How is it possible to 301 specific pages to a new domain?
-
The old site is small, only 100 pages or so, and about 10 of them are particularly useful. I would like to 301 those 10 pages to 10 similar pages on the new site, and also 301 the other 90 pages to the new site... the new site's home page, I suppose.
Does it make sense to do this and if so how?
I think if I simply 301 the whole of the old domain to the new one, the juice will be shared among the new site's page equally which is not what I want. I know where the htaccess file is and I can 301 a page within a domain but I'm at a loss with this. Thanks for any help.
EDIT:
I'm hoping for something like this:
old.com/page_1 >> new.com/page_A
old.com/page_2 >> new.com/page_B
... and 8 more of those
And then the other 90 pages:
old.com/Remaining pages >> new.com/index
-
Glad it helped and the explanation below is nicely done.
-
Thanks Matt, that put me on the right track. I have posted a full solution is you need it anytime.
-
SOLUTION:
Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine On
#redirect this type of url www.old.com/index.php?everything-after-the-question-mark to a new url
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^everything-after-the-question-mark$ RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.new.com/new-page? [L,R=301]
#change the above for every specific url with a query string that you want to send to a specific url
#for capturing the rest of the site's query string urls and sending them to a single page - the home page in this example:
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*)$ RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.new.com? [L,R=301]
#www.old.com doesn't have a query string so needs its own 301:
Redirect 301 / http://www.new.com
-
I think the issue you are having is because you are redirecting a dynamic URL and this is what is causing the problem. There was Q&A on here regarding this ages ago I will try and find it and let you have the link - unless we have an expert that wants to step in..
Try adding a rewrite condition before a rewrite rule:
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} route=product/product&product_id=51
-
For some reason it doesn't work. I've changed the fifth line below for posting here, but the four lines above it is the code that I used in the htaccess. Because it's a 1and1 server which use php4 as default, it has an extra line to use php 5, which the site has always had. The domain-to-domain 301 works ok with this extra line.
AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
Redirect 301 /index.php?route=product/product&product_id=51 http://www.newdomain.com/new-page
-
try this below
Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine on
Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.newdomain.com/newpage.html ```
-
Thanks Matt
The domain-to-domain redirect works but the page-to-page doesn't, even when the page-to-page is the only instruction below "RewriteEngine on".
-
Hi - yeah place all your specific redirects first and then add you blanket redirect at the end.
-
Sorry Matt, that was a bad typo. I've changed that now... I meant 301 those 10 pages to 10 similar pages".
Thanks very much for the link. I might just have to test this with a dormant domain and see if it works, but my worry is that the command to redirect the whole domain will override the commands to redirect the individual pages.
RewriteEngine on
#I would have ten of these:
rewriterule ^index.phproute=product/product&product_id=52(.*)$ http://www.new.co.uk/products/new$1 [r=301,nc]
######## As I would prefer not to do the above for all 100 pages, I would need a way to redirect the remaining pages. I don't know if the following accomplishes this as it's simply a command to redirect the domain?
#######Options +FollowSymLinksRewriteEngine onRewriteRule (.*) http://www.new.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]
-
Sorry my confusion - when you said "301 those 10 pages to 120 similar pages on the new site". Then your idea is correct it will be best to redirect your old page to a specific new one - I have done this successfully many times myself.
You can does this with your .htaccess - easiest way for you would be to use this:
http://www.webconfs.com/htaccess-redirect-generator.php
When using the tool you only need to initiate the rewrite engine once then just copy the last line for each url redirect:
include this only once:
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
-
Hi Matt,
It will be one-to-one:
old.com/page_1 >> new.com/page_A
old.com/page_2 >> new.com/page_B
... and 8 more of those
And then the other 90 pages:
old.com/Remaining pages >> new.com/index
-
To me it doesn't make sense to redirect a page using a permanent redirect that tells the search engines the old page has moved to multiple new pages - the new page should only exist in one location from a duplicate content and link juice point of view. I think that would be an improper use of a 301 redirect. You could group pages and point the old page to the first page of each group.
Also note as far as I am aware this is not possible as a 301 redirect will send you to a single location not multiple when you type the old address, so you could point 10 pages at 120 other than creating 10 index pages which group those 120 and pointing one of the 10 original at each of them...
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
-
301ing Pages & Moving Content To Many Other Domains
Recently started working with a large site that, for reasons way beyond organic search, wants to forward internal pages to a variety of external sites. Some of these external sites that would receive the content from the old site are owned, admin'd and/or hosted by the old site, most are not. All of the sites receiving content would be a better topic fit for that content than the original site. The process is not all at once, but gradual over time. No internal links on the old site to the old page or the new site/url would exist post content move and 301ing. The forwarding is mostly to help Google realize the host site of this content is not hosting duplicate content, but is the one true copy. Also, to pick up external links to the old pages for the new host site. It's a little like domain name change, but not really since the old site will continue to exist and the new sites are a variety of new/previously existing sites that may or may not share ownership/admin etc. In most cases, we won't be able to change any external link pointing to the original site and will just be 301ing the old url to the contents new home on another site. Since this is pretty unusual (like I wouldn't get up in the morning and choose to do this for the heck of it), here are my three questions: Is there any organic search risk to the old site or the sites receiving the old content/301 in this maneuver? Will the new sites pick up the link equity benefit on pages that had third party/followed links continuing to point to the old site but resolving via the 301 to this totally different domain? Any other considerations? Thanks! Best... Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945011 -
Do industry specific domains help SEO?
Hi everyone, I've looked for an answer to this but I can't find one. Hopefully someone can help! I have a new client that is a builder. They currently have a .co.uk domain (e.g. businessname.co.uk) Would it help them if the website was businessname_.builders_ instead? Thanks, Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebsiteAbility0 -
301 or 404 Question for thin content Location Pages we want to remove
Hello All, I have a Hire Website with many categories and individual location pages for each of the 70 depots we operate. However, being dynamic pages, we have thousands of thin content pages. We have decided to only concentrate on our best performing locations and get rid of the rest as its physically impossible to write unique content for all our location pages for every categories. Therefore my question is. Would it cause me problems by having to many 301's for the location pages I am going to re-direct ( i was only going to send these back to the parent category page) or should I just 404 all those location pages and at some point in the future when we are in a position to concentrate on these locations then redo them with new content ? in terms of url numbers It would affect a few thousand 301's or 404's depending on people thoughts. Also , does anyone know what percentage of thin content on a site should be acceptable ?.. I know , none is best in an ideal world but it would be easier if there we could get away with a little percentage. We have been affected by Panda , so we are trying to tidy things up as best at possible, Any advice greatly appreciated? thanks Peter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Removing 301 redirect from 2.5 yr old domain
Hello, Need Advise. We are in Automobiles We have an Automotive site - build 3 yrs back - which is our main site (Site A) We built a separate niche site on Used cars 2.5 yrs back (Site B - url http://www.usedcarindelhi.com) - did seo - promote it for a year and later on in feb 2013 - did 301 domain redirection to Site A Now - we thinking to rebuild Site Site B again and remove redirection Will there be any harm on Site A, as we have now removed the redirection or shall we pass on link from home page of Site B to Site A i.e say Powered by Site A (on Top) or at all no direct linking is actually needed. PS :- Also - can anyone let know the backlink quality of www.usedcarindelhi.com. Its PR 3, DA - 18, Majestic Citation Flow - 18, Trust Flow - 11 . Pl advise
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Why does Google add my domain as a suffix to page title in SERPS?
Hi, If I do a search in Google - for one our products on our site, our site comes up - but it would appear that google is adding our domain name as a suffix to our title in the results... Anyone else seen this? Can I do anything about it? I would prefer it not to appear. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Low Page ranking and domain authoriy
Hi, Even after building links through white hat, publishing fresh content and infographics every week and links from more than 1700 domains our site’s domain authority is 49 and page authority is 57. Any idea what we are doing wrong? Thank you Chris Adams
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | INN0 -
Need advice on 301 domain redirection
Hello friends, We have two sites namely spiderman-example.com & avengers-example.com which sells the same product listed out under similar categories, since we are about to stop or put down the site “avengers-example.com” because we just want to concentrate in bringing up a single brand called spiderman-example.com. “Spiderman-example” has comparatively more visitors and conversion rates than ''avengers-example'' ie. 90 % more traffic and conversion. Avengers-example has a small fraction of loyal customers who still search for the brand-name & there are a hand-full of potential keywords those ranking on its own. So is it advisable to redirect Avengers-example to spiderman-example using 301-redirect? Will this help to gain any link-juice from Avengers-example? If so how can we effectively redirect between two domain’s with minimal loss in page authority & linkjuice to enhance ''spiderman-example''? Off beat:These names "Avengers" and "Spiderman" were just used as an example but the actual site names has no relation to the ones mentioned above.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | semvibe0 -
301'ing over 700 internal links to the main page
I just got a contract for a site. After I analyzed their website, I noticed that they have over 700 pages indexed. However, their internal linking structure sucks. It's basically all 700 pages in one directory. What do you recommend? I redirect all the internal structures to their new locations, or would it be better to redirect all those internal pages to their main domain name, and build a completely new seo-friendly structure? Redirecting their current pages to each individual page is gonna take a lotta time, and I don't think they're gonna pay for it. :l
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | skgppa0