Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Turn SEO data into actionable Content Briefs
      Moz Pro

      Turn SEO data into actionable Content Briefs

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Htaccess - Redirecting TAG or Category pages

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Htaccess - Redirecting TAG or Category pages

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    4
    1035
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Jes-Extender-Australia
      Jes-Extender-Australia last edited by

      Hello Fellow Moz's,

      We have an issue redirecting some /TAG and /Category pages to inner pages.

      As an example we use:

      RedirectMatch 301 /category/Sample-Category(.*) https://OurDomain.com.au/New-Page//$1

      That works well.

      The issue is we have other categories and tags that are named similar to /Sample-Category

      As an example, if we try to redirect /Sample-Category-1 to /New-Page-1 - it will not work, and redirects to /New-Page

      I assume this is because /Sample-Category is already being redirected, so anything after /Sample-Category like -1 or -2 or -3 etc, will not be recognized.

      Anyone know of a workaround?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • ThompsonPaul
        ThompsonPaul last edited by

        The regex in your RedirectMatch doesn't say what you think it says, Jes 🙂

        This part (note the bolded part of the expression (.*)😞

        /category/Sample-Category**(.*)**

        doesn't actually say "match the URL that is specifically** /category/Sample-Category"**

        That**.*** is a wildcard thatmeans "and any other additional characters that might occur here"

        So what it's saying is "match the URL /category/Sample-Category _**as well as **_any URLs that have any additional characters after the letter "y" in category. Which is what is catching your -1 variation of the URL (or the -size-30 in your second example).

        In addition, that wildcard has been set as a variable (the fact it's in brackets), which you are then attempting to insert into the end of the new URL (with the $1), which I don't think is your intent.

        Instead, try:

        RedirectMatch 301 /category/Sample-Category https://OurDomain.com.au/New-Page/

        you should get the redirect you're looking for, and not have it interfere with the other ones you wish to write.

        Let me know if that solves the issue? Or if I've misunderstood why you were trying to include the wildcard variable?

        Paul

        P.S. You'll need to be very specific whether the origin or target URLs use trailing slashes - I just replicated the examples you provided.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • Jes-Extender-Australia
          Jes-Extender-Australia @seoman10 last edited by

          It's not as easy as that unfortunately.

          I will reiterate.....If we redirect.....

          RedirectMatch 301 /category/Blue-Shirts https://OurDomain.com.au**/Blue-Shirts**//$1 - it works, BUT....if we redirect another similar category page to different inner page like....

          RedirectMatch 301 /category/Blue-Shirts-Size-30 https://OurDomain.com.au****/Blue-Shirts-Size-30****//$1 - it redirects to the first inner page example above.

          That's why I was assuming it's not working because in the second example the sever sees /Blue-Shirts and ignores everything after it i.e the "Size-30".

          Hopefully that makes it clearer?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • seoman10
            seoman10 last edited by

            If I've understood you correctly, all you need to do is to add a tag with the relevant content same as the old one.

            Jes-Extender-Australia 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • Wavelength_International

              Should I apply Canonical Links from my Landing Pages to Core Website Pages?

              I am working on an SEO project for the website: https://wave.com.au/ There are some core website pages, which we want to target for organic traffic, like this one: https://wave.com.au/doctors/medical-specialties/anaesthetist-jobs/ Then we have basically have another version that is set up as a landing page and used for CPC campaigns. https://wave.com.au/anaesthetists/ Essentially, my question is should I apply canonical links from the landing page versions to the core website pages (especially if I know they are only utilising them for CPC campaigns) so as to push link equity/juice across? Here is the GA data from January 1 - April 30, 2019 (Behavior > Site Content > All Pages😞

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wavelength_International
              0
            • LesleyPaone

              Schema markup concerning category pages on an ecommerce site

              We are adding json+ld data to an ecommerce site and myself and one of the other people working on the site are having a minor disagreement on things. What it comes down to is how to mark up the category page. One of us says it needs to be marked up with as an Itempage, https://schema.org/ItemPage  The other says it needs to be marked up as products, with multiple product instances in the schema, https://schema.org/Product The main sticking point on the Itemlist is that Itemlist is a child of intangible, so there is a feeling that should be used for things like track listings or other arbitrary data.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LesleyPaone
              2
            • FPK

              Hacked website - Dealing with 301 redirects and a large .htaccess file

              One of my client's websites was recently hacked and I've been dealing with the after effects of it. The website is now clean of malware and I already appealed to Google about the malware issue. The current issue I have is dealing with the 20, 000+ crawl errors which are garbage links that were created from the hacking. How does one go about dealing with all the 301 redirects I need to create for all the 404 crawl errors? I'm already noticing an increased load time on the website due to having a rather large .htaccess file with a couple thousand 301 redirects done already which I fear will result in my client's website performance and SEO performance taking a hit as well.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPK
              0
            • Online-Marketing-Guy

              Substantial difference between Number of Indexed Pages and Sitemap Pages

              Hey there, I am doing a website audit at the moment. I've notices substantial differences in the number of pages indexed (search console), the number of pages in the sitemap and the number I am getting when I crawl the page with screamingfrog (see below). Would those discrepancies concern you? The website and its rankings seems fine otherwise. Total indexed: 2,360 (Search Consule)
              About 2,920 results (Google search "site:example.com")
              Sitemap: 1,229 URLs
              Screemingfrog Spider: 1,352 URLs Cheers,
              Jochen

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Online-Marketing-Guy
              0
            • BohmKalish123

              How to handle individual page redirects on Wix?

              I switched from one domain to another because I wanted a domain that had our company name so it was more brand-y. However, the old domain had better DA/PA. Originally I set up a global 301 from the old to the new, but now I'm finding that I actually need to set up individual 301's from each URL of the old site, or at least from each page. However, I am using Wix so it looks like I can't always do URL-URL 301's, although I can redirect any URL to a page on the new website. The problem is that, in some cases, the content on the new site is different (or, for example, I can only link a particular blog post on the old site back to the new site's blog's main page). How closely do URLS/pages need to resemble each other for link juice to be transferred? Also, should I try to set up all these redirects manually or bite the bullet and go back to using the old domain? The problem is that I did a lot of beginner SEO junk for the new domain, like submitting to a few higher-quality directories, and getting our website on various industry resource sites, etc. I'd need to re-do this entirely if I go back to the old page.  What do you think?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BohmKalish123
              0
            • VanguardCommunications

              Is it okay to copy and paste on page content into the meta description tag?

              I have heard conflicting answers to this.   I always figured that it was okay to selectively copy and paste on page content into the meta description tag.....especially if the onpage content is well written.    How can it be duplicate content if it's pulling from the exact same page? Does anybody have any feedback from a credible source about this? Thanks.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanguardCommunications
              1
            • HD_Leona

              Blocking Pages Via Robots, Can Images On Those Pages Be Included In Image Search

              Hi! I have pages within my forum where visitors can upload photos.  When they upload photos they provide a simple statement about the photo but no real information about the image,definitely not enough for the page to be deemed worthy of being indexed.  The industry however is one that really leans on images and having the images in Google Image search is important to us. The url structure is like such:  domain.com/community/photos/~username~/picture111111.aspx I wish to block the whole folder from Googlebot to prevent these low quality pages from being added to Google's main SERP results.  This would be something like this: User-agent: googlebot Disallow: /community/photos/ Can  I disallow Googlebot specifically rather than just using User-agent:  * which would then allow googlebot-image to pick up the photos?  I plan on configuring a way to add meaningful alt attributes and image names to assist in visibility, but the actual act of blocking the pages and getting the images picked up... Is this possible? Thanks! Leona

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HD_Leona
              0
            • JSOC

              Should I Allow Blog Tag Pages to be Indexed?

              I have a wordpress blog with settings currently set so that Google does not index tag pages. Is this a best practice that avoids duplicate content or am I hurting the site by taking eligible pages out of the index?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JSOC
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.