301 Redirect back to original domain
-
We have a site, domainA.com and we split part of the site off into it's own site a couple of years ago as domainB.com. All urls from DomainA were 301 redirected to DomainB, but with a different folder structure. For business reasons, we now shuttering domainB and rolling it back into domainA. For the 301 redirects for urls that were on the original domainA, should I overwrite them to the new folder structure directly from the original urls? In other words:
301 redirect domainA.com/oldstructure to domainA.com/newstructure
rather than:
Existing 301 redirect domainA.com/oldstructure to domainB.com/newstructuretopic with a new 301 redirect to domainA.com/newstructuretopictopic
-
Angela, we usually recommend looking at each page separately and determining the value of each URL. You may end up with a new site structure, but there may be pages on the site that you need to keep because they shouldn't be redirected to the new page on the new structure.
I prefer not to redirect a URL if it doesn't have to be redirected. You will need to redirect all pages from the old site to the new site, and it makes sense to redirect those to the most appropriate page. But, when it comes to a new site structure, I wouldn't necessarily redirect a page if it doesn't have to be redirected.
-
I see this as three distinct steps:
- Remove the old 301 redirects that go from A1 --> B
- Add new 301 redirects that go from B --> A2
- Add new 301 redirects that go from A1 --> A2
However, if there aren't any valuable links still pointing at A1, you can probably get away with skipping the last step since the only value would be for indexation guidance that would have been accomplished long ago when you first set up the 301s from A1 --> B. It won't hurt anything to do it anyway, but it might save you some time.
-
Hi Angela,
Yes, those redirects should be updated. For each redirect that Google passes through, you lose about 10% of the authority from the referring page. So if you have two-step redirects like that, you'll lose ~20% of the authority. Having redirect chains like that will also negatively affect your load time.
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
-
I have a question about the impact of a root domain redirect on site-wide redirects and slugs.
I have a question about the impact (if any) of site-wide redirects for DNS/hosting change purposes. I am preparing to redirect the domain for a site I manage from https://siteImanage.com to https://www.siteImanage.com. Traffic to the site currently redirects in reverse, from https://www.siteImanage.com to https://siteImanage.com. Based on my research, I understand that making this change should not affect the site’s excellent SEO as long as my canonical tags are updated and a 301 redirect is in place. But I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a potential consequence of this switch I’m not considering. Because this redirect lives at the root of all the site’s slugs and existing redirects, will it technically produce a redirect chain or a redirect loop? If it does, is that problematic? Thanks for your input!
Technical SEO | | mollykathariner_ms0 -
Using Sub Domains For Back Linking
Hey Guys! I'm building links for my page and happened upon the "Hoth" link building page. I tried it out and it built some no follow links and some links on several sub domains. I know that, when back linking via guest posting, no follow links do not juice my site. My question is, does building links on a subdomain from another company juice my site? If it's not helpful, could you explain why? Does it juice my site in any way? If you could link sources, I would really appreciate it. Also, do any of you have input on Hoth or platforms like it? Are they worth it? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | rodv0 -
301 Re-directing 'empty' domains
Hello, My client had purchased a few domains and 301 re-directed them, pointing to our main website. As far as I am aware the 'empty domains' are brand related but no content has ever been displayed on them, and I doubt they have much authority. The issue here is that we took a dive in ranking for our main keyword, I had a look on ahrefs and found the below: | www.empty-domain/our-keyword | 30 | 19 | 1 | fb 0
Technical SEO | | SO_UK
G+ 0
in 4 | REDIRECT 301 TO www.main-domain/our-keyword | 8 Feb '175 d | The ranking dip happened at the same time as the re-direct was re-discovered / re-crawled. Could the 'empty' URL in question been causing us any issues? I understand that this is terrible practice for 301 redirects, I was hoping someone in the community could shed light on any possible solution for this.0 -
Is there anyway to automatically find complete urls for 301 redirects?
Hello all, I'm working on a large site that is being prepared for a migration. After scraping on screaming frog, WMT, and deepcrawl, and deduping I have a list of 404 pages that need redirected. Many of these URLs are just incomplete URLs. For example the incomplete URL would be: "https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to" when it should be "https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo" I have been finding the correct page manually searching google. With hundreds more to go, I am looking for a way the would be a little less laborious. Thanks! https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
Technical SEO | | AdamBohr0 -
Redirect domain without losing SEO benefit,
Now my website need to change to new domain, Since we start this website we have the landing page for sale and blog. So I need to redirect both a.com to b.com and a.com/blog/ to b.com/blog/ and I need to do by these step to keeping the benefit of SEO. For a.com Preparing the new site by duplicate the information of old site. (Get them no-index, no-follow) Export all URL to excel files by Xenu then look up together for re-check the information are they the same or not, I think we can check that if we used the same title. Redirect together by 301 codes. Get google bot know by submission to Google Webmaster Tools (Google Search Console) For a.com/blog/ Since we used wordpress to be our blog CMS, So we need to install wordpress CMS to b.com/blog/, Then backup SQL from PHP C Panel & files. Re-upload that SQL database & files to new server. Export all URL contain /blog/ then look up together by excel again. Redirect by 301 codes. So for this method what am i wrong or need to change please suggestion me. According to this is the technical SEO stuff that I never done before. After we redirect the old domain to new domain how much time Google will take for checking and give the benefit for us with the same benefit. And what we have to do for Moz.org to checking our issues & ranking. Plus - what can we do for no-index, no-follow page that belong to a.com because my website also doing these page as well for each marketing campaign to avoid Google to index.
Technical SEO | | ASKHANUMANTHAILAND0 -
To 301 or not to 301?
I have a client that is having a new site built. Their old site (WP) does not use the trailing / at the end of urls. The new site is using most of the same url names but IS using the /. For instance, the old site would be www.example.com/products and the new site, also WP, will be www.example.com/products/. WordPress will resolve either way, but my question is whether or not to go in and redirect each matching non / page to the new url that has the /. I don't want to leave any link juice on the table but if I can keep the juice without doing a few hundred 301s that certainly wouldn't suck. Any thoughts? Sleepless in KVegas
Technical SEO | | seorocket0 -
Redirect to new domain
We are moving our website from http://mysyncpad.com to http://syncpadapp.com The old site ranks pretty well for some specific keywords, will a 301 allow the new site to rank as well or will it be penalized by good for the transfer?
Technical SEO | | fifthlayer0 -
I think I'm stuck in a 301 redirect loop
Hi all, I'm trying to correct some of my duplicate content errors. The site is built on Miva Merchant and the storefront page, /SFNT.html, needs to be permanently redirected to www.mydomain.com This is what my .htaccess file looks like: #RedirectPermanent /index.html http://dev.mydomain.com/mm5/merchant.mvc? RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^dev.mydomain.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*) http://dev.emydomain.com/$1 [L,R=301] DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php /mm5/merchant.mvc redirect 301 /SFNT.html http://dev.mydomain.com/ RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} Screen=SFNT&Store_Code=MYSTORECODE [NC] When I use this code and navigate to http://dev.mydomain.com/SFNT.html the URL gets rewritten as http://dev.mydomain.com/?Screen=SFNT So I believe this is what's called a "redirect loop".... Can anyone provide any insight? I'm not a developer, but have been tasked with cleaning up the problems on the website and can use any input anyone is willing to offer. Thanks, jr
Technical SEO | | Technical_Contact0