After the 301 redirect
-
Hi all,
A quick question, after you have setup your 301 re-directs in .htaccess - is it necessary to keep your content in the original domains directory?
My thinking is that requests do get as far as referencing the directory, thus it should be safe to delete all the files on the old domain?
Thanx!
-
Thanx all, once this content is deleted, what would I show on my sitemap.xml?
This domain has become a landing page and now redirects to two other location businesses.
eg. www.business.co.za used to be the main site, but now they have split to www.business1.co.za and www.business2.co.za
Do I now add a simplified site map showing only these two links? Or do I show the old sitemap with the two new links to the new domains?
-
You really should delete the old content that you are redirecting to a new page. If you have forgotten to de index the old page then because it physically exists Google may list that page which technically redirects to page #2. Not good.
The purpose of 301 redirects is to redirect users trying to access a deleted/moved resource to it's new location. I don't see why you would keep the old content where it is.
-
There is no need for the content to exist any more if you have 301'd the containing URL.
-
Technically you can delete the old files if the redirect is in place correctly.
However, do test it out after you delete the pages to ensure that everything is fine. You can use Google WMT's 'Fetch as Googlebot' to know the exact response Google gets.
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
-
HSTS Redirects
Hi Are these 307 redirects bad for SEO? They've just popped up on an audit & I haven't seen them before. I'm guessing as they're temporary they should be updated. Thanks Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Tough 301 redirect with a /www in it
Hi Mozzers, I'm using Eggplants 301 redirect via wordpress and for some reason I can't redirect one url. The example of it is below: www.website.com/news/www.website.com As you can see, it looks like there's 2 url's and this plugin doesn't do the trick. Does anyone have any suggestions? Maybe via .htaccess? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
How to 301 Redirect /page.php to /page, after a RewriteRule has already made /page.php accessible by /page (Getting errors)
A site has its URLs with php extensions, like this: example.com/page.php I used the following rewrite to remove the extension so that the page can now be accessed from example.com/page RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rcseo
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php [L] It works great. I can access it via the example.com/page URL. However, the problem is the page can still be accessed from example.com/page.php. Because I have external links going to the page, I want to 301 redirect example.com/page.php to example.com/page. I've tried this a couple of ways but I get redirect loops or 500 internal server errors. Is there a way to have both? Remove the extension and 301 the .php to no extension? By the way, if it matters, page.php is an actual file in the root directory (not created through another rewrite or URI routing). I'm hoping I can do this, and not just throw a example.com/page canonical tag on the page. Thanks!0 -
Is 1:1 301 redirect required on indexed URL when restructing URL even if the new URL is canonicalized?
Hello folks, We are restructuring some URLS which forms a fair chunk of the content of the domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HB17
These content are auto generated rather than manually created unlike other parts of the website. The same content is currently accessible from two URLs: /used-books/autobiography-a-long-walk-to-freedom-isbn
/autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-isbn The URL 1 uses the URL 2 as the canonical url and it has worked allright since Moz does
not show the two as duplicate of each other. Google has also indexed the canonical URL although
there is still a few 'URL 1s' which were indexed before the canonical was implemented. The updated URL structure will look like something like this: /used-books/autobiography-a-long-walk-to-freedom-author-name-isbn
/autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-authore-name-isbn It would be great to have just a single URL but a few business requirement prevents
us from having just the canonical URL only even with the new structure. Since we will still have two URLs to access the same content and we were wondering
whether we will need to do a 1:1 301 redirect on the current URLs or since there will be canonical URL
(/autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-authore-name-isbn),
we won't need to worry about doing the 1:1 redirect on the the indexed content? Please note that the content will still be accessible from the OLD URL (unless 301ed of course). If it is advisable to do a 1:1 301 redirect this is what we intend to do: /used-books/autobiography-a-long-walk-to-freedom-isbn 301 to
/used-books/autobiography-a-long-walk-to-freedom-author-name-isbn /autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-isbn 301 to
/autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-authore-name-isbn Any advice/suggestions would be greated appreciated. Thank you.0 -
Multiple 301 redirects and old site content appearing in Google results
I have found that for some Google searches the old version of the site on a completely different domain is appearing on page one of the results, while the newer site is only on page 3. The old site is redirecting to the new site with a 301 redirect, however there is also an additional redirect on the new site to force SSL. Despite this when you view the Google cache of the result that appears in Google the content of the page is still the old site. Is this normal or is Google not following the chain of 301 redirects? Edit: I just found out that downloading the page by right clicking a link and clicking download rather than viewing it in a browser leads to the old site appearing and the 301 redirect not being followed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | freshleafmedia0 -
What things should I consider if I am doing a 301 redirect on only 1 page/blog post?
I wrote a blog post on one of my websites and it got picked up by reddit and I got a bunch of nice backlinks and now that website got a nice boost overall, and especially that blog post page. I now wish I would have posted the article on a different website of mine. I would prefer if this other site was getting the traffic and the good backlinks that I've acquired. What are the pros and cons if I move the content over to my other website, and 301 redirect just that one article to the article location on my other website? The blog post I wrote almost instantly began ranking for certain terms in Google. Ideally I would like my other website to rank for those terms, but I realize there will be some differences as search engines look at the website as a whole and take many factors into consideration. I know there are tons of case studies and information about moving entire sites etc but I couldn't find much on this. Any advice, questions or comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bradbowman
Brad0 -
Multiple 301 redirects for a HTTPS URL. Good or bad?
I'm working on an ecommerce website that has a few snags and issues with it's coding. They're using https, and when you access the website through domain.com, theres a 301 redirect to http://www.domain.com and then this, in turn, redirected to https://www.domain.com. Would this have a deterimental effect or is that considered the best way to do it. Have the website redirect to http and then all http access is redirected to the https URL? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasondexter0 -
Redirection not working
http://elmanarah.com/ to http://www.elmanarah.com/ I have mistakenly created 5 databases for one wordpress installation.In order to get rid of them I mistakenly even deleted the right one.Now created the new one but the URL is showing with www Even now if It type in http://elmanarah.com/ it sends me to http://www.elmanarah.com/ I also check in URL D.A and P.A in OSE it shows like I have redirected it fine.Can anyone Check in and guide me either I have done it right and It pass on my previous work effort or it was total loss for me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | csfarnsworth0