Is my 301 redirect working?

[Cairmen]

Very simple question here . I've redirected a bunch of older pages with decent ranking to some newer pages on my site, using the Thesis theme's built-in redirect function.

However, in the SERPS, the older pages (and, importantly, older titles) still show up. When clicked on, they redirect to the new page, but it's still irritating because the older titles make the site look out of date.

Is this Working As Intended, or have I or my theme done something wrong? And if it's the latter, what's the best way to achieve a redirect, preferably with a Wordpress plugin?

[johnshearer]

Thanks Mike..great instructions to 301 via .htaccess file.

[jamesjackson]

hi mike,

thanks for the detailed response. that seems like a pretty solid methodology. apparently resubmitting your old sitemap also helps google to recrawl those old url's..

although this is a bit off the point from the original question in this thread, this is a great Q&A answer from one of the seomoz staff about how to implement sitewide redirects http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/45183/update-url-structure

[MikeGracia]

Hi Hugh,

Glad the advice helped

I have run into issues with Wordpress plugins in the past (ones that do various things!) and for important stuff like 301's, I tend to prefer working in .htaccess manually, as I can see what it is happening, and see how to fix any issues easier.

If you run into the issue whereby you are doing massive amounts of 301's, it is sometimes possible to do re-write rules on the URL structure to effect large amounts of 301's, however this can be a bit more involved

Anyway, glad you got it sorted - did you check them with the http header check tool? (there are a few like that tool I linked to in case you prefer others, simply google: http header status tool

And that should give you a few (just letting you know in case you either prefer others, or if that one goes down when you need it ever).

Cheers!

Mike.

[Cairmen]

All done. I added the redirects to the .htaccess directly, and it's now working as it should.

Bonza.

In answer to your question - about 15 pages, so not un-doable by hand.

[Cairmen]

In theory, I agree with you. However, the plugin didn't work, and editing the .htaccess did, so I'm going with that in future!

[gfiorelli1]

I think that to work directly in the .htacces would not be needed, as that should be the purpose of the wordpress plugin...

[MikeGracia]

Hi, I am not Gianluca, but hope you don't mind my input here!

From our own experience, this is what happens:

1) Implement a 301

2. TEST to ensure you get the correct header status (301 permanently moved)

3. Google eventually crawls the old page, and finds the 301 redirect

4. After some time, Google replaces the old URL with the new URL.

Now, as for speeding things up, in my opinion (born out by testing), counter to your idea of adding the new URL to webmaster tools, it is better to get Google to find the actual 301 redirect, before the new url (this way, Google won't see the new URL as a duplicate, before it finds the old, now 301 redirected, URL, which in theory 'could' happen if both pages had the same content/title tag, etc - Although with just 1 or 2 redirects, it is quite unlikely, and should resolve itself pretty quick).

So what I like to do, is try to get Googlebot to the old (301'd) page as soon as possible once it has been implemented (and tested!).

To do this, consider pinging the URL, or pinging your RSS feed (if your site has them)  - Tweet about the fact you did a redirect, and link from twitter to the old URL, or even, if you have done some website redesign, write a press release about it, and within the PR, link to the old page... Basically, anything to get google old Googlebot to crawl the old URL< and find the 301 redirect

Others may disagree, but this does appear to work well for us!

Hope that helps,

Mike.

[MikeGracia]

I like to add the 301's myself in the .htaccess file, with the following format:

Redirect 301 /url-goes-here.html http://www.yoursite.com/url-goes-here.html

Be sure to use that structure (eg. NO http://www. on the old page, but have it on the new page)

Maybe try that for 1 URL, and see if it works for you? - I have to say, be sure to not delete any o fthe other stuff in your .htaccess file! - Best to create a backup BEFORE editing

Remember, when doing web design, coding, or on-page SEO, if anything goes wrong, the worse thing that should happen is that you have to revert back to the bacup that you made before you started

Although if you have lots to do, then you can automate it... various ways to do that!

Really it depends on the context of what you want to do.

Can I ask, how many pages do you want to 301 redirect?

[jamesjackson]

Hi Gianluca,

Sorry for butting into this thread, hope you dont mind:

So the process that typically happens  is:

1. 301 redirect is implemented but older pages remain in the index and ranking

2. Over time Google will drop the older pages and replace them in their index with the new pages

Is that the process? Is it an exact replacement, and is there a period of overlap when both the new and old pages are ranking?

Also, is it possible to speed up the process by delisting the old URL with GWT and adding the new URL to GWT?

Thanks in advance

[Cairmen]

Wordpress Simple 301 Redirect plugin did NOT give me 301s on the site you recommended. So, for anyone else reading this subsequently - don't use that

However, I then went and just inserted redirects into the .htaccess, and that worked like a charm. Win.

Thanks very much!

[Cairmen]

It was a few weeks ago, and we're crawled pretty frequently. I think my theme is Not Doing What It Should.

[Cairmen]

HTTP/1.1 200 OK. Oh, dammit.

I'm going to try installing a plugin to sort this problem out, and if that doesn't work, I'll be back. Thanks!

[MikeGracia]

It can take a while for Google to update - how long ago did you do this?

I would look here: http://www.webconfs.com/http-header-check.php

Enter an old URL, and hit 'Submit' - You should then be taken to a results page, and hopefully will see this:

"HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently => "

If you don't, something is wrong

Try that tool, and copy/paste the result here for everyone to take a peek at - we will then help if we can, as we will have more to go on

Hope that helps!

Oh, and also, consider this plugin for firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/live-http-headers/

[gfiorelli1]

First question: how long ago did you do the redirect 301?

This is not a stupid question. In fact Google will show the change of urls in the serps (and therefore the new snippet) just after a certain time.

That does not mean that it is not indexing your new pages (try a search with their URL to check this), simply the old ones are still present in the index.

Irritating, yes...