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
-
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?
-
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.
-
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?
-
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.
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
-
Fresh page versus old page climbing up the rankings.
Hello, I have noticed that if publishe a webpage that google has never seen it ranks right away and usually in a descend position to start with (not great but descend). Usually top 30 to 50 and then over the months it slowly climbs up the rankings. However, if my page has been existing for let's say 3 years and I make changes to it, it takes much longer to climb up the rankings Has someone noticed that too ? and why is that ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
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 | | FPK0 -
Null Alt Image Tags vs Missing Alt Image Tags
Hi, Would it be better for organic search to have a null alt image tag programatically added to thousands of images without alt image tags or just leave them as is. The option of adding tailored alt image tags to thousands of images is not possible. Is having sitewide alt image tags really important to organic search overall or what? Right now, probably 10% of the sites images have alt img tags. A huge number of those images are pages that aren Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
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 | | BohmKalish1230 -
Redirect Search Results to Category Pages
I am planning redirect the search results to it's matching category page to avoid having two indexed pages of essentially the same content. Example http://www.example.com/search/?kw=sunglasses
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WizardOfMoz
wil be redirected to
http://www.example.com/category/sunglasses/ Is this a good idea? What are the possible negative effect if I go this route? Thanks.0 -
Using href lang tag for multi-regional targeting on the same page
Hi, I have the site au.example.com and I ranked on google AustraliaI would like to be ranked also in Google New Zeland for the same page (au.example.com) Because they are geographically & culturally close Can I place href lang tag for both countries and present the same page The code should look like: OR should i have create a different page for New Zealand (for eample: http://au.example.com/EN-NZ) And the code will look like: What will work better or there is other solution? Hope I’m clear.. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kung_fu_Panda0 -
Are there any negative effects to using a 301 redirect from a page to another internal page?
For example, from http://www.dog.com/toys to http://www.dog.com/chew-toys. In my situation, the main purpose of the 301 redirect is to replace the page with a new internal page that has a better optimized URL. This will be executed across multiple pages (about 20). None of these pages hold any search rankings but do carry a decent amount of page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visually0