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
-
301 Redirect Review Nodes
I have a client who rents out vacation beach rentals. They currently have thousands of homes under management. Each property has its own internal reviewing platform. Reviews are not really intended to be viewed on their own, as in a stand alone page with just the review on it. The problem is that Drupal makes just about every type of node viewable on its own dedicated URL. I was just thinking about taking request to view stand alone reviews and 301’ing them to their respective property page, the context in which they are intended to be viewed. The website has about 2500 review nodes currently crawlable via Drupal that sit on their own URLs. Would there be a material impact to 301 them to their respective property page when any attempt to view them on their own is made to the site?
Technical SEO | | conversionpipeline20 -
Crawl errors: 301 (permanent redirect)
Hi, here are some questions about SEO Crawl Diagnostics. We've recently found out this 301 (permanent redirect) errors in our website and we concluded that the two factors below are the causes. 1. Some of our URLs that has no / at the end is automatically redirected to the same URL but with / at the end. 2. For SEO reasons we have designed our website in a way that when we type in a URL it will automatically redirect to a more SEO friendly URL. For example, if one of the URLs is www.example.com/b1002/, it will automatically redirect to www.example.com/banana juice/. The question is, are these so significant for our SEO and needs to be modified? One of the errors in our blog was having too many on-page links. Is this also a significant error and if so, how many on-page links are recommended from the SEO perspective? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | Glassworks0 -
301 redirect and search engines
How long until 301 redirects get recognized by search engines? I noticed my link on Google isn't forwarding over to my new domain even after the 301 redirect. If I go to the site directly, the 301 redirect works. Anyone know how long it takes for search engines to pick it up? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | timeintopixels0 -
Creating a CSV file for uploading 301 redirect URL map
Hi if i'm bulk uploading 301 redirects whats needed to create a csv file? is it just a case of creating an excel spreadsheet & have the old urls in column A and new urls in column B and then just convert to csv and upload ? or do i need to put in other details or paremeters etc etc ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Htaccess code to 301 redirect a folder change
Hi, I need some help to redirect all my site as there was a folder change. eg, the old structure was www.mysite.com/stuff-1/bags.html and I need it to go to the same structure without the "-1" eg: /stuff/bags.html
Technical SEO | | Paul_MC
The "bags.html" will be lots of different products, so this would be a wildcard? What would the htaccess code need to be? Thanks0 -
How to know what pages are 301 redirecting to me?
Hi! It is easy to know if somebody is spam linking your website, looking i.e., looking at open site explorer to analyse the links profile. But, is it possible to know if a competitor of mine is redirecting a bad domain to main with a 301 redirect, thus transfering any bad SEO reputation to me? Best Regards, Daniel
Technical SEO | | te_c0 -
301 from old domain to new domain
Hi, I need to create a 301 redirect for all internal pages located on organic7thheaven.com to the homepage of our new site at http://www.7thheavennaturals.com/ Currently internal pages of the old site such as the following are returning a page not found www.organic7thheaven.com/products/deepcleansing/miraclemud.asp Can anyone help me in setting up a .htaccess file for this problem please? Thanks
Technical SEO | | MJMarketing0 -
Difference between URL Rewrites and 301 Redirects for Rankings
What is the difference between URL rewriting and 301 redirects? Specifically if my home page is rewriting the www. version and the /index.html version rather than 301 redirecting them is this equivalent? Does it still pass the link juice on those alternate variations the same way a 301 redirect will?
Technical SEO | | rcarll0