Where does Wordpress store the 301 redirects?
-
Hi, I've just created a campaign for my new wordpress blog and found 11 301 redirects which I was not aware of. It looks like wordpress has created them automatically.
Does any one know how wordpress handles this issues or where are they stored so I can delete them? They are of no use for me.
9 of these redirects point to the same url with an added '/' and are in pages
1 is on a post. I've been changing the permalink and some urls several times and maybe one of these times the Wordpress has automatically created the 301 redirect. But why? I do not want to keep the old url.
the last redirect is very strange it goes from http://www.mydomain.com/folder to http://www.mydomain.com where folder is the folder where I installed wordpress. But again, I want no one to type the url with the folder name or even know this folder exists.
Any comment on this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks a lot,
David
-
Thanks Sha and Aran,
Thank's a lot for your explanations on 301 redirects
I see a line of code in the htaccess file (RewriteBase /) that is probably doing the 9 first redirects that I mentioned
To avoid the rest, I just exported the pages and posts, deleted all of them and imported the xml file again. Maybe this fixes it. I understand it's not important but I'd rather have them disappear.
But appart from that, before importing the file I changed the
David
-
Hi,
There are plug ins which handle 301 redirects so I'd start by checking your plugs section and seeing what is active.
Wordpress uses a HTAccess file to store its 301's and such. However if you are inexperienced with handling a HTAccess file, I'd leave it be ad ask a expert to have a look at it as you can seriously mess up your site.
-
Hi David,
Having the 301's in place is a good thing rather than a problem. They have been created by Wordpress so that you do not have broken links on your site (because you have created links and then deleted them by changing the permalink).
There are 3 major reasons for using 301 (Permanent) Redirects:
- To move pages (or whole sites) to a new location and maintain accessibility to them
- To eliminate broken link issues when URL's that may already have been crawled and/or seen by search engines or site users. (Links can be created by ordinary users who may have bookmarked or shared the URL)
- To ensure that multiple URL's which render the same content are not seen by search engines as duplicate content. For example, a canonicalization issue can exist when http://mydomain.com (root domain) and http://www.mydomain.com (the subdomain) generally produce the same page of content, but can be seen as duplicates of each other because they are distinctly different URLs. Dr Pete's Duplicate Content in a Post Panda World is the definitive post on the different reasons for duplicate content and the best options for fixing them.
The 301's have no influence on users as they cannot see them - they are written to the .htaccess file. The idea of having them there is to catch any incoming traffic that comes via existing links to those pages that no longer exist.
There is a good explanation of 301 Best Practice in the Learn SEO section here at SEOmoz.
When working through the things identified in the crawl test, the Errors (red) and Warnings (yellow) are the things to pay attention to first. If you check the single line explanation above the blue tabs you will see this message "Notices are interesting facts about your pages we found while crawling." So they are not really problems that need fixing.
A couple of other great resources if you are just starting out are The Beginners Guide to SEO and the rest of the Learn SEO section.
Hope that helps,
Sha
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world
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
-
Can a page that's 301 redirected get indexed / show in search results?
Hey folks, have searched around and haven't been able to find an answer to this question. I've got a client who has very different search results when including his middle initial. His bio page on his company's website has the slug /people/john-smith; I'm wondering if we set up a duplicate bio page with his middle initial (e.g. /people/john-b-smith) and then 301 redirect it to the existent bio page, whether the latter page would get indexed by google and show in search results for queries that use the middle initial (e.g. "john b smith"). I've already got the metadata based on the middle initial version but I know the slug is a ranking signal and since it's a direct match to one of his higher volume branded queries I thought it might help to get his bio page ranking more highly. Would that work or does the 301'd page effectively cease to exist in Google's eyes?
Technical SEO | | Greentarget0 -
301 redirected all my pages to my new domain, now I have a problem with Google Search Console
Hi guys! I bought a new domain name and redirected all my URLs from the old domain to the new one. Everything worked perfectly but now I have a little problem. I want to use the option 'Address Change' in google search console. Step 1 Works (Select new website in the list) Step 2 Works (Confirm that the 301 are working) Step 3 Asks me to Verify the old domain (huh!?) in order to complete the request. Obviously that doesn't work because my 301s WORKS! So if I try to verify the old website by putting a google file in the root of my domain Google tries to access it and it automatically redirects to the new domain. I must be missing something lol help!
Technical SEO | | benoit_20180 -
1000 Pages on old website. What to do with the 301 redirects for this domain?
Hi Moz Community, I have a 301 redirect question... I just acquired an old domain: Totally in my niche Domain is 14 years old Website exists of 1000 pages Great amount of backlinks Website is offline since about 2 weeks Will place a new website online asap with new url structure For the 50 best scoring pages I wrote a new, but fully comparable/related article. I will put a 301 redirect from those old to the new pages. My question: What to do with the 950 other url's? Should I put a 301 redirect to the homepage? Should I forward those pages to the 404 page? Should I divide the 950 url's with a 301 redirect to the 50 new ones? Another solution maybe? Any idea what would be the best solution so we can save as much Google juice as possible? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | snorkel0 -
Blogger to Wordpress 301 and Meta Refresher Redirect
Hi Everyone! So my client has a blogger that she has developed a good amount of link equity for. It is a hersite.blogspot.com (she doesn't own her own domain yet). She is moving to the Wordpress platform though and the only way we can do a redirect is through a meta refresh redirect (since she doesn't have access to the servers on blogger). I went to Google Webmasters to do a change of address and found that the 301 checker said it couldn't find any 301 redirect, which is disappointing. What we're planning is telling all the places that link to the blog to change their links to the new blog but other than that what does anyone recommend to keep this link strength? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
Product Level 301 Redirects Best Practice
When creating a 301 mapping file for product pages, what is best practice
Technical SEO | | Bucktown
for which version of the URL to redirect to? Base directory or one
subdirectory/category path. Example Old URL: www.example.com/clothing/pants/blue-pants-123 Which of the following should be the new target URL: www.example.com/apparel/pants/blue-pants-123 www.example.com/apparel/blue-apparel/blue-pants-123 www.example.com/apparel/collections/spring-collection/blue-pants-123 www.example.com/blue-pants-123 This is assuming the canonical tag will be www.example.com/blue-pants-123. Also, if www.example.com/blue-pants-123 cannot be reached via site
navigation would it be detrimental to make that the target URL if Google
cannot crawl that naturally? Thanks0 -
Help writing a .htacess file with the correct 301 redirects
Hello I need help writing a .htaccess file that will do two things. URL match abc.com and www.abc.com to www.newabc.com except one subdomain was also changed www.abc.com/blog is now www.newabc.com/newblog everything after blog matches. Any help would greatly be appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | chriistaylor0 -
How long should you keep 301 redirects?
Hi, Back in 2009 I decided to update an older site from .htm and .shtml to .php. In order to minimize the impact I would go in every month and do a 301 redirect on the .shtml page to the new .php page. So I have many that range from 2009 through 2010. I had left the old 301's because I felt they would only be used if needed but I would think I should clean up my .htaccess by removing the old 301 redirects if they are not needed. How long should you keep this type of 301 redirect? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Force70 -
301 redirect
We have just had an outside SEO agency report on our site: One of things brought up were arounf broken links, and how they class them as broken links. Could any body tell me whether this statement holds true please, as I am not aware of this "Our latest intelligence shows that google are downgrading ranking from sites that feature 301 redirects within the internal link structure". Any help would be greatly appreciated Regards
Technical SEO | | Yozzer0