When is it safe to remove 301 redirects?
-
I have created over 500 301 redirects in my .htaccess file, some of them are more than 2 years old now. Should I delete them? I don't like seeing the "notices" number in crawl diagnostics so high
-
Hi again Daniel,
Notices are nothing to worry about - if you take a look at the message from Roger and the Mozzers above the blue tabs in the Notices section, you will see a little explanation:
"Notices are interesting facts about your pages we found while crawling."
They are just there to make you aware of things in the background that might not be obvious
You will find a short explanation on each of the other sections too.
Incidentally, lots of 302's is not such a good thing - which is why they are in the "Warnings" section instead of the "Notices.
Another little thing to be aware of is the tiny blue "Help" link toward the top right of each page in the Pro Tool. Whichever page you are on, this link will take you to the help documentation for that particular feature. Some good stuff in there and a great way to get to know the tools when you are starting out.
If you have questions about your campaigns, you can also email the Help Team direct - help at seomoz.org. It's worth it just to see the awesome thankyou video when you answer the feedback survey!...or register for the weekly Welcome Webinar with Moz staff.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
Is it possible that the high level of 301's affect my MOZ trust raking or Google Ranking at all? Each time I work on the "errors" section in SEOmoz, the "notices" section keeps on rising...
-
Any ideas of what would be a potential solution?
-
Hi Daniel,
I have to say I really don't agree with the idea of deleting 301's after a period of time. The only place where there is a time frame involved in the 301 scenario is at the Search engines.
Links can come from any number of other sources including links from other sites, browser bookmarks, links passed in emails, pdf documents, embedded in Youtube videos ...to name just a few.
If the 301's were originally placed to fix the problem of broken links, why would I want to "unfix" them?
Even for large sites with a lot of 301's there are ways to manage processing load etc and if you have found a solution that is acceptable for a period of time, the same solution should be acceptable over the longer term.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
Are the 301's for old urls on the existing domain that now point to a new one? Or are they from an old (or expired) domain that you are looking to pass along that value?
If it's an old or expired domain, you should be able to remove the 301 after 90 days.
If everything is still on the same server, you should keep them intact. 500 re-directs isn't a tremendous amount.
I work with some enterprise level clients that have millions of 301's in place.
Hope this helps!
-
I would ask the following question:
Regarding those 500 redirects: Do you have external sites linking to any of those 500 pages ?
I would at-least identify pages that have external links and keep them if possible. -
Only as soon as you've found another way to solve the problem that the 301s were the solution to.
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
-
301 Redirects from example.com to store.example.com and then removing store.example.com subdomain
Hi I'm trying to wrap my head around the best approach for migrating our website. We're migrating from our example.com (joomla) site to our existing store.example.com (shopify) site... with the plan to finish the redirects/migration then remove the subdomain from shopify and use example.com moving forward. I've never done this and asking here to see if any harm will come from re-directing example.com URLs to store.example.com URL's then changing the store.example.com URL's to example.com. Right now my plan would run like this: redirect example.com URL's to store.example.com remove subdomain on store.example.com use example.com moving forward. wonder what happens next? Is there going to be any issues here, possible harm to the URL's?
Technical SEO | | Minarets0 -
Where to put 301 redirects in my Wordpress htaccess file?
I have about 25 301 redirects in my Wordpress htaccess file, that look like this: <code>Redirect301/store/index.html https://www.notesinspanish.com/store-home/</code> At the moment they are at the bottom of my htaccess file, below the usual Wordpress rewrite rules: <code># BEGIN WordPress <ifmodulemod_rewrite.c>RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L] # END WordPress</ifmodulemod_rewrite.c></code> So they are below all that. Above my WP rewrite rules I have a number of other rules from plugins (caching, ssl). Are my 301's OK where they are at the very bottom of that file? They are working, and redircting pages correctly. Should they be somewhere else? Many thanks for any help. Thanks for any help.
Technical SEO | | Benspain0 -
Recently migrated to https version of volusion site. 301 redirect link chain question
I recently migrated to a https version of a volusion site. They have some type of internal 301 redirect method to accommodate for the entire site. I have also used the 301 redirect manager to redirect categories and pages which I have changed. The question is if I have changed a page internally in the redirect manager from say source. /bluewidget to say. target. /superbluewidget is it wiser or even possible to do it this way to reduce the redirect chain from 3 to 2 steps source. /bluewidget to. target https://www.example/superbluewidget can a relative link be targeted to a full url to reduce steps in a 301 redirect link chain. Thanks
Technical SEO | | mrkingsley0 -
301 Redirect for multiple links
I just relaunched my website and changed a permalink structure for several pages where only a subdirectory name changed. What 301 Redirect code do I use to redirect the following? I have dozens of these where I need to change just the directory name from "urban-living" to "urban", and want it to catch the following all in one redirect command. Here is an example of the structure that needs to change. Old
Technical SEO | | shawnbeaird
domain.com/urban-living (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe/the-vale (single page w/ content) New
domain.com/urban
domain.com/urban/tempe
domain.com/urban/tempe/the-vale0 -
301 with nofollow ?
Hi, our ecommerce link penalty was revoked by google back in Feb 26th 2013, but to this day we have not seen any improvement on our rankings. Due to 80% revenue loss we had to layoff quite a few people to stay alive. Situation now is more dire then ever for our company. We have millions of dollars invested in our business and google just busted it for some "low quality" or "spammy links" as they call it. We want to try to move to a different domain and do a 301 from the old domain to make sure our previous customers can still find us as a last effort to stay alive. But doing so we do not want to the bad links juice to flow to our new domain. Can we do a 301 with nofollow and will that have any negative impact or any impact at all.? any suggestion is greatly appreciated. Thank you Nick We are planning on moving to a different domain after 10 years, and laying off bunch of people due to loss of revenue.
Technical SEO | | orion680 -
301 redirect not working
Hi there! I have recently moved a domain that has been indexed by google and setup redirects so that it forwards to the new domain. It seems like the only redirect that actually is working is the canonical and main domain but every other page and or page nested within a folder are not working. Here is an example of some of the redirects. Am I doing this wrong? It seems to be going to the new domain but can't find the actual pages.... RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | twotd
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !agoodsweep.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://agoodsweep.com/$1 [L,R=301]
redirect 301 woodstoveservicerepair.html http://agoodsweep.com/woodstoveservicerepair/
redirect 301 /westchesterchimney.html http://agoodsweep.com/west-chester-chimney/ Thanks in advance for any help!!0 -
301 redirect of one site version to new domain
Hello all. I today have domain.com that has 10 language versions and the structure is by folders: domain.com/ru/
Technical SEO | | Gregos
domain.com/pl/ etc. Soon I plan redesign,new CMS and I plan to register 9 new ccTLDs. My question is: Can I 301 redirect domain.com/ru/ to domain.ru without having some bad effect on domain.com? I mean,the main domain,com is not going to be affected by permanent redirect of one url to completly new domain right?0 -
301 redirects reverting to 302 redirects
We recently built a new website with a new site structure. To prevent there being a load of 404's I redirected the old pages to the new relevant pages with 301 redirects. A few days later the SEOmoz crawl report alerted me to a load of 302 redirects. When I looked into this for some reason all of the 301 redirects I set up are reverting to 302 redirects. I did a test by 301 redirecting a made up URL to an existing page and the same thing happens - it 302 redirects. I can't find any settings in WordPress to possibly explain why this is happening. Has anyone got any ideas why this could be?
Technical SEO | | Tone_Agency0