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.
301 Redirects - Large .htaccess file question
-
We are moving about 5000 pages from root into different folders. We need to individually 301 each page because the are sitting at root level now:
We want to move them to: mysite.com/folder/page.html etc
I dont think redirect match can works because of the different files names and folders they are being moved in to.
Will 5000 entries in .htacess slow site loading? Any other suggestions how to handle?
-
@leadforms
Try this format via your .htaccess# Enable Rewrite Engine RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / # Individual 301 Redirects Redirect 301 /page1.html /folder1/page1.html Redirect 301 /page2.html /folder2/page2.html Redirect 301 /page3.html /folder3/page3.html # ... (and so on for the other 4997 pages) # If there are other specific redirects unrelated to the pages being moved, you can add them here as well.
I hope it helps you.
- topic:timeago_earlier,4 years
-
Sorry I meant to add some links that might be useful.
here they are
https://moz.com/community/q/will-301-redirects-slow-page-speed
https://moz.com/blog/heres-how-to-keep-301-redirects-from-ruining-your-seo
https://moz.com/community/q/massive-301-permanant-redirects This is an older question on here but may have some useful insights.
https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/113246/does-too-many-301-redirects-harm-serp-rankings
http://www.thesempost.com/best-practices-for-301s-in-large-htaccess-file/
-
Hi Leadforms,
Interesting question.
Having lots of redirects will slow down your site.
There are different ways to implement your redirects other than .htaccess but I believe this would be the best method for you.
Is there any way you can group some of the redirects? maybe part of the URL is the same for all the pages you want to send to a certain folder then the match may work?
If not then I think you have a massive job on to redirect 5k pages and manage the redirects afterwards as well.
I would look at the pages and judge the value of a redirect on that page. If the page has no external links pointing to it and it has a low PA then do you need to redirect it?
You also need to keep in mind a few other things:
1. You need to make sure that the page you are redirecting to and from are similar in a boolean context - that is that a machine will see them as the same content and not just a person
2. you need to avoid redirect chains - that is a redirect to a redirect and so on
3. If you have redirects in place at the moment from HTTP to https you need to redirect these separately otherwise you will generate a chain
4. I would amend all your internal links rather than relying on the redirect otherwise again you will create a chain
Once you have implemented the redirects you will need to monitor them to see how much traffic they are generating, if after a few months a redirect is generating no traffic and all the traffic is going to the new URL then you will need to consider the benefit of keeping that redirect in place or removing it to improve site load times.
I hope this helps,
Steve
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
-
Should I redirect or add content, to 47 Pages?
We have an insurance agency website with 47 pages that have duplicate/low content warnings. What's the best way to handle this? I'm I right in thinking I have 2 options? Either add new content or redirect the page? Thanks in advance 🙂
On-Page Optimization | Aug 27, 2024, 5:32 AM | laurentjb1 -
Solve Redirect Chains
I've gotten a few Redirect Issues that involve Redirect Chains, with the https:// version redirecting to the www. version and then redirecting to the right URL. Here is an example:
On-Page Optimization | Dec 10, 2021, 12:17 PM | Billywig
Schermafbeelding 2021-12-07 om 11.04.32.png I've tried setting a direct redirect between the first and the last URL, but WordPress doesn't seem to allow that (it's overwritten). I've also tried checking the internal links to make sure that none of the links are the first one. They don't seem to be there. Does anyone have any tips on solving these Redirect Chains?0 -
My site auto redirects http to https. This is causing redirect chains. What can I do?
I noticed that Moz flags a lot of redirect chain issues on my site. I realized that this is mostly because the site automatically redirects http to https, and when I create a new URL (when a URL changes, for example) it is automatically flagged as a chain. Example: http://www.example-link Auto directs to: https://www.example-link Which is then redirected to: https://www.example-link-changed (when the address actually changes) I don't seem to have any control over changing where the initial http redirect goes. Any advice on fixing this problem?
On-Page Optimization | Dec 28, 2019, 7:05 AM | baystatemarketing0 -
301 Redirect or landing page
Hi everyone. I'm currently doing some SEO for a client, at the moment he has some landing pages which are categorised, but the category is set as a 302 redirect. I have a dilemma whether to 301 redirect to the landing page or make a page for each category. The link structure is as follows - http://examplesite.co.uk/products/fire/company-1/product/ so currently this is set as a 302 redirect - http://examplesite.co.uk/products/fire/company-1/ Do I make this page a category page and link the page to the children with some on-page optimisation or 301 redirect it?
On-Page Optimization | Jul 6, 2016, 1:49 PM | Unbranded_Lee0 -
Author Byline Question
What's the best practice for displaying author information at the beginning of an article? We're presently displaying it as: By <Author> • Jan 16, 2015 • <City>. We're considering making it even more concise by removing the term 'By'. Would be shooting ourselves in the foot if we did this? Any other ways we should optimize?
On-Page Optimization | Jan 16, 2015, 11:17 PM | TheaterMania0 -
Redirecting deleted posts 301 vs 302
There is a category on WP where job ads are posted. when a post got deleted I would like to pass 404 error page and redirect all those deleted posts to specific category. I found WP plugin Auto Redirect 404 in 301 for Trashed Posts which does redirect deleted post to specific URL. But posts which are in the trash (not permanently deleted) will get 302 redirects. Those deleted permanently will get 301 redirects. Should I try editing this plugin or find another why? Maybe there is similar way with Redirection plugin?
On-Page Optimization | Sep 18, 2013, 4:08 PM | OVJ0 -
How much juice do you lose in a 301 redirect?
Our site has a number of, shall we say, unoptimized URLs. I would like to change the URLs to be more relevant; if a page is about red widgets, the URL should be www.domain.com/red-widgets.html, right? I'm getting resistance on this, however, based on the belief that you lose something significant when you 301 an old URL to a new one. Now, I know that if you have a long chain of redirects, the spiders will stop following at some point, and that is a huge problem. That wouldn't apply if there's only one step in the chain, however. I've also heard that you lose some link juice in a 301, but I'm unsure how serious that problem actually is. Is it small enough that we'd win out in the long run with better-optimized URLs?
On-Page Optimization | Sep 27, 2012, 1:49 AM | CMC-SD0 -
Would it be bad to change the canonical URL to the most recent page that has duplicate content, or should we just 301 redirect to the new page?
Is it bad to change the canonical URL in the tag, meaning does it lose it's stats? If we add a new page that may have duplicate content, but we want that page to be indexed over the older pages, should we just change the canonical page or redirect from the original canonical page? Thanks so much! -Amy
On-Page Optimization | Mar 8, 2011, 9:32 PM | MeghanPrudencio0