A Really Specific Question about 301 Redirect Strategies
-
Hi there:
As part of a site redesign project, we've been doing a lot of 301 redirects, as we retire old URLs or rename them. My question is: is it necessary to redirect ALL old URLS? What about URLs with no links and low authority? Are these really necessary to redirect, since they're not referenced on the web and there's obviously a global redirect happening at the level of the root domain?
Just curious; I'm not sure I've ever really understood this...
-
Hi David,
Is it necessary to redirect ALL old URLs_**? **_
No.
The old URLs will continue to show up in search results for some time. Your global redirect will make sure visitors and link juice gets appropriately routed, but you do want those URLs to eventually get dropped from the index. The best way to encourage search engines to do that is to not create a specific redirect.
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 cross domains
Hi Moz Community. We have a client that has Website A and Website B. Website A is going to be replaced by Website C, a new website and brand. Some products sold on Website A are going to be split out to Website B & C. i.e. Say Website A sells eight products - then four will go to Website B and four to Website C. OUR QUESTION Technically we know we can 301 redirect the Website A products to the relevant Website B & Website C products. 1. Given this convoluted structure, will there be any negative ramifications for SEO? and; 2. Which website would you redirect the homepage to, B or C?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WCR0 -
301 Redirect from unused domain
Hi All First question here so go easy.. I have a property site which is working well so far considering it;s early days, unfortunately some of my earlier efforts did not go so well and one in particular I pretty much destroyed in my attempts to improve the site SEO. Lucky enough my SEO skills have improved quite a bit lately, largely thanks to the great tools, tutorials and experts here at Moz 🙂 My question is whether I can use a 301 redirect to pass the domain authority and any link equity from an unused site to the one that ive done a better job on? it would seem a little sketchy to me and I would prefer not to get slapped and penalized "again" for doing something dodgy... Thanks everyone and thanks for all the help over the last 6 months or so.. Wes Dunn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wesdunn19771 -
Mass 301 redirect from a sub-domain - using Joomla or htaccess
How is best to mass redirect old domains - Listing the URL's in htaccess? We are looking to use Joomla as a CMS - transferring a blog from a sub-domain to the main site and want to 301 all the sub domain blog posts - any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
For a mobile website, is it better to use a 301 vs. a 302 redirect?
We are vetting a vendor for our mobile website and they are recommending using a 302 redirect with rel=canonical vs. a 301 redirect due to 301 caching issues. All the research I've done shows that a 301 is by far the better way to go do to proper indexing, which in turn will enhance our page authority. Thoughts on why a 302 would be a better fit than a 301 on our mobile site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seohdsupply1 -
301 redirect hell.... How do you de-commission an old site
Hi SEO experts: We operate a vacation rental website and around 1 year ago moved to a different platform. Because our pages are arranged by location (what we refer to as Locales) we need to put 301 redirects for all the old locale pages. So for example: www.example.com/__Skeggness.cfm redirects to www.example/com/vacation-rentals/locale/skeggness But here's the problem: We can't seem to get Google to drop those old __{locale_name}.cfm pages... even after over 12-months of the new site going live! Other clues we've noticed: The old underscore URLs show up in our SERP sub-links Sometimes google shows the new page title and description but attributes it to the __{locale_name}.cfm URL (aghh!!!) One suggestion we received was to use the URL removal tool in Google WMT.... But given we have 1,000's of locales i don't see that as being affective. Questions: Any suggestions on how to get Google to drop these old URLs and use the new ones? Is this situation hurting our SEO? Or do you think its benign... and I should just take a deep breath.... and relax at little more...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AABAB0 -
How many pages to 301 Redirect
Hi Mozzers, My site has 11,200 pages indexed in Google and I'm looking to remove some of the lesser content which should probably have been picked up by Panda. However these pages work out to about 1,100 in total and I'm not sure whether to remove these bit by bit or just do it in one fell swoop? Does Google not like a site's indexed pages fluctuating too quickly? Are there any other considerations I should be aware of? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | panini0 -
New to SEO. How do I set up a 301 Redirect? What Else should I do?
Hello, I am new to web design. I designed my own site using dreamweaver and did all my seo on my own, I read a few books. Long story short I rank on the bottom of page 1 just after 3 months and the keywords are highly competitive. Now, I am up against some heavy hitters from national brands versus my local real estate site. I don't have a 301 redirect, and am not sure what else I should be doing to get my site ranked higher. I have back links from various sites, ( non-paid ) so it's what others call white hat. When I grade my site on website grader I get a great score versus the sites that are higher than me. I'm guessing my sites age is an issue. I guess I'm looking for some guidance. Thank you all, Here is my site to view. http://www.bronxpad.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
How do I set up a 301 redirect if the default settings for our web servers create multiple URLs for the same page?
How do I set up a 301 redirect if the default settings for our web servers create multiple URLs for the same page but only views it as one page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ibex0