Redirects for new website
-
Hi Moz community,
I'm a fairly new SEO Specialist with a brand new website. We initially had a very basic holding website until the fully functional website was completed. I have to do some redirects as we have both .html and .php files & we don't want to lose SEO value for specific pages (like the index, news, etc). I also want to redirect from a www url to a non-www url.I am trying to accomplish redirects with the following code:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mywebsite.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://mywebsite.com/$1 [R=301,L]RedirectMatch 301 /index.html (.*).(php|html) http://mywebsite.com/index.php
RedirectMatch 301 /cupcakes-slideshow/glutenfree-slideshow.html (.*).(php|html) http://mywebsite.com/gluten-and-glutenfree.php
RedirectMatch 301 /press.html (.*).(php|html) http://mywebsite.com/news-and-reviews.php
Please let me know if I am on the right track. Thanks so much in advance!
-
Thanks so much Jeff. I will try the options you suggested.
-
Yes, there are two main ways to do something like this.
My recommendation would be based on how many actual pages you need to redirect, and if you want to redirect everything, or if you want to redirect only a few pages here and there.
Option 1. Redirect everything using programming.
The first way, is to use a rewrite rule like this:
RewriteRule ^/blog/(.*)$ http://blog.subdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]... that will redirect things programatically. Your syntax seems to be okay, but I'd test it out to make sure it's working properly.
Advantages: One or two lines, and you're done!
Disadvantages: You are redirecting everything, and you can't test each and every line easily.Option 2. Belt and Suspenders Method.
The second way is what I like to call the belt and suspenders method. It is not elegant. But the theory is that if you wear both suspenders and a belt, chances are good that you won't have your pants fall down.
This option creates a rewrite rule for each page on the site that is added to your .htaccess file.
What's nice about this is that you can easily create these redirects, without programming, just using a sitemap page.
I wrote a long article over on this site:
http://www.advancedwebranking.com/blog/how-to-create-301-redirects-from-sitemap/... that shows how to create these redirects quickly, without any programming (just through Excel and a text editor).
Option 3. Use the rewrite rule, but use the method in option 2 to create a list of all of the pages that need to be redirected.
If you'd rather, you could also use the method for creating a list of all of the pages that need to be redirected, and then use a 301 redirect checking script (there are a lot of free ones out there, just Google it), and then test if your method is working properly.
Hope this helps!
- Jeff
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
-
SEO for Parallax Website
Hi, Are there any implications of having a parallax website and the URL not changing as you scroll down the page? So basically the whole site is under the same URL? However, when you click on the menu the URL does change? Cheers
Technical SEO | | National-Homebuyers0 -
Redirecting a single page on a separate domain to a new site?
My client started a subdivision of their company, along with a new website. There was already an individual page about the new product/topic on the main site, but recognizing a growth area they wanted to devote an entire site to the product/topic. Can we/should we redirect that page on the old corporate/main site to the new domain, or just place a link or two? Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | VTDesignWorks0 -
Building a new website post penalty and redirects
A website I'm working on is clearly algorithmically penalised. I've spent a lot of time mass disavowing spammy links, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. We have been planning to build a new website anyway since we are rebranding. 1. Is it possible to tell which pages are most likely to have a penalty applied? 2. If the website as a whole has a penalty, will redirecting certain pages to the new website carry the penalty? 3. Our website is structured as sales pages and blog content. It is the sales pages that have the spammy links, yet most of the blog content does not rank either. Would it be a good strategy to only redirect all the blog posts (which have natural links pointing to them) to the new website and not the sales pages? 4. The homepage has a mix of spam and very good editorial links. If I have disavowed links and domains, can I safely redirect this page?
Technical SEO | | designquotes0 -
.htaccess redirects
I've done some research but can't find a good answer to this question. Here's my situation: Site redirects from example.com to www.example.com just fine. However, it doesn't work so well for internal pages. My site incorrectly redirects (non-www) example.com/page2 to www.example.com when it should instead go to www.example.com/page2 So I need a method to redirect non-www internal pages to www versions. Currently I have this in my .htaccess - do I need to modify the rules? RewriteEngine on
Technical SEO | | 3plains
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.example.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L] Thanks0 -
Website not crawled
i added website www.nsale.in in add campaign, it shows only 1 page crawled. but its working fine for other sites, any idea why it failed ?
Technical SEO | | Dhinesh0 -
URL redirecting domains
Hi Is there anything wrong/dangerous forwarding a clutch of domains to a sub page (landing page) on a different domain ? Say Brand X buys Brand Z and wants to close down Brand Z site but have Brand Z domain fwd to a landing page (explaining the company acquisition) on Brand X site. In addition Brand Z had a few related but unused domains forwarding to Brand Z doman & now also wants those fwd'd to the new landing page on brand X Since the reasons for doing this forwarding are legitimate company reasons relating to an acquisition i would have thought it should be ok but can anyone think of a reason why could be bad since i remember in the old days peeps used to redirect domains for seo reasons so worried fwd'ing a load of domains could cause some sort of negative flag with big G ? Also do domain redirects transfer the authority/juice from the old site/domain to the new destination page (new landing page on brand x site) similar to how a 301 redirect works ? Many Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Would moving a large part of our website onto a separate website be SEO suicide?
Hello, Our website currently has what I would call educational and sales pages - which sells our services and also a techy section for the developer community. The developer pages on the website have some of the highest authority pages that we have and equates for about 50% of the content. It has been proposed to move the developer pages onto their own domain - away from the main website. Now, would this crush a lot of the SEO benefit that we have on our main site? Does anyone know of a workable solution that would help retain the SEO. Would linking to our main site from the developer site help? It would be great to hear what people think, Thanks,
Technical SEO | | esendex0 -
Question about domain redirects
One of my clients has an odd domain redirect situation. See if you can get your head round this: Domain A is set-up as a domain alias of Domain B Entering domain A or domain B takes you to default.asp on domain B. The default.asp includes VB script to check the HTTP_HOST variable. It checks whether the main doman name for domain A is present in the HTTP_HOST and if so redirects it to domain A/sub-folder/index.htm. If not present it redirects to domain B/index.htm. In both cases the redirect uses a response.Redirect clause. I think what is trying to be achieved is to redirect requests to Domain A to a sub-folder of Domain B. It works but seems extremely convoluted. Can anyone see problems with this set-up? Will link juice be lost along the redirect paths?
Technical SEO | | bjalc20110