That is correct - the developer told me that's exactly what he did. Could I send you a screenshot of the actual .htaccess file in a private message?
Thank you!
-
Hi Lori,
On closer inspection, I think that only the rewriterule should have the [L] flag and that placing the specific Redirect at the top of the file should work fine without chained redirects as the other commenters suggested. I tested that here: http://htaccess.mwl.be/ and it appears to work fine using the following .htaccess - can you confirm with your developer that this is what they were trying?:
Redirect 301 /old.php https://www.clientdomain.com/new.php
RewriteEngine on
if non-SSL and one of these, redirect to SSL
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.clientdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L] -
Thank you Will! Just one question, so if it's a simple redirect from one page to another, it would look like this? Or is adding [R=301,L] only for those that start with RewriteRule?
Redirect 301 /Bamboo https://www.fauxpanels.com/style-wood.php [R=301,L]
-
Hi Lori. The solution the other commenters have suggested is definitely the way to do this - so it sounds like it needs more debugging. I suspect it's to do with the [L] option being needed on the specific redirect once it's moved above the general http-->https redirect. This stops other redirects below it firing, if I remember correctly.
If that doesn't work, do you want to share back here the specific different htaccess files the developer has tried?
-
So the developer got back to me and said he had tried that but the redirect chain still occurred. Any other ideas?
-
So the developer got back to me and said he had tried that but the redirect chain still occurred. Any other ideas?
-
The easy solution (and recommended best practice) is to put the specific individual redirects above the HTTPS redirect in the htaccess file. Just make certain the legacy individual redirects point to the correct HTTPS version to start with.
It's standard procedure to have an htaccess file list the most specifically targeted rules first, gradually moving to the more general.
Hope that helps?
Paul
-
Thank you! Will try and let you know
-
I guess you could probably do this by checking the https rule at last. So if it is old.php, the first thing you do is redirect to the new.php but already on the https. So all your static redirects will automatically go to https with one redirect while the other will always reach the last rule and go to the secure versions. Let me know if this helps.
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 - implementation question
Hello, I am looking at a site on which they haven't 301'd http to https, so each URL is there whether you have http or https at the beginning. Why would a site owner not 301 to https? Is there any logical reason not to use 301? This particular website is simply using a canonical tag to point to the https version of each URL.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
PushState for redirects
Is it possible to use PushState for redirects from one site to another?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rgamedia_seo0 -
HTTPS 301 Redirect Question
Hi, I've just migrated our previous site (siteA) to our new url (siteB) and I've setup 301 redirects from the old url (siteA) to the new (siteB). However, the old url operated on https and users who try to go to the old url with https (https://siteA.com) receive a message that the server cannot be reached, while the users who go to http://siteA.com are redirected to siteB. Is there a way to 301 redirect https traffic? Also, from an SEO perspective if the site and all the references on Google search are https://siteA.com does a 301 redirect of http pass the domain authority, etc. or is https required? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | opstart0 -
Should I just redirect all my sites to my main site.
Hi, Over the last few years I have built many sites and own a lot of domain names. Some have high page rank some have high domain authority and some have many back links. I'm finding it very difficult to keep up with all the links and being able to provide quality content for everything. Should I just redirect everything to my one site that make the most money as all sites are for the same industry, but in different categories of that industry. So I could 301 redirect all the sites to the relevant page on my money site. Would it be a problem is 1000's if not 10,000's of links all of a sudden pointed in to one site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cibble030 -
301 Redirect and Webmaster Central
I've been working on removing canonical issues. My host is Apache. Is this the correct code for my htaccess? RewriteEngine On
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spkcp111
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^luckygemstones.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.luckygemstones.com/$1 [R=301,L] SECOND!!! I have two websites under Google's Webmaster Central; http://luckygemstones.com which gets NO 404 soft errors... AND http://www.luckygemstones.com which has 247 soft 404 errors... I think I should DELETE the http://luckygemstones.com site from Webmaster Central--the 301 redirect handles the"www" thing. Is this correct? I hate to hose things (even worse?) Help! Kathleen0 -
Redirection strategy for mobile site
Hello folks! I am just about to launch a mobile specific version of our website. We were not able to make the main site responsive so have decided to make a seperate copy on an m dot subdomain. I have kept the url structure identical between both sites and added a canonical url on the mobile pages pointing to the desktop site. I will detect and redirect all mobile devices and googlebot mobile crawler to the m dot site. The questions i have are as follows... Is that the best approach if you use a mobile specific site on a seperate subdomain? What type of redirects should i use to send mobile users (and googlebot mobile) to the mobile site? My mobile site does not have all the pages the desktop site has. What happens if i redirect a mobile user from a page on the desktop site to a page on the mobile site that does not exist? (will give 404 currently). I guess i could maintain a list of valid mobile urls but this would be a pain (and a bit of an overhead) Your help is most appreciated Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertHill0 -
Redirecting Powerful Domains
What do you do if you have a client that never implemented a 301 redirect on their domain? For example here are the OSE stats for the URLs; http://url.com PA: 48 DA: 50 LRD: 65 TL: 1,084 FB: 178 FB: 14 T:5 http://www.url.com PA: 51 DA: 50 LRD: 165 TL: 2,271 FB: 178 FB: 14 T:5 G+1:3 My first instincts are to redirect the first one to the second one, but is it too late for that? Will that screw up all of their established stats? Any input or examples of past experiences with this would be great.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Redirect a subdomain to a subdirectory for SEO purposes.
Hi, I have a site on wordpress and I want to add eCommerce to it. We want to go with Shopify but Shopify only allows to host their platform on a subdomain. I like to have it on a subdorectory, so my question is: Would it make sense to redirect the whole subdomain to a subdirectory (move everything from shop.domain.com to domain.com/shop) for SEO purposes? Would Google see these pages as if they were part of the main domain? Thanks! Julien
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | julienraby0