Redirecting Ecommerce Site

[BeckyKey]

Hi

I'm working on a big site migration I'm setting up redirects for all the old categories to point to the new ones.

I'm doing this based on relevancy, the categories don't match up exactly but I've tried to redirect to the most relevant alternative.

Would this be the right approach?

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Becky

If you just think of it in terms of not losing any backlinks and so that the old URLs in Google Index don't 404, then they just need the most appropriate page on your new site to be 301'd to.

You won't go wrong if you stick to this approach.

If there is no relevant category, then go up to department, no department? go to home.

Keep it simple & logical.

Regards Nigel

[BeckyKey]

Hi

Thank you for the reply. How about it categories are similar, what I am finding is categories may have been merged slightly, so have a few different types of products.

The new category structure is awful, we've done as much as we can to improve it but it's being dictated by our parent company.

Becky

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Beck

Absolutely the correct approach. If you find any that simply don't match at all then you may consider gender, if that is appropriate or homepage if there is nowhere else.

Individual products need mapping as well, and if there is no close match for any of them then category>gender>home whichever is most appropriate.

Obviously, if there is no gender then just 301 to home but I work with a lot of fashion sites where it is relevant.

Regards

Nigel.

[KevinBudzynski]

Yes, match as closely as possible. You can also preview if the redirects works good by changing your host file and opening google and query site:yourdomain.com and clicking on each page to see if it redirects correctly. Good luck!