undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • MozCon
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
    Moz Pro

    Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

    Try it free!
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers

      Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
  4. Changing a parent category and 301 redirecting

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.

Changing a parent category and 301 redirecting

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
2
4
1.1k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • bizzer
    bizzer last edited by Aug 27, 2012, 3:57 PM

    I have a set of three pages that are subpages of a parent. The structure is as follows:

    mysite.com/directory/personal-widgets

    mysite.com/directory/commercial-widgets

    mysite.com/directory/widgets-services

    The partent page name "directory" really isn't working for where I want these pages to evolve. So I want to change it to "guides"

    In a world without worrying about google, I would simply change the parent page to guides, so they look like this, and be done with it:

    mysite.com/guides/personal-widgets

    But, the obvious problem is that I have external links to the page now. And the pages have a nice PR. And they also have Facebook page Likes and I don't know if I'll lose those.

    I know that if I should do this I should redirect the pages to the new pages of course.

    My question is:

    Will redirecting the old URL to the new URL with a 301 cause anything negative to happen that I might not be expecting?  Does Google dislike Redirects for any reason, or understand they are sometimes necessary?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • OlegKorneitchouk
      OlegKorneitchouk @bizzer last edited by Aug 28, 2012, 11:39 AM Aug 28, 2012, 11:39 AM

      Google won't think it's shady... they recently released a video that says they follow multiple redirects (but if you have too many, it will reflect poorly).

      Why get rid of a redirect at all? I would set a canonical url as well as keep the 301 redirect.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • bizzer
        bizzer last edited by Aug 27, 2012, 9:41 PM Aug 27, 2012, 9:41 PM

        What do you think Google thinks of a site that has redirects in it, I mean overall. Do they perhaps think something shady is going on?  I've got another site that I have to redirect about a dozen pages (and it's not a big site), as I migrate a poorly designed site to a better one.  The redirects will be from URL like .../sample-page.php to .../sample-page.  What will Google think of that?

        And if some pages I've redirected don't have links to them, and I'm only concerned with the search engines changing the indexed pages, how long do I need to keep the redirects active?

        OlegKorneitchouk 1 Reply Last reply Aug 28, 2012, 11:39 AM Reply Quote 0
        • OlegKorneitchouk
          OlegKorneitchouk last edited by Aug 27, 2012, 9:36 PM Aug 27, 2012, 4:23 PM

          Common consensus: 301 redirects will drop your rankings for ~ 2 weeks but you should bounce back in rankings after then. You do lose a small amount of link juice but if the word "guides" is a common search term for your widget queries, it might be worth the move.

          In addition, I would review the backlinks you currently have, sort out the most powerful backlinks, and contact the respective webmasters to change the URL to the new address and avoid the redirect.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • 1 / 1
          1 out of 4
          • First post
            1/4
            Last post

          Got a burning SEO question?

          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


          Start my free trial


          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.

          • See all categories

          Related Questions

          • matt.nails

            301 Redirect from query string to new static page

            If i want to create a redirect from a page where the slug ends like this "/?i=4839&mid=1000&id=41537" to a static, more SEO friendly slug like "/contact-us/", will a standard 301 redirect suffice? Thanks, Nails

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 13, 2018, 2:32 PM | matt.nails
            0
          • cuarto715

            Google Is Indexing my 301 Redirects to Other sites

            Long story but now i have a few links from my site 301 redirecting to youtube videos or eCommerce stores. They carry a considerable amount of traffic that i benefit from so i can't take them down, and that traffic is people from other websites, so basically i have backlinks from places that i don't own, to my redirect urls (Ex. http://example.com/redirect) My problem is that google is indexing them and doesn't let them go, i have tried blocking that url from robots.txt but google is still indexing it uncrawled, i have also tried allowing google to crawl it and adding noindex from robots.txt, i have tried removing it from GWT but it pops back again after a few days. Any ideas? Thanks!

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 19, 2018, 5:56 PM | cuarto715
            0
          • shloy23-294584

            SEO impact difference between a URL Rewrite and 301 redirect

            Hi guys and girls! Just putting a new site live, we changed the URL from one thing to another and I created a 301 file redirecting the urls like for like. The developer installing it has created a different file with columns like: RewriteRule ^page/ http://www.site/page [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^/page/ http://www.site/page [R=301,L] What's the difference? The page redirects but is there a difference between the 301 redirect and this URL rewrite in terms of SEO and link value?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 16, 2014, 12:52 PM | shloy23-294584
            0
          • WizardOfMoz

            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
            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.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 9, 2014, 11:56 AM | WizardOfMoz
            0
          • BeytzNet

            How to 301 redirect old wordpress category?

            Hi All, In order to avoid duplication errors we've decided to redirect old categories (merge some categories).
            In the past we have been very generous with the number of categories we assigned each post. One category needs to be redirected back to blog home (removed completely) while a couple others should be merged. Afterwords we will re-categorize some of the old posts. What is the proper way to do so?
            We are not technical, Is there a plugin that can assist? Thanks

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 10, 2013, 9:45 AM | BeytzNet
            0
          • BrianAlpert78

            Can I make 301 redirects on a Windows server (without access to IIS)?

            Hey everyone, I've been trying to figure out a way to set up some 301 redirects to handle the broken links left behind after a site restructuring, but I can only ever find information on 2 methods that I can't use (as far as I can tell). The first method is to do some stuff with an htaccess file, but that looks like it only works on Linux-based servers. The method described for Windows servers is generally to install this IIS rewrite/redirect module and run that, but I don't think our web hosting company allows users to log directly into the server, so I wouldn't be able to use the IIS thing. Is there any other way to get a 301 redirect set up? And is this uncommon for a web hosting company to do, or do you all just run your sites on Linux-based servers or your own Windows machines? Thanks!

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 4, 2013, 8:53 PM | BrianAlpert78
            0
          • SEOMG

            Can penalties be passed via 301 redirect?

            I have a well established domain that's been hit with some penalties. It hasn't been nuked off the map, just downgraded, especially on short-tail, one word type queries. I'm planning on redirecting this domain to another well established domain. The domains already have a history of lots of interlinking and are very similar from a subject matter standpoint. I feel that the penalized domain has been hit with an "over-optimization" of link anchor text penalty (I'm hoping it's algorithmic, but it could be manual). My question is if anyone has ever heard of a penalty like this being transferred to another domain through a 301 redirect. My hope is that the penalty just puts a cap on how much juice the redirect can pass, rather than transferring the penalty to the other domain itself. Any thoughts on this?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 25, 2014, 8:10 AM | SEOMG
            1
          • tylerfraser

            301 Redirect With A Message And Delay

            Hello, I'd like to sell a site I own. I'd like the site to be redirected to the buyers site with a 301 redirect. But I'd like the viewer to be informed that the site was purchased by this company and they will be redirect in 5 seconds.I'd like for the redirect to be a complete 301 and pass as much linklove as possible. Are you familiar with how to do this? Thanks, Tyler

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 15, 2011, 8:13 PM | tylerfraser
            0

          Get started with Moz Pro!

          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

          Start my free trial
          Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz API
          • Moz Data
          • STAT
          • Product Updates
          Moz Solutions
          • SMB Solutions
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Digital Marketers
          Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Authority Checker
          • Link Explorer
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • Brand Authority Checker
          • Local Citation Checker
          • MozBar Extension
          • MozCast
          Resources
          • Blog
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Help Hub
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • How-to Guides
          • Moz Academy
          • API Docs
          About Moz
          • About
          • Team
          • Careers
          • Contact
          Why Moz
          • Case Studies
          • Testimonials
          Get Involved
          • Become an Affiliate
          • MozCon
          • Webinars
          • Practical Marketer Series
          • MozPod
          Connect with us

          Contact the Help team

          Join our newsletter
          Moz logo
          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
          • Accessibility
          • Terms of Use
          • Privacy

          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.