Should I stop redirectin 301, sometime?
-
Dear All,
I work for a southamerican ecommerce, I would like to know if you can help me out with the following.
This site is full of 404, more than 45K, so we are doing 301 to corresponding pages. The development team is asking me if we could stop doing the 301 in some time...In order to do this search engines should index only the url we are redirecting to, and not the one that is redirecting to the new one.
Currently they are redirecting in the HTML no by htaccess, so this means they have one page for each URL that needs to be redirected, and this is not efficient.
Bests,
Pablo
-
I would just setup wild card 301 redirects via htaccess. Allows you to establish rules to redirect whole directories to new pages: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6877486/how-can-i-use-htaccess-to-redirect-paths-with-a-wildcard-character
-
Meta noindex + the URL Removal Tool would work to get rid of them. I would also try and make sure any old links internally on your site that may point to these pages get removed, if that is the step you are going to take. What will the user see when they land on these old URLs?
-
Hi Jazom,
Errors are hard 404. I like what you say, but I would like to know if it would be better to erase indexed pages from index.
Bests,
Pablo López Carrara
Cinepapaya
-
Hi Russ,
Tnks, I like this kind of segmentation by inbound links and traffic, let me quote you
"Chances are, most of those pages neither receive traffic nor have inbound links. Go ahead and drop the 301 redirect for all of those" I think you mean (Im Argentine) I should use redirect for these URLs. which I dont think it make much sense since these are not the most valuable pages. I got your general idea, but let me know if you made I mistake when you wrote it.
I like what you said in general, but I wouldn´t like leaving 404 (even though they got no traffic or links) with out treating. So...questions...Meta no-index, does it work for already indexed pages? What do you think about using no-index + deleting these urls from index using webmaster tools.
Bests,
Pablo López Carrara
Cinepapaya
-
Hi Pablo,
What report are you using to find the 404 pages? Are they soft 404 or hard 404s? A lot of reports may return a 404 response for something like a failed file request which does not really impact usability.
If you have a consistent page name for your 404 pages, look under Analytics site content and filter by page title then search for your 404 page title - this will give you the actual failed page requests, you can then narrow down if they are internal page links or external.
It may be worthwhile checking what links are pointing to your 301 redirects and if there are links you want to keep, dropping them could have a negative impact on your site.
Regards,
Jason
-
This is a good and common question. There are two reasons why you would want to keep the 301 redirect in place
- Usability: Users are still trying to reach this now defunct page
- Inbound Links: There are external links that are pointing to this page.
The best thing to do is first narrow down the pages for which you have no reason to keep 301s in place. Open up your analytics platform and look to see which of those 45K pages have received no traffic in the last 30 days. Then use a tool like Open Site Explorer or Google Search Console to see if any of those 45K pages have inbound links. Chances are, most of those pages neither receive traffic nor have inbound links. Go ahead and drop the 301 redirect for all of those.
Then, prioritize the remaining pages. The ones with the most links and most traffic should probably retain a 301 redirect for the long run. Those near the bottom you might choose to drop.
Finally, with that many 404s, make sure that your 404 page is useful. Create a custom 404 page that helps direct users to their correct location or provides an easy search mechanism to find it themselves.
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
-
Phasing in new website on www2 domain - 301 plan
Hi, I work for a large company and we're planning to phase in a new website. The idea is to develop key journeys on the new site and serve them on a www2 domain, removing them from the old website which is served on the www domain. The reason for this is because the old website is over 2,000 pages, and the management want to see new, improved journeys sooner rather than later. So, rather than launching all new pages and journeys at the same time, which will take a long time to design and develop, key journeys will move across to the new site / design sooner and made available to visitors. Whilst the overall journey might be a bit disjointed in parts (i.e. sending people from old to new site, and vice versa) I can't see a better way of doing it... Once all new content is complete, 301s will be implemented from old content on www. to new content www2. Once the phasing is complete, and all new content is in place on www2, 301s will be implemented to point everything back to www. Does anybody see any problems with this approach? Or any ideas on how to better handle this situation? Thanks Mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RWesley0 -
A Really Specific Question about 301 Redirect Strategies
Hi there: As part of a site redesign project, we've been doing a lot of 301 redirects, as we retire old URLs or rename them. My question is: is it necessary to redirect ALL old URLS? What about URLs with no links and low authority? Are these really necessary to redirect, since they're not referenced on the web and there's obviously a global redirect happening at the level of the root domain? Just curious; I'm not sure I've ever really understood this...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
Hacked website - Dealing with 301 redirects and a large .htaccess file
One of my client's websites was recently hacked and I've been dealing with the after effects of it. The website is now clean of malware and I already appealed to Google about the malware issue. The current issue I have is dealing with the 20, 000+ crawl errors which are garbage links that were created from the hacking. How does one go about dealing with all the 301 redirects I need to create for all the 404 crawl errors? I'm already noticing an increased load time on the website due to having a rather large .htaccess file with a couple thousand 301 redirects done already which I fear will result in my client's website performance and SEO performance taking a hit as well.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPK0 -
How long does Google take to completely authorise 301 redirect?
Will 301 redirect will have immediate impact once the website or that redirected link got indexed? We have recently redirected few links in the process of link reclamation and ranking dropped few days later. Every link we claimed is related to our topic (matched in content and URL) and they have good DA. Even though why it has happened? What are the general rank dropping factors in the process of link reclamation? Thanks, Satish
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Do I need to do a 301, as well as adding re-write rules on Apache
I'm sure this has probably been asked somewhere before... We're implementing a URL re-write rule to convert non dub pages to the www. subdomain and also removing all trailing slashes as part of a basic canonicalisation exercise. The question is, as well as doing the URL rewrites within htaccess, should I also 301 those duplicate pages or does the URL rewrite do the job on it's own? Thanks mozzers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ultramod0 -
301 redirect on Windows IIS. HELP!
Hi My six-year-old domain has always existed in four forms: http://www**.**mydomain.com/index.html http://mydomain.com/index.html http://mydomain.com/ http://www.mydomain.com My webmaster claims it’s “impossible” to do a 301 redirect from the first three to the fourth. I need simple instructions to guide him. The site’s hosted on Windows running IIS Here’s his rationale: These are all the same page, so they can’t redirect to themselves. Index.html is the default page that loads automatically if you don’t specify a page. If I put a redirect into index.html it would just run an infinite redirect loop. As you can see from the IIS set up, both www.mydomain and mydomain.com point to the same location ( VIEW IMAGE HERE ) _Both of these use index.html as the default document ( VIEW IMAGE 2 HERE ) _
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jeepster0 -
Does 301 Redirect works on social signals?
Hello, I'm considering strategic change in my site's formation.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
301 redirecting some of the pages is not a problem but the question remains - what will happen with all of my social signals? These pages have Likes, plus ones, and tweets. Thanks0 -
Help Needed - 301 a .co.uk to a .com Serp Questions
Hey, really need some help deciding what to do... I have a .co.uk site, its my oldest and best site of my network and accounts for maybe 30-40% of my income. Although its a .co.uk site, it actually makes most of its from from USA traffic and targets many terms for the US market - but the problem is that due to it being a .co.uk it doesnt rank as well in G .com and over the last few years Google has defiantly widened the gap as such for the ability for a .co.uk to rank in G .com. Many terms that I used to be #1 for in G .com, I now rank position 5-10 only, but in G .co.uk I'm #1 and often with a duo listing so I wouldnt put the loss of rankings in G .com down to just losing rankings naturally. Now many of my key pages are gradually losing rankings in G .com which is not good and really frustrating Feedback Needed So my dilemma is do I risk my best site and 301 it to a .com hosted in the US for potential at a guess 50% increase in revenues and more future potential (If the 301 worked well and got some US rankings back - Im sure longtail would increase lots too) ? If people with experience with 301ing sites to a new domain could let me know how they did or if you're an SEO and have done this many times, how many times on average has Serps remained stable / unchanged ? Trying to work out the reward to risk ratio, like on average if the transition is seamless 90% of the time it would seem worth the gamble, but if its 50% then I would say its not worth it.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | goody2shoes0