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
-
Weird 404 Error URL's - Where to redirect?
For some reason, I end up with a bunch of weird 404 error URLs like these. /KRVWZ/SVfSZ/ /wp-content/upl /MKWTZ/RKYQZ/ /wp-content/upload What should I do with them? Should I redirect them or is there a better way to do something with them. I do use Yoast Premium if that makes a difference. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | photoseo10 -
Will Multiple 301's to the Same URL Cause Issues?
Hey Everyone, We have a client (I don't have permission to disclose) that has just attempted to create better URL's for their site, per our direction. In the process, their website platform kind of took over their renaming attempts and instead of creating the clean, short, descriptive URLs we all wanted, they got convoluted, longer URLs. This all happened within the past 3 or 4 days. So, they went out and got an add-on that's going to help them create better URL's. In the meantime, they now have the original page/URL plus two new ones for a total of three. No 301's have been setup yet. When they create the new and (hopefully) improved URL tomorrow, will it hurt their rankings to have three pages redirected to the new one? Is a 301 redirect the right method for this issue or should they do something different? Thanks in advance, Kirk
On-Page Optimization | | kbates0 -
To avoid the duplicate content issue I have created new urls for that specific site I am posting to and redirecting that url to the original on my site. Is this the right way to do it?
I am trying to avoid the duplicate content issue by creating new urls and redirecting them to the original url. Is this the proper way of going about it?
On-Page Optimization | | yagobi210 -
With 301 Redirects Does Changing URLs Matter?
We are redesigning our website in order to give it a more modern visual look. For the most part all the content will remain the same. Our old site is hosted on .asp so all of our current URLs look something like this: www.example.com/products/food.asp We plan on using 301 redirects in order to update every URL and remove the .asp. Since we are going to be doing 301 redirects for every existing URL anyways, does it matter from an SEO and ranking standpoint, if we also change the content and structure of the URL? For example, would we see a ranking impact if we were to change the above example URL to www.example.com/food? Obviously we want to try to retain as much link juice and ranking factors as possible during this redesign. Another issue we are seeing is with the image file names of our existing website images. We are moving to a new CMS platform (WordPress) that automatically saves images using a folder path similar to this: wp-uploads/2015-08/food. Will that change affect our SEO or ranking at all? When Google crawls an image does it care about the full path? Any insight would be much appreciated! 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | BlueLinkERP0 -
301 Problem
Hi Guys, Just have a small problem with a htaccess 301 redirect. I would like to 301: www.old-domain.com & old-domain.com to www.new-domain.com. The site is exactly the same with the same directory structure so i would also like all the subpages to work. Eg: www.old-domain.com/folder/page & old-domain.com/folder/page to www.new-domain.com/folder/page Many thanks
On-Page Optimization | | MSSTORAGE0 -
Building content pages, redirecting and linking
Previously the company had created some .HTML content pages around top shoe styles and top manufactures. One or two of these pages used to rank but have been neglected over the page 18 months. I want to build out new content round our top styles / top manufactures and I am wondering if I should use the existing HTML pages or create new pages that use our content management system. The .HTML pages can contain keywords in the URL, using our content management system, all URL’s are www.site.com/content/home/contentid=1234abcd. If we use the .HTML pages all content is managed manually. If we build out 6 to 10 pages, this can become a resource issue and may result in a bad experience for the website visitor. From an SEO perspective, does the benefit of having the keywords in the URL outweigh the manual management hassles? And if not, should we 301 all the HTML pages to the new content pages? And from a linking standpoint, I want these content pages to point to the new version of the top style. From a navigation standpoint, we also want to provide access to all styles from the manufacture. Should we nofollow the links to all styles?
On-Page Optimization | | seorunner0 -
Too many 301 redirects to home page - is this possible?
If a site has a bunch of 404’s that are basically old URL’s that no longer work and point to pages or documents that don’t exist anymore - Can someone clarify if it’s a problem when fixing a bunch of these 404’s to point them all to the home page? so if there is not really anywhere else that is applicable for the old broken URL, is it really a problem to 301 old pages to the site home page? I have read some different things on this recently on some different sites, so I just wondered what the latest thinking on this was….thanks...
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0 -
Whats important to receive a large amount of traffic quickly?
What would you suggest is the best route for providing a website with extra traffic quickly?
On-Page Optimization | | wazza19850