Removing 301 Redirects
-
Is it safe to remove old 301 Redirects from an SEO standpoint and can 301s dramatically affect seo?
Prior to switching our old domain over to our new domain, we had (and currently still do) tons of 301 redirects, because of optimizing our file names and structure.
Then our old domain was redirected to our new domain in the same redirect file.
So that being said, now that our new domain has been up and running for about 3 months, would it be safe for me to get rid of the old 301 redirects and redirect anything that was on our old domain to our new domains home page? This would clean up our redirects tremendously and I hope would help with SEO.
-
This is what I would like to do, as we do not currently sell online. We were not getting a lot lot of traffic from them. So you think it is safe to do 1 redirect from the old domain?
-
Correct, but a mass 301 redirect from all URLs on the site to the homepage will still pass PR and the pages will not 401.
The only reason I would keep them there is if there is significant traffic to internal pages that are generating revenue. For instance, if you are getting a lot of traffic from a Nike sneaker page you would want that to redirect to your new Nike sneaker page, not a homepage where they would then have to search for Nike.
-
Definitely need to keep the 301 redirects in place if there are any backlinks going to your old URL structure. Depending on your website, there could be many websites linking to the OLD URL to this day. if you remove the 301's you will lose the juice and anyone who clicks those links would now get a 404 or just go the the top level of the new domain (depending on how you have it setup)
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
-
Sudden drop in Rankings after 301 redirect
Greetings to Moz Community. Couple of months back, I have redirected my old blog to a new URL with 301 redirect because of spammy links pointed to my old blog. I have transfer all the posts manually, changed the permalink structure and 301 redirected every individual URL. All the ranking were boosted within couple of weeks and regained the traffic. After a month I have observed, the links pointed to old site are showing up in Webmaster Tools for the new domain. I was shocked (no previous experience) and again Disavowed all links. Today, all the positions went down for new domain. My questions are: 1. Did the Disavow tool worked this time with new domain? All the links pointed to old domain were devaluated? Is this the reason for ranking drop? Or 2. 301 Old domain with Unnatural links causes the issue? 3. Removing 301 will help to regain few keyword positions? I'm taking this as a case study. Already removed the 301 redirect. Looking for solid discussion.Thanks.
Technical SEO | | praveen4390 -
Does any one have experience with SEO and .NET using 301 redirects?
A while ago I altered some of the URL's of my website. Google now thinks that I have two duplicate pages (duplicate content), I have asked my third party web developers (Who use .NET and a custom built CMS system) to simply 301 redirect the old URL to the other. However, my web developers say the following: "Solving the problems by 301 permanent re directs are out of the question as this would create infinite loops. Likely to bring down our server." They also wont do a canonical, as they say there is only one page (but two URLs) Firstly, has any one heard of this before and do they think this is true? Also, does anyone have an alternative method of getting rid of the old URL? Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CoGri0 -
How long after google crawl do you need 301 redirects
We have just added 301's when we moved our site. Google has done a crawl & spat back a few errors. How long do I need to keep those 301's in place? I may need to change some. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Paul_MC0 -
301 Redirect for 3 Domains into 1 New Domain
So I wanted a quick sanity check on the htaccess syntax for migrating 3 domains into 1 new domain. For example, we're migrating 3 sites abc.com, def.com and ghi.com, all into 1 new site on ghi.com. Here's the htaccess we're placing on the root of ghi.com: redirect 301 http://www.abc.com/wines.html http://www.ghi.com/wines redirect 301 http://www.def.com/trade.html http://www.ghi.com/trade
Technical SEO | | cmaseattle
redirect 301 http://www.ghi.com/winery-tours.html http://www.ghi.com/visit/taste On the DNS side of things, we're parking abc.com and def.com on the ghi.com server. I'm not seeing examples of htaccess files for this scenario, and none that use any domain info on the "from" side of the redirect 301 syntax. Any suggestions before we pull the trigger? Thanks!0 -
301 Redirect Have no ranking
Hi Guys wonder if you can help my site www.economy-car-leasing.co.uk has just been 301 from www.economyleasinguk.co.uk The reason for the move is the site is going to be structured for both cars and vans separately we did the 301 around 8 weeks ago and initially we thought everything went well, all the new site was indexed within 24 hours, we updated WMT on the old site we monitored around 150 keywords many were top 10 in Google 99% were top 5 pages However 8 weeks on we do not rank for hardly anything, i have confirmed all the redirects are working, we have 200 ok from the home page and all the other canonical pages return 301 we just implemented the canonical tag to all pages. we did factor that we will get some down time but not 8 weeks worth, i have done a 301 on this scale before with no real loss of rankings (Different site) Really tempted to put the old site back however its not what i want to do, Bing seems to have picked up on the change really well but im thinking Google just needs time The change looks like its done perfectly and everything is working as it should however it looks like that none of the original rankings or juice has been pushed over from Google yet and im wondering how long does it typically take to get the site ranking again site have gone from 17k unique s per month to less than 2k Paul
Technical SEO | | kellymandingo0 -
301 Redirects
Last year we merged 3 websites into 1 website and launched the new site in February. When developing the new site I created 301 redirects for all the pages from the old sites to the new site. Unfortunately when the new website was created the URLs were not optimised for search engines. I now need to optimised the page URLs. In theory I need to create new 301 redirects from this existing pages to the new optimised URLS. I am concerned that in a few years I might end up with a string of 301 redirects and if I break some links I might loose some ranking. How many redirects will link juice work for? I hope I'm clear here, if not I've attached a image showing what I'm doing. Thank you. unledfh.jpg
Technical SEO | | Seaward-Group0 -
Will Google index a 301 redirect for a new site?
So here is the problem... We have setup a 301redirect for our clients website. When you search the clients name it comes up with the old .co.uk website. We have made this redirect to the new .com website. However on the SERPs when it shows the .co.uk it shows the old title pages which currently say 'Holding Page'. When you click on that link it takes you to the fully functioning .com website. My question is, will the title tags in the SERPs which show the .co.uk update to the new ones from the .com? I'm thinking it will be just a case of Google catching up on things and it will sort itself out eventually. If anyone could help I would REALLY appreciate it. Thanks Chris
Technical SEO | | Weerdboil0 -
301 redirects
Hi Guys, Question,
Technical SEO | | VividLime
Lets say I have a page oldfile.php at position #2 then set-up a redirection in the following way 100 incoming external links--> oldfile.php [301 to] newfile.php Google comes along and updates its index to newfile.php and ranking of newfile.php remains at position #2. Everything is good. Lets say in 5months, I come along and delete oldfile.php so we have
100 incoming external links--> deleted(oldfile.php) or 100 incoming external links-->404 error. |||| newfile.php Do I then loose the rankings on newfile.php. My thinking is that now that all the external links now point to a page not found, newfile.php should loose rankings Am I correct in my assumption?0