Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. 301 redirect syntax for htaccess

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    301 redirect syntax for htaccess

    Technical SEO
    3
    3
    8557
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • SamKlep
      SamKlep last edited by

      I'm working on some htaccess redirects for a few stray pages and have come across a few different varieties of 301s that are confusing me a bit....Most sources suggest:

      Redirect 301 /pageA.html http://www.site.com/pageB.html

      or using some combination of:

      RewriteRule + RewriteCond + RegEx

      I've also found examples of:

      RedirectPermanent /pageA.html http://www.site.com/pageB.html

      I'm confused because our current htaccess file has quite a few (working) redirects that look like this:

      Redirect permanent /pageA.html http://www.site.com/pageB.html

      This syntax seems to work, but I'm yet to find another Redirect permanent in the wild, only examples of Redirect 301 or RedirectPermanent

      Is there any difference between these? Would I benefit at all from replacing Redirect permanent with Redirect 301?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • IOHanna
        IOHanna last edited by

        There  is no difference between "Redirect 301", "Redirect permanent" and  "RedirectPermanent". It is clear from mod Alias documentation:

        "This directive makes the client know that the Redirect is permanent (status 301). Exactly equivalent to Redirect permanent."   "permanent - Returns a permanent redirect status (301) indicating that the resource has moved permanently."

        But, these directives are really confusing, because they are not page to page, but directory to directory.  For example:

        Redirect 301 /a-very-old-post/ http://yoursite.com/a-very-new-post/

        Surprisingly, it will redirect all old subpages to new subpages. In particular it will redirect  /a-very-old-post/page1 to /a-very-new-post/page1  Therefore better to use RedirectMatch or RewriteCond+RewriteRule for page by page redirections and for redirections with query strings.

        Links to docs: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/B14099_19/web.1012/q20206/mod/mod_alias.html

        Link to simple RedirectMatch page by page redirects generator: RedirectMatch generator for htaccess https://www.301-redirect.online/htaccess-redirectmatch-generator

        Link to good RewriteRule generator: htaccess 301 redirect rewrite generator https://www.301-redirect.online/htaccess-rewrite-generator

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • BlueprintMarketing
          BlueprintMarketing last edited by

          In **apache **"permanent" "RedirectPermanent" is  the same as "Redirect 301"

          By default, the "Redirect" directive establishes a 302, or temporary, redirect.

          If you would like to create a permanent redirect, you can do so in either of the following two ways:

          1. Redirect 301 /oldlocation http://www.domain2.com/newlocation
          2. Redirect permanent /oldlocation http://www.domain2.com/newlocation
          • See
          • https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-temporary-and-permanent-redirects-with-apache-and-nginx

          Page to Page 301 Redirect Generator for Htaccess

          https://www.aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/

          If no <var>status</var> argument is given, the redirect will be "temporary" (HTTP status 302). This indicates to the client that the resource has moved temporarily. The <var>status</var> argument can be used to return other HTTP status codes:

          <dl> "permanent" & "Redirect 301"</dl>

          <dl>

          <dd>Returns a permanent redirect status (301) indicating that the resource has moved permanently.</dd>

          "temp"</dl>

          <dl>

          <dt>Returns a temporary redirect status (302). This is the default.</dt>

          "seeother"</dl>

          <dl>

          <dd>Returns a "See Other" status (303) indicating that the resource has been replaced.</dd>

          "gone"</dl>

          <dl>

          <dd>Returns a "Gone" status (410) indicating that the resource has been permanently removed. When this status is used the <var>URL</var> argument should be omitted.</dd>

          </dl>

          **https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_alias.html **

          https://www.askapache.com/htaccess/seo-search-engine-friendly-redirects-without-mod_rewrite/#seo-301-redirect-single-file

          https://www.bruceclay.com/blog/how-to-properly-implement-a-301-redirect/

          To 301 Redirect a Page:

          RedirectPermanent /old-file.html http://www.domain.com/new-file.html

          To 301 Redirect a Page:

          Redirect 301 /old-file.html http://www.domain.com/new-file.html

          https://i.imgur.com/PTEj5ZF.png

          https://www.aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/

          Single URL redirect

          Permanent redirect from pageA_.html_ to pageB.html.

          .htaccess:

          301 Redirect URLs.

          Redirect 301 /pageA.html http://www.site.com/pageB.html

          https://www.aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/page-to-page/

          <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
          Redirect 301 /pageA.html /pageB.html</ifmodule>

          https://www.htaccessredirect.net/

          //Rewrite to www
          Options +FollowSymLinks
          RewriteEngine on
          RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^site.com[nc]
          RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.site.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

          //301 Redirect Old File
          Redirect 301 /pageA.html /pageB.html

          You asked about Regex

          https://mediatemple.net/community/products/dv/204643270/using-htaccess-rewrite-rules

          .htaccess

          Regular expressions

          Rewrite rules often contain symbols that make a regular expression (regex). This is how the server knows exactly how you want your URL changed. However, regular expressions can be tricky to decipher at first glance. Here's some common elements you will see in your rewrite rules, along with some specific examples.

          • ^ begins the line to match.
          • $ ends the line to match.
            • So, ^folder1$ matches folder1 exactly.
          • . stands for "any non-whitespace character" (example: a, B, 3).
          • * means that the previous character can be matched zero or more times.
            • So, ^uploads.*$ matches uploads2009, uploads2010, etc.
            • ^.*$ means "match anything and everything." This is useful if you don't know what your users might type for the URL.
          • () designates which portion to preserve for use again in the $1 variable in the second string. This is useful for handling requests for particular files that should be the same in the old and new versions of the URL.

          See for more regex

          • http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html#Regular-Expressions
          • https://www.askapache.com/htaccess/mod_rewrite-variables-cheatsheet/
          • https://www.askapache.com/htaccess/

          Hope this helps

          Tom

          PTEj5ZF.png

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • 1 / 1
          • First post
            Last post

          Got a burning SEO question?

          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


          Start my free trial


          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.

          • See all categories

          Related Questions

          • TroyW

            301 Redirect with index.asp

            I am very new to all of this so forgive the newbie questions I will get better.   Ok so after starting a campaign I see that I have many issues including where some pages are being deemed as duplicate content. 1. The report says the http://lucid8.com has duplicate content on 2 other pages 2. When I look at them it shows that http://lucid8.com/index.asp and http://www.lucid8.com are duplicates. 3. Really these are the exactly the same page because the default page that is opened for www.lucid8.com http://www.lucid8.com etc always opens the index.asp page. 4. Now I read that I should do permanent redirects and how to do this via IIS and I tried to do a redirect from index.asp to www.lucid8.com but that does not work because www.lucid8.com is pointing to index.asp and so we end up in a circle. So the question is how do I get rid of these duplicate page references without causing problems. Thanks

            Technical SEO | | TroyW
            0
          • twotd

            301 redirect not working

            Hi there! I have recently moved a domain that has been indexed by google and setup redirects so that it forwards to the new domain. It seems like the only redirect that actually is working is the canonical and main domain but every other page and or page nested within a folder are not working. Here is an example of some of the redirects. Am I doing this wrong? It seems to be going to the new domain but can't find the actual pages.... RewriteEngine On
            RewriteBase /
            RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !agoodsweep.com$ [NC]
            RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://agoodsweep.com/$1 [L,R=301]
            redirect 301 woodstoveservicerepair.html http://agoodsweep.com/woodstoveservicerepair/
            redirect 301 /westchesterchimney.html http://agoodsweep.com/west-chester-chimney/ Thanks in advance for any help!!

            Technical SEO | | twotd
            0
          • bewoldt

            How to create a delayed 301 redirect that still passes juice?

            My company is merging one of our sites into another site. At first I was just going to create a 301 redirect from domainA.com to domainB.com but we decided that would be too confusing for customers expecting to see domainA.com so we want to create a page that says something like "We've moved. please visit domainB.com or be redirected after 10 seconds". My question is, how do I create a redirect that has a delay and will this still pass the same amount of juice that a regular 301 redirect would? I've heard that meta refreshes are considered spammy by Google.

            Technical SEO | | bewoldt
            0
          • Squall315

            Will bad things happen if I cancel 301 site redirect?

            Hi, please someone help! We have two identical websites, say A & B. Because of the not so good SEO establishment, site B was built and site A was 301 redirected to site B weeks ago. For some reasons, we have to reuse site A, which means we have to cancel the 301 redirection. (Sound a little crazy) So the question are: 1. Can we conduct the action? 2. If we cant, what's the reason? 3. If we can, what would be the best practice? Thanks for help in advance! Plus: we also CARE what would happen to site B if the 301 is cancelled? Will it grow healthy like a new site?

            Technical SEO | | Squall315
            0
          • Kotkov

            302 or 301 redirect to https ?

            I am redirecting whole site to https. Is there a difference between 302 or 301 redirect for seo? Site never been indexed. Planning to do that with .htaccess command RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
            RewriteRule ^(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R,L] There are plenty of ways http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/ssl-example-usage-in-htaccess.html Which way would be the best? Thanks is advance

            Technical SEO | | Kotkov
            0
          • SamTurri

            Any way around buying hosting for an old domain to 301 redirect to a new domain?

            Howdy. I have just read this QA thread, so I think I have my answer. But I'm going to ask anyway! Basically DomainA.com is being retired, and DomainB.com is going to be launched. We're going to have to redirect numerous URLs from DomainA.com to DomainB.com. I think the way to go about this is to continue paying for hosting for DomainA.com, serving a .htaccess from that hosting account, and then hosting DomainB.com separately. Anybody know of a way to avoid paying for hosting a .htaccess file on DomainA.com? Thanks!

            Technical SEO | | SamTurri
            0
          • dim_d

            Why is a 301 redirected url still getting indexed?

            We recently fixed a redirect issue in a website, and although it appears that the redirection is working fine, the url in question keeps on getting crawled, indexed and cached by google. The redirect was done a month ago, and google shows cached version of it, even for a couple of days ago. Manual checking shows that its being redirected, and also a couple of online tools i checked report a 301 redirect. Do you have any idea why this could be happening? The website I'm talking about is www.hotelmajestic.gr and its being redirected to www.hotel-majestic.gr

            Technical SEO | | dim_d
            0
          • briankb

            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 | | briankb
            0

          Get started with Moz Pro!

          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

          Start my free trial
          Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz API
          • Moz Data
          • STAT
          • Product Updates
          Moz Solutions
          • SMB Solutions
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Authority Checker
          • Link Explorer
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • Brand Authority Checker
          • MozBar Extension
          • MozCast
          Resources
          • Blog
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Help Hub
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • How-to Guides
          • Moz Academy
          • API Docs
          About Moz
          • About
          • Team
          • Careers
          • Contact
          Why Moz
          • Case Studies
          • Testimonials
          Get Involved
          • Become an Affiliate
          • MozCon
          • Webinars
          • Practical Marketer Series
          • MozPod
          Connect with us

          Contact the Help team

          Join our newsletter
          Moz logo
          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
          • Accessibility
          • Terms of Use
          • Privacy

          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.