What if my developers tell me they can only handle a certain amount of 301 redirects?
-
We recently launched a new site and I felt the need to redirect all of our old site URLs to the new site URLs. Our developers told me they would only be able to do about 1000 before it starts to bog down the site. Has anyone else came across this before? On top of that, with our new site structure, whenever our content team changes a title (which is more often than i had hoped), the URL changes. This means I'm finding i have many other redirects I need to put in place, but cant at the moment. Advice please??
-
This would only work if the old site is still live, you need to place the canonical tag in the old page pointing to the new page to transfere link juice.
You can only transfer link juice thought a request (eg: a link)if no links point to old pages, there is no need for the link juice
-
Hello,
I assume you want the 301 redirects so that you can carry over any SEO goodness the old site had to the new site. I wouldn't recommend using redirects for your entire site, the benefit is not often worth it. This is what I'd recommend:
I'd place 301 redirects on the old homepage (to new homepage) and same for top entry points of secondary pages only. All other pages I'd use canonical links (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en) from old site to new site. And, be sure to use Google Webmaster Tools to inform of the new domain name. Over next few months go to the websites that drive high levels of traffic to your website (i.e. referral sites) and ask them to change the domain name from old to new.
If your CMS is up for it you can also build into the platform a canonical module which can stop the URL changing when the title of the page changes. Highly recommend you sort this particular issue quickly.
Hope that helps,Davinia
-
301's do take resources, but very little, but there has to be a limit, 1000 is a lot.
why do you need so many?
With your old site see what pages had external links, and 301 them, there is no reason to 301 those that do not.
-
It seems to me that your developers are placing the 301 redirect rules in something like a .htaccess file. In this case, it is better to have fewer redirect rules to keep the size of the file down.
But why don't they store the original URL and new URL in a database - which can be queried and the appropriate 301 header initiated to allow the redirect to take place (if appropriate)? This way you could easily add a few thousand without any performance issues.
As far as the titles/urls are concerned, the system shouldn't change the URL every time the title changes. This will cause problems in the future. I'd ask the developers to change this.
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
-
Website url structure after redesign and 301 redirect chains - Looking for advice
OK, been trying to piece together what is best practice for someone I'm working with, so here goes; Website was redesigned, changed urls from url a to url b. 301's put in place. However, the new url structure is not optimal. It's an e-commerce store, and all products are put in the root folder now: www.website.com/product-name A better, more organized url structure would be: www.website.com/category/product-name I think we can all agree on that. However, I'm torn on whether it's worth changing everything again, and how to handle things in terms of redirects. The way I see things, it would result in a redirect chain, which is not great and would reduce link equity. Keeping the products in the root moving forward with a poor structure doesn't feel great either. What to do? Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Tomasvdw0 -
301 Domain Redirect And Old Domain to a New one including pages
Hi, I need to 301 an old domain to a new one (new website) I need to 301 the domain to a new page not the new domain direct for example www.olddomain.co.uk to www.newdomain.co.uk/pagenew Then I need to also 301 all the other pages on the old domain to the new one for example... www.oldmain.co.uk/oldpage to www.newdomain.co.uk/newpage Issue is I can do one or the other not both, I can get the other pages to redirect but then the main domain wont redirect to the correct new page. Or I can get the old domain to redirect but not the internal pages. Thanks
Technical SEO | | David-Sharpe0 -
301 redirects- how long to keep and how many are too many?
Hi, I was told we have way too many 301 redirects on our site. We have some that have been there for 3 years. Our site is datacard.com . Question- how long should you keep a redirect out there when building a new page and expiring an old page? Is it 6 months, is it a certain time frame? wondering what the best practices are? Thanks! Laura
Technical SEO | | lauramrobinson320 -
Help creating a 301 redirect in my htaccess file
Hi Guys, I'm trying to build a 301 file with the file requirements: It should be visible only for Google and other Search Engine Agents. It will have a few direct redirects. A few URL must be dynamic redirect. For example each page the starts with olddomain.com/category and is not in the list of of direct redirects should be redirect for newdomain.com/category Here is my start point: #301 Starts here Set the agents RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | Felip3
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Googlebot [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} msnbot [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Slurp Make the direct redirect. Redirect 301 /category/sub1 http://www.newdomain.com/category/sub1
Redirect 301 /category/sub2 http://www.newdomain.com/category/sub2 Redirect everything else Redirect 301 /category/* http://www.newdomain.com/category #End of my 301 Will that work how I want? is there anything wrong?0 -
While SEOMoz currently can tell us the number of linking c-blocks, can SEOMoz tell us what the specific c-blocks are?
I know it is important to have a diverse set of c-blocks, but I don't know how it is possible to have a diverse set if I can't find out what the c-blocks are in the first place. Also, is there a standard for domain linking c-blocks? For instance, I'm not sure if a certain amount is considered "average" or "above-average."
Technical SEO | | Todd_Kendrick0 -
301 Redirect with ASP (not .NET)
I'm looking to redirect non www to www and also .co.uk to .com. http://www.xxxxx.com is the intended target. http://xxxxx.com & http://www.xxxxx.co.uk & http://xxxxx.co.uk to redirect. I managed to do some of this but if I come through to a service page /services/cars.asp it redirects to the homepage. All I have so far is this code: <% If InStr(Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME"),"www") = 0 ThenResponse.write "http://www." & Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_HOST") & Request.ServerVariables("URL") & "?" & Request.ServerVariables("QUERY_STRING")Response.EndEnd if %> What am I missing?
Technical SEO | | Hughescov0 -
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 redirects and OSE
We run a blog/video real estate site (yochicago.com) as one of the venues for sponsored content for our clients looking for off-page SEO and inbound links. I'm working with a client who we've linked to a handful of times in the last few weeks, but I'm not seeing any external links from our site on PRO/OSE. Come to find that our writer has been linking to http://clientsite.com, instead of http://www.clientsite.com, which is the canonical site. I wouldn't have thought that this would make a difference, and about an hour of web research seems to confirm that it shouldn't make a difference, save for losing a little bit of SEO credit. What am I missing? Any input would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | mikescotty0