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    4. 301 Redirects - Large .htaccess file question

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    301 Redirects - Large .htaccess file question

    On-Page Optimization
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    • leadforms
      leadforms last edited by

      We are moving about 5000 pages from root into different folders. We need to individually 301 each page because the are sitting at root level now:

      mysite.com/page.com

      We want to move them to: mysite.com/folder/page.html etc

      I dont think redirect match can works because of the different files names and folders they are being moved in to.

      Will 5000 entries in .htacess slow site loading? Any other suggestions how to handle?

      rsneha 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • rsneha
        rsneha @leadforms last edited by

        @leadforms
        Try this format via your .htaccess

        # Enable Rewrite Engine
        RewriteEngine On
        RewriteBase /
        
        # Individual 301 Redirects
        Redirect 301 /page1.html /folder1/page1.html
        Redirect 301 /page2.html /folder2/page2.html
        Redirect 301 /page3.html /folder3/page3.html
        # ... (and so on for the other 4997 pages)
        
        # If there are other specific redirects unrelated to the pages being moved, you can add them here as well.
        
        

        I hope it helps you.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • MrWhippy
          MrWhippy @MrWhippy last edited by

          Sorry I meant to add some links that might be useful.

          here they are

          https://moz.com/community/q/will-301-redirects-slow-page-speed

          https://moz.com/blog/heres-how-to-keep-301-redirects-from-ruining-your-seo

          https://moz.com/community/q/massive-301-permanant-redirects This is an older question on here but may have some useful insights.

          https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/113246/does-too-many-301-redirects-harm-serp-rankings

          http://www.thesempost.com/best-practices-for-301s-in-large-htaccess-file/

          https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/301-redirect-lessons

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

            Hi Leadforms,

            Interesting question.

            Having lots of redirects will slow down your site.

            There are different ways to implement your redirects other than .htaccess but I believe this would be the best method for you.

            Is there any way you can group some of the redirects? maybe part of the URL is the same for all the pages you want to send to a certain folder then the match may work?

            If not then I think you have a massive job on to redirect 5k pages and manage the redirects afterwards as well.

            I would look at the pages and judge the value of a redirect on that page. If the page has no external links pointing to it and it has a low PA then do you need to redirect it?

            You also need to keep in mind a few other things:

            1. You need to make sure that the page you are redirecting to and from are similar in a boolean context - that is that a machine will see them as the same content and not just a person

            2. you need to avoid redirect chains - that is a redirect to a redirect and so on

            3. If you have redirects in place at the moment from HTTP to https you need to redirect these separately otherwise you will generate a chain

            4. I would amend all your internal links rather than relying on the redirect otherwise again you will create a chain

            Once you have implemented the redirects you will need to monitor them to see how much traffic they are generating, if after a few months a redirect is generating no traffic and all the traffic is going to the new URL then you will need to consider the benefit of keeping that redirect in place or removing it to improve site load times.

            I hope this helps,

            Steve

            MrWhippy 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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