301 Redirect Issue
-
I'm having an issue with 301 redirects:
Let's see if I can verbalize my thoughts on this one...
So we just recently moved our site to Wordpress. One of our new 301 commands is redirecting oursite.com/news to oursite.com/blog . However there are other links from our previous site that look like oursite.com/news/XYZ and the issue is that, because wordpress structures its links differently, that URL is not equivalent to oursite.com/blog/XYZ. Instead, it might look something more like oursite.com/blog/yaddayadda/XYZ or something. Does that make sense?
The issue is that when I find an old link of ours on google that looks something like "oursite.com/news/XYZ" or "oursite.com/news/ABC" it is automatically replacing "news" with "blog". When I try to go in manually and redirect anything that says "/news/XYZ" to "/blog/yaddayadda/XYZ" it still doesn't work. It still just replaces "news" with "blog."
Wow I realize that might not make sense to anyone but if it does - please advise!!
Thanks!!!!
-
I did try that. Not sure why it isn't working but I think it has something to do with Tom's answer below. Heh. Thanks though Daniel!!
-
Wow thanks so much. This might be way over my head (I know very little about web development) but I'm going to talk to our devs about it. Thanks again!!
-
Ah you have a parameter in the old URL. That ? is the real trick here. because you redirected /news to /blog it will redirect /news?anythingyouputhere to /blog?anythingyouputhere if that makes sense.
Did you try to redirect /blog?tag=business-2 to /blog/category/business yet?
-
Hi!
The problem you have is that you are using two different Apache extensions and I don't believe you can control the order the go in. You are using mod_alias and mod_rewrite.
It sounds like you have a line like:
Redirect permanent /news/dinosaur/ninja http://www.oursite.com/blog/ninja
This is the mod_alias rule, and it is firing before your mod_rewrite rules (and then it no longer fits their criteria, so they don't fire).
So, what you need to do is change your mod_alias rules into mod_rewrite rules, so then you can control the order (they execute top to bottom, so you just put your 'specific' redirects above your general ones). You rule should look something like this (I've not confirmed!):
RewriteRule ^/news/dinosaur/ninja/$ /blog/ninja/ [L,R=301]
I hope all that make sense. Let me know how you get on!
-
Hey Daniel. Thanks for your response - the only problem is that we already have /%postname% selected. It is working for mostly every blog entry except this one that I'm running into problems with. I'll show you the exact URL that's giving us the problem.
On google, it shows the URL as:
oursite.com/news?tag=business-2
Then it seems to be redirecting it to:
oursite.com/blog?tag=business-2
However, that site does not exist. It should be
http://oursite.com/category/business
I tried to literally 301 redirect both oursite.com/news?tag=business-2 and http://oursite.com/category/business to http://oursite.com/category/business but neither worked.
Thoughts?
-
It sounds like more of a permalink issue in wordpress than a redirect issue. Under settings on the left sidebar in your wordpress dashboard is a link called permalinks. Go there and let us know what it says there. You probably want a custom structure that says /%postname%/ so that your blog will make permalinks like site.com /blog/postname instead of site.com /blog/category/postname or whatever else might be going on there.
Get the simple 301 redirect plugin and make sure you do redirect every old URL to its new counterpart, but make sure your new ones look the way you want first.
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
-
After you remove a 301 redirect that Google has processed, will the new URL retain any of the link equity from the old URL?
Lets say you 301 redirect URL A to URL B, and URL A has some backlinks from other sites. Say you left the 301 redirect in place for a year, and Google had already replaced the old URL with the new URL in the SERPs, would the new URL (B) retain some of the link equity from URL A after the 301 redirect was removed, or does the redirect have to remain in place forever?
Technical SEO | | johnwalkersmith0 -
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 -
301 Redirecting http to https
In the Moz Site Crawl issue, I was seeing an error that said we were temporarily redirecting our homepage to https URLs. So I changed the code in htaccess to make it 301 redirect but I'm still getting the same error. I implemented it last week and we just had a new crawl yesterday. Here is the new code: RewriteEngine on
Technical SEO | | Heydarian
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^heritagelawmarketing.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.heritagelawmarketing.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC] Does anyone know why I'm still getting 302 redirects? Thanks0 -
301 redirect adding trailing slash to url
I am looking into a .htacess file for a site I look after and have noticed that the urls are all 301 redirecting from a none slash directory to a trailing slashed directory/folders. e.g. www.domain.com/folder gets 301 redirected to www.domain.com/folder/ Will this do much harm and reduce the effect on the page and any links pointing to the site be lessened? Secondly I am not sure what part of my htaccess is causing the redirect. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.co.uk [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$
Technical SEO | | TimHolmes
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.domain.co.uk/$1 [L,R,NE] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.php
RewriteRule ^(.)index.php$ /$1 [R=301,L] or could a wordpress ifmodule be causing the problem? Any info would be apreciated.0 -
301 redirects on Windows server
Hi, We are soon moving www.ourumbrellaorganisationwebsite.co.uk/oldsubsidiaryname/index.aspx AND www.differentolddomainname.co.uk to just www.ourumbrellaorganisationwebsite.co.uk (an existing site which will no longer have the old subsidiary name sub section). How do we do the 301 redirects on a Windows server? Helicon has been suggested but I don't know it. I know we need to 301 redirect 'old' pages to the equivalent new ones, but is it a problem to do all of the old pages (there are lots) or should we just just do a few? is there ever a downside to doing individual redirects for an entire old site? Also, once the 301 redirects are in place from the old domain, is it possible to let the old domain expire and if so, at what point? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Houses0 -
How do find where a 301 redirect is located
My report says I have http://www.30minuteseder.com/Passover.blog redirected to http://30minuteseder.com/Passover.blog. It is correct, but I can't find where the 301 redirect is located. I looked in my .htaccess file in the root and it's not there. How do I find it so I can change it?
Technical SEO | | Sederman0 -
What should be use 301 or 302 redirection for 404 pages
Please suggest which redirection we should use for 404 pages- 301 or 302. If you can elaborate it with reason then it will be highly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | koamit0 -
301 Redirect for homepage with language code
In my multilingual Magento store, I want to redirect the hompage URL with an added language code to the base URL. For example, I want to redirect http://www.mysite.com/tw/ to http://www.mysite.com/ which has the exact same content. Using a canonical URL will help with search engines, but I would just rather nip the problem in the butt by not showing http://www.mysite.com/tw/ to visitors in the first place. Problem is that I don't want (can't have) all /tw/ removed from URLs due to Magento limitations, so I just want to know how to redirect this single URL. Since rewrites are on, adding Redirect 301 /tw http://www.88kbbq.com would redirect all URLs with the /tw/ language code to ones without. Not an option. Hope folks can lend a hand here.
Technical SEO | | kwoolf0