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.
Changing URL structure of date-structured blog with 301 redirects
-
Howdy Moz,
We've recently bought a new domain and we're looking to change over to it. We're also wanting to change our permalink structure. Right now, it's a WordPress site that uses the post date in the URL. As an example:
http://blog.mydomain.com/2015/01/09/my-blog-post/
We'd like to use mod_rewrite to change this using regular expressions, to:
http://newdomain.com/blog/my-blog-post/
Would this be an appropriate solution?
RedirectMatch 301 /./././(.) /blog/$1
-
Yes, sorry, I missed that part! That looks great.
-
Thanks! Yes, in my original post, I ask if the format of the mod_rewrite is correct for a 301 redirect. I realize we need 301 redirects. I am wanting to do it so I don't have to do a direct 1 to 1 for every page:
We'd like to use mod_rewrite to change this using regular expressions, to:
http://newdomain.com/blog/my-blog-post/
Would this be an appropriate solution?
RedirectMatch 301 /./././(.) /blog/$1
-
Whether you use a mod_rewrite or a 1 - 1 301, the end result is a 301 redirect. If you are changing the URL at all, even from http to https, you will need to tell Google that the URL has moved, hence, the 301 redirect. If you do not 301 redirect your old URLs you will lose all SEO value, traffic and link juice for the old URLs.
Does that make sense? Setting the redirects in Apache is simply a shortcut to the 301 step. Whichever path you take, you are ending at a 301.
And the syntax you wrote above looks correct for the rewrite script.
-
Hey Monica! Thanks for your response.
On Apache, you can set redirects before the server sends you to the domain. This is a preferred method for us. Erica was kind enough to suggest using WP to do so, but with thousands of blog posts, this really isn't an option to do a 1 to 1 301 redirect for every post.
Because of that, we're looking at **mod_rewrite **instead of a 301 plugin or using .htaccess, but I'm a little fuzzy on the appropriate syntax for it to work correctly.
-
Even if you are moving away from WP, you will set up your redirects the same way. You can do that through the HTAccess file to make sure that they are pointing to the correct pages on your new site.
-
Thanks for the response!
I should have mentioned that we are moving away from WP on the new domain.
-
I'd go in and change the structure in WP and then 301 the old URLs with the redirect. Then your new posts going forward will only have the cleaned up URL structure and the old ones will be properly 301'd for all the SEO goodness.
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
-
Setting up 301 Redirects after acquisition?
Hello! The company that I work for has recently acquired two other companies. I was wondering what the best strategy would be as it relates to redirects / authority. Please help! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Colin.Accela0 -
Is it worth removing date from Blog Posts / Articles
Wondering, is it worth to remove date from articles from seo perspective. Am sure, Google search algorithm would like demote a post written a year back, as against an article on the same post (unless a year old post has very strong Authoritative links) May be it can turn out a bad user experience of removing dates, but if can hide date using Javascripts so as to show it as image to user and hide it from search engines, is it a good idea !!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Language Detection redirect: 301 or 302?
We have a site offering a voip app in 4 languages. Users are currently 302 redirected from the root page to /language subpages, depending on their browser language. Discussions about the sense of this aside: Is it correct to use a 302 redirect here or should users be 301 redirected to their respective languages? I don't find any guideline on this whatsoever...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zeepartner1 -
Url structure for multiple search filters applied to products
We have a product catalog with several hundred similar products. Our list of products allows you apply filters to hone your search, so that in fact there are over 150,000 different individual searches you could come up with on this page. Some of these searches are relevant to our SEO strategy, but most are not. Right now (for the most part) we save the state of each search with the fragment of the URL, or in other words in a way that isn't indexed by the search engines. The URL (without hashes) ranks very well in Google for our one main keyword. At the moment, Google doesn't recognize the variety of content possible on this page. An example is: http://www.example.com/main-keyword.html#style=vintage&color=blue&season=spring We're moving towards a more indexable URL structure and one that could potentially save the state of all 150,000 searches in a way that Google could read. An example would be: http://www.example.com/main-keyword/vintage/blue/spring/ I worry, though, that giving so many options in our URL will confuse Google and make a lot of duplicate content. After all, we only have a few hundred products and inevitably many of the searches will look pretty similar. Also, I worry about losing ground on the main http://www.example.com/main-keyword.html page, when it's ranking so well at the moment. So I guess the questions are: Is there such a think as having URLs be too specific? Should we noindex or set rel=canonical on the pages whose keywords are nested too deep? Will our main keyword's page suffer when it has to share all the inbound links with these other, more specific searches?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boxcarpress0 -
301 Redirect - What happens to backlinks
Hello... One of my sites is losing rankings in G. I received the webmaster notification of unnatural links... My question is, should i do a 301 redirect of every page on my site to a new domain? If so, do the backlinks (which i believe are causing my rankings to drop) carry over? How about the good backlinks? Also, what would happen to the rankings i currently have on page 1? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Prime850 -
Changing a url from .html to .com
Hello, I have a client that has a site with a .html plugin and I have read that its best to not have this. We currently have pages ranking with this .html plug in. However If we take the plug in out will we lose rankings? would we need a 301 or something?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
301 - should I redirect entire domain or page for page?
Hi, We recently enabled a 301 on our domain from our old website to our new website. On the advice of fellow mozzer's we copied the old site exactly to the new domain, then did the 301 so that the sites are identical. Question is, should we be doing the 301 as a whole domain redirect, i.e. www.oldsite.com is now > www.newsite.com, or individually setting each page, i.e. www.oldsite.com/page1 is now www.newsite.com/page1 etc for each page in our site? Remembering that both old and new sites (for now) are identical copies. Also we set the 301 about 5 days ago and have verified its working but haven't seen a single change in rank either from the old site or new - is this because Google hasn't likely re-indexed yet? Thanks, Anthony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grenadi0 -
301 Redirects After Company Acquisition
We recently acquired a company, and now we are going to redirect all of the pages on their site to their respective pages on our site. Do we need to keep the original pages on their site active? For how long? Ideally, we would like to redirect everything and remove the old site entirely so we don't have to pay to keep hosting it. Is this possible? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pbhatt1