Changing permalinks, 301 nightmare
-
I would like to change some of permalinks on our website. I have created new posts with new permalinks and the old ones I have redirect by using yoast seo plugin.
Today I have opened a category and I have realized that there are of course the post with new permalinks, but also the old once!
What should I do with the old posts?
-
Sunny greetings from Diani beach Dan! Thank you very much! I wish you very nice day
-
Awesome! Thanks for letting me know it worked and thanks for trying that 'good answer' button a few times
If you ever have any more trouble with anything on Moz - email help@seomoz.org
-
now it just worked...I am cursed:-(
-
Thank you so much Dan for all the explanation! All clear now! I have now manged to do redirect in .htaccesses file. All links are running well now. Thank you so much!
Iam trying to give you the good answer and it is bringing me to Not Found page:-(
I believe I might be cursed by computers and our site will never rank:-(
-
Hi July
This is really three separate things here, so I see why it's giving you trouble.
- Changing permalinks
- Changing what category a post belongs to
- Redirects
When you do one of the above, it does not do the others automatically - for example, changing a permalink will not change the category or add a 301 redirect (by default - although some systems might add the 301 automatically).
So let me explain each one step by step. Realize they are three separate things normally.
1. Changing The Permalink
This is changing the URL. If you wanted to change for example
That's one step. Now. Some plugins may add a redirect for you. So. When you change your permalink
- try visiting the old permalink
- if it redirects - you're all set - you don't need to do a redirect yourself.
- if it does not redirect, you either need to use the redirection plugin or write the redirect in the .htaccess file.
2. Changing What Category The Post Belong To
Note, this is entirely different from just changing a permalink. You need to go to edit that post itself and select your preferred category for that post. This is assuming your not creating any new categories or deleting old categories. You're just moving posts around to different categories.
Then, when you move a post into a different category and remove it from the old one, it will show up under the new category archive.
3. Redirects
As mentioned - these may or may not happen automatically when you change a permalink. I usually prefer them to NOT happen automatically.
This is why it's best of course to decide the final permalink for a post before you hit publish as it's much easier to not have to go back and edit it.
Please let us know if you're still having trouble - thanks!
-Dan
-
Hmmm.Yes, I would try the www in case your server doesn't handle that redirect automatically.
If you can't get it to work, I would remove the 301 redirects you added to the .htaccess file. Again, I would suggest you use the Redirection Plugin:
-
So and now i have pasted redirects of some posts and I am going to check and I can't axes the site! It says Internal server error. And now I am dead:-(
-
Thank you Jeff very much,
But we are not using www, do you thing that I have to include it anyway or is this redirect without www correct? Redirect 301 /geography-kenya-map-kenya/ http://villasdiani.com/where-is-kenya/
-
The basic idea for 301 redirects in htacess is:
`Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.yoursite.com/newpage.html` But if you aren't comfortable writing out a line for each page you've deleted and need redirecting, I would suggest the "Redirection" plugin. It's pretty easy to set up.
-
Thank you very much Jeff, I thought that the only option will be to do it in .htaccess file, any idea how to do it?
-
I think the Yoast SEO Plugin assigns 301 redirects to existing pages, so it can't keep the redirect if you delete the old page. It sounds like you need to either add the 301 redirects directly to your .htaccess file (which isn't too tough if you only have a few), or use another plugin for redirects. The plugin called "Redirection" by John Godley does a good job. Good luck!
-
Most of our permalinks are way to long and almost all contain Diani beach, which is a word we wanted rank for and believed we have to write it everywhere....so I need to change them as it is a problem.
Sure I can change the permalink directly for each of the post, but then all the old posts links will be still not found after I change the link...
I thought with yoast plugin it is going to be easy but it does not make sense for me why if I redirect the post it stays in category. What is it for...who wants to redirect a post and then keep it in a category...
I can't find any answer anywhere:-( I am actually getting to the point that I want to just delete them(it is around 30) and wait until google index the new once, but I am afraid of some punishment..
-
Hmm, that is a bother. Are you not able to edit the permalinks directly for each of the posts? Sorry, maybe I'm just not following, but why create whole new posts?
-
Hi Philip, Thank you very much, yest I would love to, but once I delete them and I go to check the redirects, they do not bring me to the new url but the page is not found:-(
-
Hi,
Would it be possible to delete the old pages if they're not serving any purpose?
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 passing authority?
Does anyone have experience of 301's in connection with SEO or more specifically passing authority? Recently purchased a small business that had three small websites. My main concern is all three websites do rank for some fairly important key phrases, but there is very little direct overlap. I was hoping by using 301's I would be able to refocus the authority to get the main site ranking.
Link Building | | seoman100 -
301 redirect backlink
Hello, My website is brand new! I am planning to do have some 301 redirect backlinks. Is it safe in terms of SEO ? Do i have any SEO benefits? let me know. Thanks
Link Building | | EchoMartinez1 -
Very old site wanting a revamp - how to handle all the redirects/URL changes
Hi all, I have a very very old site, that requires a facelift (going from an old clunky CMS to wordpress). A problem I know I am going to face is that this site has a very poor URL structure (www.site.com/section/1/section/ etc) which I plan on cleaning up. but how do I handle the 100+ backlinks this website has point to such links? If someone could point me in the direction of an article or such that would be great. Thanks,
Link Building | | Greenroads0 -
I'm thinking about buying a competitor and 301 redirecting? How much SEO value?
I'm thinking about buying a competitor and 301 redirecting their site to mine. The high level stats are as follows. My site has a DA of 46 and the homepage has a PA of 55. 375 root domains, 170,000 links. The site sells millions of dollars worth of product each year. The competitor (who I had never heard of) has a DA of 58 and a homepage PA of 64. They have 634 root domains and 260,000 links. They aren't selling much of anything (less than 100,000 per year). We might be able to operate their site but I'm concerned about maintaining 2 platforms. My question is about the value of buying this site and 301 redirecting it to my site. Would this create long term SEO value or not? Any examples that have been documented are greatly appreciated.
Link Building | | bradwayland0 -
Domain Authority and Page Authority down - Change of Server
Dear All, Today I noticed that our page authority and domain authority is down, and the number of linking domains is also down. We do not have too many linking domains to our site, but at least one blogger link to us, with a very nice article about our site (since some months ago) and this link does not appear in the site explorer (follow link). This blog is well indexed by google, but impossible to see using open site explorer for some reason unknown to me; and two pages we helped, and they link also to us (follow links): their links appear in the webmaster tools, but not in the site explorer. Neither the blog nor those two pages were in the site explorer before, the links that were removed are from other sources (SEO analisys pages, automatic generated when I run a test by them, so I supossed not high quality links at all, not content related, we don't miss them). Our site was partially down for 1 1/2 day this week due change of server, from a shared hosting to a VPS. Now all pages are up again, and we are improving everything, working really hard (almost no sleep at all in two days). Could it also have something to do with the lower domain authority? How bad penalized google the time down of a domain? How long will we feel the effects of that? Listing published in our site are ranking exactly as before, but I am afraid this could change in the near future. Since the end of December (not directly related to my question), we do not have this nice snipped showing the main pages of our site, when we writte the exact domain name in google. At the time, we did not any change, and this did not affect the listings ranking (they even improved in some cases); we rank better for the main keyword, so the snipped changed, without other problems. So, the questions: Have made site explorer any change in the last days, to discard low quality links? Could be the lower domain authority related to the down time of our site? How long can be felt the effects of the down time in google results? Is it something that can be felt forever? =( Do you have any idea why google decides in some cases to remove the site links in the snipped? General question, I know it is not possible to answer it for any specific domain without looking at it. We would like to have those links again. Is there something we can do in order site explorer visit that blog I mentioned? I will try to crawl it using the dashboard to see what happen. Many thanks for your help! Daniel
Link Building | | te_c0 -
Using brand domain for easy verbally said with 301 redirect to exact match.net for a site
I have recently bought an exact match.net for a keyword with no hyphens (on the fence about hyphens, read so many different views on here). From looking around it seems that not all solicited links that I am interested in use anchor text, but more significantly exact match domain would be like automatic anchor text when anyone from the general population posts a link to your site. I sell print books and am thinking of keeping the non-keyword domain in them so they are easy to say and type, while using the exact match domain for everything else online which the non-keyword domain would 301 redirect to. I don't do any programming and will use cPanel on my webhost to do the 301 redirect, I already have one 301 to go to the www subdomain so that would make two 301's. This might sound quite straight forward to many here but it's fairly new to me and I've not seen cPanel mentioned here yet, so was wondering if I am going about it the right way.
Link Building | | Zoolander0 -
Changing Category Names in Wordpress Blog & Inbound Links
I'm working on a wordpress blog, /www.athleticfoodie.com, and I'd like to change the names of the categories so that I include keywords. If I change the current category name of "Healthy Recipes" to "Recipes for Athletes" will I lose the inbound links associated with the category and/or posts? Is there a way to prevent this?
Link Building | | EricVallee340 -
My customer needs to change hosts! What part of the SEO process should I worry about most? Backlinks?
I just hired an agency to build quality backlinks and articles....should I worry about the new webhost? Should I wait? Ill assume if the page names are the same, all will be good. What if they change? Newbie Help! Thanks Mozzers.
Link Building | | Giggy0