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 Redirects - Large .htaccess file question
-
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:
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?
-
@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.
-
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/
-
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
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
-
SERP Hijacking/Content Theft/ 302 Redirect?
Sorry for the second post, thought this should have it's own. Here is the problem I am facing amongst many others. Let's take the search term "Air Jordan Release Dates 2017" and place it into Google Search. Here is a link:
On-Page Optimization | | SneakerFiles
https://www.google.com/#q=air+jordan+release+dates+2017 Towards the bottom of the page, you will see a website that has SneakerFiles (my website) in the title. The exact title is: Air Jordan Release Dates 2016, 2017 | SneakerFiles - Osce Now, this is my content, but not my website. For some reason, Google thinks this is my site. If you click on the link in search, it automatically redirects you to another page (maybe 302 redirect), but in the cache you can see it's mine:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qrVEUDE1t48J:www.osce.gob.pe/take_p_firm.asp%3F+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us I have blocked the websites IP, disallowed my style.css to be used so it just shows a links without the style, still nothing. I have submitted multiple google spam reports as well as feedback from search. At times, my page will return to the search but it gets replaced by this website. I even filed a DMCA with Google, they declined it. I reached out to their Host and Domain register multiple times, never got a response. The sad part about this, it's happening for other keywords, for example if you search "KD 9 Colorways", the first result is for my website but on another domain name (my website does rank 3rd for a different Tag page). The page I worked hard on keeping up to date. I did notice this bit of javascript from the cloaked/hacked/serp hijacking website: I disabled iFrames...(think this helps) so not sure how they are doing this. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Note: I am using Wordpress if that means anything.0 -
On Site Question: Duplicate H2...
Hi All A few on-site audit tools pull information on duplicate H2 tags on pages. This implies it's a bad thing and should be fixed - is that the case? On one of my sites the tag-line is in H2 in the header, so appears on every page... Just wondering if this is something worth fixing. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | GTAMP0 -
Image File Names for eCommerce?
Hi everyone! I'm wondering about naming my product photo file names for an E-Commerce site. Let's say I say have product named Abe Lincoln in the **Print **category for sale with 4 images, relatively similar but from different views for example.Could I name them as follows? 1) abe-lincoln-print.jpg 2) abe-lincoln-print-side-view.jpg 3) abe-lincoln-print-close-up.jpg 4) abe-lincoln-print-font-view.jpg Or is that too many keywords for the page? Should I be worried about keyword stuffing? Plus once I add in title and alt tags and descriptions this could also increase the keyword count for "abe lincoln print"?
On-Page Optimization | | TheFlyingSweetPotato0 -
[HELP!] File Name and ALT Tags
Hi, please answer my questions: 1. Is it okay to use the same keyword on both file name and alt tags when inserting an image? Example: File Name: buy-lego-online.jpg ALT tag: buy-lego-online Will it trigger Google Panda? Will I be penalized for that? Or the file name and alt tags should be different from each other? Because when inserting an image on Wordpress, the alt tags are always the same as the file name by default. 2. For example, I have 2 images in a page (same topic/niche) and I will put "cheap-lego-for-kids" and "best-lego-for-sale" as alt tags. Considering that I repeat the word "lego", is it considered keyword stuffing? Will I be penalized for that? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | bubblymaiko0 -
How long should I leave an existing web page up after a 301 redirect?
I've been reading through a few of blog posts here on moz and can't seem to find the answer to these two questions: How long should I leave an existing page up after a 301 redirect? The page old page is no longer needed but has pretty high page authority. If I take the old page down—the one that I'm redirecting from—immediately after I set up the 301 redirect, will link juice still be passed to the new page? My second question is, right now, on my index.html page I have both a 301 redirect and a rel canonical tag in the head. They were both put in place to redirect and pass link equity respectively. I did this a couple years back after someone recommended that I do both just to be safe, but from what I've gathered reading the articles here on moz is that your supposed to pick one or the other depending on whether or not it's permanent. Should I remove the rel conanical tag or would it be better to just leave it be?
On-Page Optimization | | ScottMcPherson0 -
How can I fix multiple 404 errors with Wildcard htaccess redirect
Hi all I hope that someone can help.... How can I fix multiple 404 errors with Wildcard htaccess redirect The url in question is: How can I fix multiple 404 errors with Wildcard htaccess redirect http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/listing/search/Category/luxury_hotels_venues_uk_wedding_venues/exclusive_use_venues/letter/c http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/listing/location/uk-england/bedfordshire-weddings/franklin-park http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/deal/location/uk-england/chorley-weddings/curtis-bay etc, going to http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business the above is just a few examples, google webmaster is showing over 8.000 404 page not found errors. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Taiger0 -
Question about url structure for large real estate website
I've been running a large real estate rental website for the past few years and on May 8, 2013 my Google traffic dropped by about 50%. I'm concerned that my current url structure might be causing thin content pages for certain rental type + location searches. My current directory structure is:
On-Page Optimization | | Amped
domain.com/home-rentals/california/
domain.com/home-rentals/california/beverly-hills/
domain.com/home-rentals/california/beverly-hills/90210/
domain.com/apartment-rentals/california/
domain.com/apartment-rentals/california/beverly-hills/
domain.com/apartment-rentals/california/beverly-hills/90210/
etc.. I was thinking of changing it to the following:
domain.com/rentals/california/
domain.com/rentals/california/beverly-hills/
domain.com/rentals/california/beverly-hills/90210/ ** Note: I'd provide users the ability to filter their results by rental type - by default all types would be displayed. Another question - my listing pages are currently displayed as:
domain.com/123456 And I've been thinking of changing it to:
domain.com/123456-123-Street-City-State-Zip Should I proceed with both changes - one or the one - neither - or something else I'm not thinking of? Thank you in advance!!0 -
Would it be bad to change the canonical URL to the most recent page that has duplicate content, or should we just 301 redirect to the new page?
Is it bad to change the canonical URL in the tag, meaning does it lose it's stats? If we add a new page that may have duplicate content, but we want that page to be indexed over the older pages, should we just change the canonical page or redirect from the original canonical page? Thanks so much! -Amy
On-Page Optimization | | MeghanPrudencio0