Help creating a 301 redirect in my htaccess file
-
Hi Guys,
I'm trying to build a 301 file with the file requirements:
- It should be visible only for Google and other Search Engine Agents.
- It will have a few direct redirects.
- A few URL must be dynamic redirect. For example each page the starts with olddomain.com/category and is not in the list of of direct redirects should be redirect for newdomain.com/category
Here is my start point:
#301 Starts here
Set the agents
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Googlebot [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} msnbot [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} SlurpMake the direct redirect.
Redirect 301 /category/sub1 http://www.newdomain.com/category/sub1
Redirect 301 /category/sub2 http://www.newdomain.com/category/sub2Redirect everything else
Redirect 301 /category/* http://www.newdomain.com/category
#End of my 301
Will that work how I want? is there anything wrong?
-
Hi Thompson,
Thanks for your input, so I'm planning on eventually do the 301 for everyone. I'm re-designing a big website and not everything is done, but I want users that are looking for the content that I already completed to land in the new site. (because the new site has a much higher conversion rate).
In other hand I have 30% of my traffic in my old site coming from direct visitors, I dont want those visitors to be send to other URL because it would be confusing. however I want people coming from google to go my new site...
Do you think I should sacrifice usability, so I don't risk Google to think I'm trying to do some kind of black hat, strategy.
-
Setting redirects to apply only to search crawlers is pretty much their definition of cloaking, Felip3. The site could end up in a world of hurt if/when caught.
What's the reason for wanting the crawlers to be redirected differently than users? Maybe there's a better way to accomplish what you need in a way that doesn't break their terms of service.
Paul
-
For the directories I think you need to go down the rewrite route. This isn't probably functioning correctly but you get the principle.
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ /category/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/category/sub1/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/category/sub2/
RewriteRule ^category/(.*) http://www.newdomain.com/category/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ /category/sub1
RewriteRule ^category/sub1(.*) http://www.newdomain.com/category/sub1/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ /category/sub2
RewriteRule ^category/sub2(.*) http://www.newdomain.com/category/sub2/$1 [L,R=301]
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
Looking for the best way to do the following. Business has changed its name, and has also become a corporate store. The old domain name is now no longer needed as a website page has been created inside the main corporate site. Obviously i dont want to loose all the traffic that we had and want to redirect them but there is a problem, that im unable to redirect the old domain to the new one due to office 365 installed on the hosting platform, and the old emails will need to run for another 6 months. I can remove the old site and put a landing page up, but i still need to redirect all the pages to the new site, and there is approx 50+ of them. My main question is i currently have atleast 50+ redirects already in there due to seo changes over the years, some would go back atleast 5 years, whats a safe amount of time that i can remove the older redirects And am i going about this the right way so i dont loose all the hard work on rankings etc
Technical SEO | | Dunjoko0 -
Http:// to https:// 301 or 302 redirect
I've read over the Q & A in the Community, but am wondering the reasoning behind this issue. I know - 301's are permanent and pass links, and 302s are temporary (due to cache) and don't pass links. But, I've run across two sites now that 302 redirect http:// to https://. Is there a valid reason behind this? From my POV and research, the redirect should 301 if it's permanent, but is there a larger issue I am missing?
Technical SEO | | FOTF_DigitalMarketing1 -
Redirect a 301 Redirect
Does any link juice get passed from a permanent redirect to a new 301 redirect? If so, are there any studies which indicate an estimated percentage?
Technical SEO | | RedCaffeine0 -
Htaccess code to 301 redirect a folder change
Hi, I need some help to redirect all my site as there was a folder change. eg, the old structure was www.mysite.com/stuff-1/bags.html and I need it to go to the same structure without the "-1" eg: /stuff/bags.html
Technical SEO | | Paul_MC
The "bags.html" will be lots of different products, so this would be a wildcard? What would the htaccess code need to be? Thanks0 -
How does this rank? - a page that is 301 redirected
How does a 301ed page rank in google? In google I searched for" ikea.ca" which is set up as a 301 redirect to www.ikea.com/ca/en and was surprised to see the url --> www.ikea.ca actually ranking. IKEA Canada <cite>ikea.ca/</cite>IKEA Featuring Scandinavian modern style furniture and accessories. Include storage options, lighting, decor products, kitchen appliances and beds. Bedroom - Kitchen - Living Room - IKEA North York
Technical SEO | | Morris770 -
Setting up a 301 redirect from expired webpages
Hi Guys, We have recently created a new website for one of our clients and replaced their old website on the same domain. One problem that we are having is that all of the old pages are indexed within Google (1000s) and are just getting sent to our custom 404 page. We are finding that there is an large bounce rate from this and also, I am worried from an SEO point of view that the site could lose rank positioning through the number of crawl errors that Google is getting. Want I want is to set up a 301 redirect from these pages to go to the 'our brands' page. The reason for this is that the majority of the old URLs linked to individual product pages, and one thing to note is that they are all .asp pages. Is there a way of setting up a rule in the htaccess file (or another way) to say that all webpages that end with the suffix of .asp will be 301 redirected to the our brands' page? (there is no .asp pages on the new site as it is all done in php). If so, I would love it if someone could post the code snippet. Thanks in advance guys and if you have any other ideas then be my guest to suggest 🙂 Matt.
Technical SEO | | MatthewBarby0 -
Joomla 301 redirects
hi i am using joomla sef404 and i have 7000 not found pages in my webmaster google tool page. the trouble is i got rid of a lot of pages and also components so now i am left with loads of not found pages. what i want to try and do is to create 301 redirects so that i do not lose page rank. can anyone please let me know how to do this step by step please
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Do 301 redirects pass page rank quickly
Hi I have been asked to carry out a site audit for a potential client. The site has that many issues I don't where to start in explaining them however, there is one question we are debating and would like to get a second opinion on it. The site I am auditing used to have a homepage rank 7. The site has currently had a redesign (new template with new URLs) and now the root domain 301 redirects to a sub folder two levels deep (not ideal I know!). This happened about a month ago and we are still getting N/A for toolbar page rank. The question is, does Google page rank transfer quicker than normal due to the redirects? or do we still have to wait on the next Google Page Rank update? Thanks in advance Gavelect
Technical SEO | | Equatorites0