301 redirect question
-
Hi Everyone
When doing 301 redirects for a large site, if a page has 0 inbound links would you still redirect it or just leave it? Im just curious on the best practice for this
Thanks in advance
-
I'm with keszi on this, redirect all pages anyway as they still had some value. Think of Google as a user for a second, it was aware of all these pages and suddenly they are gone. Those pages were valuable to Google, and if not redirected that value disappears.
-
I see the points that each of these people are making.
The general rule of thumb is that if there is any chance that link will be clicked on you should redirect it. Redirecting the page won't hurt you, but it could hurt you not to redirect it. Do you know if the page ranks at all?
I don't see the harm in redirecting it, it is better to be safe than sorry.
-
I'd probably go the other way. If it's got zero inbound links and no logical page to redirect to I'd leave it as is.
404 errors also advise the user that the page no longer exists. Simply redirecting it to the home page/ another page could confuse the user further.
-
Hi,
I'd go for redirect all the pages. Even if doesn't have 1 link (external), but until it is not an orphan page, it still got some value from internal linking.
That is my personal opinion.
Gr., Keszi
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
-
Can a page that's 301 redirected get indexed / show in search results?
Hey folks, have searched around and haven't been able to find an answer to this question. I've got a client who has very different search results when including his middle initial. His bio page on his company's website has the slug /people/john-smith; I'm wondering if we set up a duplicate bio page with his middle initial (e.g. /people/john-b-smith) and then 301 redirect it to the existent bio page, whether the latter page would get indexed by google and show in search results for queries that use the middle initial (e.g. "john b smith"). I've already got the metadata based on the middle initial version but I know the slug is a ranking signal and since it's a direct match to one of his higher volume branded queries I thought it might help to get his bio page ranking more highly. Would that work or does the 301'd page effectively cease to exist in Google's eyes?
Technical SEO | | Greentarget0 -
.htaccess redirect question
Hi guys and girls Please forgive me for being an apache noob, but I've been trawling for a while now and i can't seem to find a definitive guide for my current scenario. I've walked into a but of a cluster$%*! of a job, to rescue a horribly set up site. One of many, many problems is that they have 132 302redirects set up. Some of these are identical pages but http-https, others are the same but https-http and some are redirects to different content pages with http-http. A uniform redirecting of http to https is not an option so I'm looking to find out the best practice for reconfiguring these 302s to 301s within .htaccess? Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | craig.gto0 -
Existing content & 301 redirects
Hi All, I will try to keep this to the point. One of our websites was hit by penguin for unnatural linking. We are building a new site (same business, different domain), but we would like to take some of the pages/content off the old website and use it on our new site. Is it just a case of copying each page onto our new site and 301 redirect the old URL? Or should I just be completely rewording/recreating the old content so it is unique? Any help on this would be great, but I am also open to alternate methods too. Thanks Lewis
Technical SEO | | SO_UK0 -
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 -
Does 301 redirect cause penalty
Good Morning, I am considering doing a 301 (permanent) re-direct of roughly 100 domains, split between my 3 main e-commerce sites. Would taking an action like this put any of the 100 domains or any of the 3 recipient domains at risk of violating G's guidelines? Thanks...
Technical SEO | | Prime851 -
301 Redirect
Need a little bit of help on this one. I have a product page which actually has 3 products on the page in question: www.example.com/products I thought it would be best for each product to have a page on its own: www.example.com/product-1 www.example.com/product-2 www.example.com/product-3 however my question is: The page with the 3 products www.example.com/products where should the 301 go to? Can you do a 301 to all the new product pages? Hope that makes sense Kind Regards,
Technical SEO | | Paul780 -
301 redirects
Hi Guys, Question,
Technical SEO | | VividLime
Lets say I have a page oldfile.php at position #2 then set-up a redirection in the following way 100 incoming external links--> oldfile.php [301 to] newfile.php Google comes along and updates its index to newfile.php and ranking of newfile.php remains at position #2. Everything is good. Lets say in 5months, I come along and delete oldfile.php so we have
100 incoming external links--> deleted(oldfile.php) or 100 incoming external links-->404 error. |||| newfile.php Do I then loose the rankings on newfile.php. My thinking is that now that all the external links now point to a page not found, newfile.php should loose rankings Am I correct in my assumption?0 -
What are the SEOmoz-suggested best practices for limiting the number of 301 redirects for a given site?
I've read some vague warnings of potential problems with having a long list of 301 redirects within an htaccess file. If this is a problem, could you provide any guidance on how much is too much? And if there is a problem associated with this, what is that problem exactly?
Technical SEO | | roush0