Redirects
-
If I redirect page A to page B does page A need to exist before Google sees the redirect. Or can I just put up a redirect and delete page A.
If the page doesn't need to exist: You have all your redirects in place for a website. You want this website to redirect to another website. You completely delete the website and put up the htaccess, there should be no problem with this, because the redirects are in place correct?
Thanks
-
Think of Googlebot like a web user (who happens to be somewhat aimless and browses without JavaScript support).
Googlebot requests a page that it finds by A) following a link on another page, B) following a reference in a sitemap.xml file or C) some other usage data we don't know about (i.e. it scraped the link from a source it doesn't "officially" have access to or users have hit that page frequently with Google toolbar installed, etc).
This is a basic server request for the page. The server gets the message "load this URL" - if there's an .htaccess 301 redirect in place, it does not matter whether the page would ordinarily display content, because the server never gets to that point. It handles the redirect first.
I'm hung up on the second part of your question. "If the page doesn't need to exist...you want this website to redirect to another website." I'm not sure under what circumstances you'd need to do this. If the page doesn't exist, it shouldn't be referenced anywhere on the web, and if it's not referenced anywhere on the web, there's no need for the redirect.
Perhaps you're planning to set up the page as a vanity URL - such as a short URL, for easy reading/remembrance.
In short, for whatever reason you want to achieve this, .htaccess bypasses the need for the first URL to exist - it works on the request for that page, whether the page is there or not, the redirect will bypass it and work properly.
-
To your first question: Redirects are done for pages that presently exist and have been indexed by Google, not for pages that don't presently exist on a website. So if it's a page that has already been indexed by Google, you would implement a 301 redirect to point the old page and most of its link juice to the new page. (Not sure if this answer is what you were after - maybe I don't get the question?)
As to redirecting an old site to a new domain: I suppose you could technically delete the old pages when you put up the htaccess file with the redirects to the new pages. However, I'd strongly caution against doing this in case you need to access the old content for some reason. The crawler won't be able to get at it, because as soon as it hits the server it will trigger the htaccess file which will forcibly send them to the new URLs. I've occasionally had to access an old site's content, so I'm glad I didn't delete it entirely.
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
-
Redirects, 301's & 404's
I have tons of links that I have had added a redirect to after creating my companies new website. Is it bad to have all these 301s? How do I permanently redirect those links? Also, on Google Search Console it's telling me I have 1,000+ excluded links. Is this bad? Will it negatively affect me? Is this something to do with my sitemap? Any help would be greatly appreciated 🙂
Technical SEO | | sammecooper0 -
.aspx 301 redirects on Business Catalyst
Hi I am have moved my website from .aspx to business catalyst. I have found out (when the site already migrated!) that Business Catalyst does not support .aspx 301 redirects. On a previous post from 2012 (https://moz.com/community/q/aspx-files-will-simply-not-work-as-redirects) , someone has recommended a java script re direct. I have tried this but google search console is classing this as a 404 resulting in no link juice and my website dropping pages on google. I have tried to do 301 redirects at my server level but wont work. Anyone know a solution? Thanks in advance Keith
Technical SEO | | EntertainmentIdeas0 -
301 redirect and search engines
How long until 301 redirects get recognized by search engines? I noticed my link on Google isn't forwarding over to my new domain even after the 301 redirect. If I go to the site directly, the 301 redirect works. Anyone know how long it takes for search engines to pick it up? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | timeintopixels0 -
Holy Redirects
Currently working on a project for a medium sized site (http://sleeponcall.com/) but the SEOMoz crawl crawled over 14,000 pages because the report is showing more than 8,000 redirects. The client has no clue how this happened as their previous web programmers may not have been on the ball. What could be causing the problem and what is the best way to untangle this mess?
Technical SEO | | Nobody15330770827560 -
Another 301 redirect question - penalty?
Good Morning, We have 2 sites have images and minimal text on them. The images have links that point to a 3<sup>rd</sup> site that facilitates eCommerce. Question: If we 301 redirect these sites permanently to yet a 4<sup>th</sup> site… 1) Does it violate any G’s guidelines 2) Should we delete the links embedded in the images (as they point to the 3<sup>rd</sup> site) Thanks
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
Htaccess redirect with question mark
Hi I have a problem setting up my htaccess for a specific page that has a question mark in the link, and one that has a space in the link and also a question mark. So I would like 2 redirects in my htaccess like that: www.olddomain.com/page.php?page=pagename1 to www.newdomain.com/newpage1.html www.olddomain.com/page.php?page=page name2 to www.newdomain.com/newpage2.html I have tried with something like this but doesn't work: RewriteEngine on RewriteRule ^page.php?page=pagename1 "http://www.newdomain.com/newpage1.html" [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^page.php?page=page name2 "http://www.newdomain.com/newpage2.html" [R=301,L] Could someone tell me what exactly I have to change? Thanks
Technical SEO | | darkanweb0 -
Domain redirection and seo implications
We have an existing site that is a subdomain but we recently acquired an exact match domain. Will building links to the exact match domain and having the domain point at our existing subdomain work or should we convert the entire site and redirect our existing subdomain to the new domain? What I'm trying to figure out is how to maximize the benefit here and how the existing mass of links pointing to our existing subdomain (shop.domain.com) can be used. New domain: keywordshop.com Existing URL: shop.domain.com
Technical SEO | | CHarkins0 -
Help with domain redirect advice please!
I run the website http://buildyourjacket.com. We have other domains as well, most importantly www.buildyourjacket.com and cvcsports.com. If you Google "letterman jackets" (our primary search term) cvcsports.com shows up as the first result (yay!). But that is not what we want. Until a few weeks ago, Google would show http://buildyourjacket.com as the domain for the first search result from "letterman jackets". But then a few weeks that changed. I don't know how that could have happened. There are two reasons why we want the domain http://buildyourjacket.com to be the one that shows up: 1) It's a better sounding/looking domain and 2) When it was showing up, Google also showed right below the domain another link of our that said "Build Your Own Jacket" which definitely helped us get more clicks. Can someone please help me and tell me what I should do? Thank you so much.
Technical SEO | | BrandonDoyle0