Redirect old "not found" url (at http) to new corresponding page (now at https)
-
My least favorite part of SEO
I'm trying to redirect an old url that no longer exists to our new website that is built with https.
The old url: http://www.thinworks.com/palm-beach-gardens-team/
New url: https://www.thinworks.com/palm-beach-gardens/
This isn't working with my standard process of the quick redirection plugin in WP or through htaccess because the old site url is at http and not https.
Any help would be much appreciated! How do I accomplish this, where do I do it and what's the code I'd use?
Thank you Moz community!
Ricky
-
Hey Avin,
Don't worry about it anymore. I flipped my personal site running WordPress over to SSL last month and I'll tell you everything I did to make it work. Thomas mentioned, "you should be forcing HTTPS", and he's right but what the Yoast plugin lacks in forcing an HTTPS redirect, you can achieve with a WordPress Plugin.
If you want to see it working for my site, just go to http://www.kingrosales.com and watch it work
Here's what I did:
1. Install the WordPress HTTPS plugin. I found another plugin before this one called, HTTPS Redirection, but it didn't do the job.
2. One of the thinks that you will also need to do is change all the hardcoded links to images within your content that may be calling the http version. If you don't, any images or embedded content from your site will cause the browser show that your site is trying to be https but some components are not, so you're gonna get a caution sign over the padlock.
You can do one of two things to fix all these hard coded links to content within your site:
- Go through each page and post and change the img src to the https version.
- Open phpmyadmin and go run an SQL query to find and replace http with https.
In the Yoast SEO plugin, check the Edit Files area so you can check the htaccess file. In mine, it looks like eventhough I disabled the HTTPS Redirection plugin, it has some lines in there placed above all the other rules:
BEGIN HTTPS Redirection Plugin
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]</ifmodule>END HTTPS Redirection Plugin
3. Lastly, install the Redirection plugin by John Godley so you can manage any other 301 redirects manually. Its an awesome tool and I wish I had installed this a long time ago. It has a log of all 404 and then you can just click the "Add Redirection" and when you scroll to the bottom (because nothing appears to happen when you click it), it will give you a form where you just have to put the URL of the new slug.
I hope it helps!
-
Along with Redirection I think the Yoast WordPress SEO premium plug-in is probably the best redirection and search plug-in for WordPress.
One thing I wanted to let you know is that you are showing HTTPS you should be forcing HTTPS though I do not believe it has anything to do with this particular issue.
Add the following redirect to the the top of your .htaccess file:
RedirectMatch 301 ^/palm-beach-gardens/$ https://www.thinworks.com/palm-beach-gardens-team/?p=$
You may need to implement force HTTPS
Use https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-force-https/
of course depending on your hosting provider and other factors you can do one better and implement it in this method
sincerely,
Thomas
-
I use the Yoast SEO plugin. It has a great utility for redirects. It's only in the paid version though. It's worth the $ but it's not cheap. $89
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
-
Any idea why Google Search Console stopped showing "Internal Links" and "Links to your site"
Our default eCommerce property (https://www.pure-elegance.com) used to show several dozen External Links and several thousand Internal Links on Google Search Console. As of this Friday both those links are showing "No Data Available". I checked other related properties (https://pure-elegance.com, http:pure-elegance.com and http://www.pure-elegance.com) and all of them are showing the same. Our other statistics (like Search Analytics etc.) remain unchanged. Any idea what might have caused this and how to resolve this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SudipG0 -
Google ranking 301 redirected vanity urls
We use vanity URLs for offline marketing. An example vanity URL would be www.clientsite.com/promotion, this URL 301 redirects to a page on the site with tracking parameter ex: www.clientsite.com/mainpage?utm_source=source&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=xyz. We are running into issues with Google ignoring the 301 redirect and ranking these vanity URLs instead of the actual page on the website. Any suggestions on how to resolve?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digitalhound0 -
WordPress – parent category "blog" instead of regular "post page"?
In WordPress you normally show you blog posts on: Your home page. Your "posts page" (configurable in the Reading Settings) I want to do neither and have a third option instead: Assign a parent category called "blog" for all posts, and show the latest posts on that category's archive page. For the readers, the experience will be 100% the same as a regular "posts page". The UI, permalinks, and breadcrumbs will be 100% the same. But, I have heard that the "posts page" is important for Google for indexing and understanding your blog. So is is smarter SEO-wise to use a "posts page" instead of a parent category named "blog"? What negative effects might there be, if I have no "posts page" and just use the parent category "blog" instead?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NikolasB0 -
Http to Https implementation - What happens to the backlinks?
UPDATE: Found a source that says that Google recognizes the redirects, so it should be fine leaving backlinks as is - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-link-https-20552.html Hi again Mozers, When a site's protocol is changed from http to https, what impact would it have on the backlinks? Especially, when the backlinks doesn't contain any protocal mentioned. Thanks in advance Malika
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika10 -
Same URLS different CMS and server set up. Page Authority now 1
We have moved a clients website over to a new CMS and onto a new server. The Domain and URLs on the main pages of the website are exactly the same so we did not do any 301 re directs. The overall Domain Authority of the site and the Page Authority of the Homepage, while having dropped a bit seem OK. However all the other pages now have a Pagerank of 1 I'm not exactly sure what the IT guys have done but there was some re routing on the server level applied. The move happened around the end of December 2014 And yes traffic has dropped significantly Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daracreative0 -
How much is the effect of redirecting an old URL to another URL under a new domain?
Example: http://www.olddomain.com/buy/product-type/region/city/area http://www.newdomain.com/product-type-for-sale/city/area Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | esiow20130 -
Keep Pages with Old Dates?
We have a tourism related site. We list annual events. Right now the URL extension includes the year. I assume it is better to keep the same page and update the dates, thereby keeping any links, ranking trust and authority we built. Is that the best strategy by updating the event info with the new dates? I would assume with a new page for the new year we would be starting over again and would have too much similar content and link diffusion. And in the future are we better off not including the year in the URL extension?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ebtec0 -
Given the new image mismatch penalty, is watermarking considered "cloaking"?
Google has released a new penalty called "Image mismatch". Which actually penalizes sites that show images to Google than are not the same as the ones offered to users when accessing the site. Although I agree with those sites that the image is completely different that the one shown in image search, lately I've seen lots of big sites using some king of watermark or layer that reads something like "To see the high quality of this image, click here" in order to "force" the user to visit the site hosting the image. Considering the latest changes to Google's image search, which made lots of sites lose their "image search traffic", are these techniques considered part of the new penalty Google is applying? Or does it only apply to the first scenario when the image is completely different? You can read more on this new penalty here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FedeEinhorn0