.htaccess code
-
I've got a .htaccess file set up on a site to redirect specific old pages to specific new pages on a different site:
eg
Redirect 301 /oldpage.html https://www.newsite.co.uk/newpage.html
Redirect 301 /oldpage2.html https://www.newsite.co.uk/folder/
I have two questions:
1. Is that all the file needs? Or does it need any "rewrite engine on" type code?
2. I would also like to include code to "mop up" any other URLs and redirect them to the root, so that
/anyotherpage.html redirects to newsite.co.uk
Is there a way to do this?
-
What I'm looking to do is pass the link juice on from about 5,000 backlinks still pointing at our old site (which exists in domain form only a present) to the new site. Are these links pointed to the home page? Or are these pointed at relevant landing pages? If to the home page (and page is same on new site) nothing is needed. If these links are pointed to a landing page, you will need to route them to a related page on the new site and 301.
Are you saying there's not point in using a 301 if the page doesn't exist? Yes, no point unless there is a new landing page that is some-how related.
I don't really understand why you'd use a 301 if the page still existed...? If the page is on the new site and is the same url, no 301 is needed.
-
Thanks Kevin - I'm not sure I completely understand though.
What I'm looking to do is pass the link juice on from about 5,000 backlinks still pointing at our old site (which exists in domain form only a present) to the new site.
Are you saying there's not point in using a 301 if the page doesn't exist? I don't really understand why you'd use a 301 if the page still existed...?
-
Not really, since the resource doesn't exist anymore. If the resource exists (or something close to it) it would be a 301 and link juice will be passed (although not 100% of it).
If you have a relevant page, you should always 301 them. I would go through analytics and makes sure any "valuable" page has a relevant landing page. If no relevant landing page exists, you should 404 the result will eventually fall off.
I would also advise on creating a custom 404 page that explains what they are looking for and doesn't exist and show alternative pages/search bar. Users may get confused if they were looking for something specific and land at your home page.
-
Hi Kevin
Many thanks for this. Is a 404 as effective in passing on link juice as a 301?
-
2.) Are you talking about a catch-all? You can use 404 and redirect them to whatever. Try to redirect as much as possible though. Good luck!
ErrorDocument 404 /index.html
-
Thanks Andy, much appreciated. I'll look forward to the code
-
Your current redirects are fine and the best way is if its live to test it. Even thought I knew I had done it right recently when i went to https, I still do several random checks. They all came back as working - but no harm in testing.
Your point 2 is doable and as I am not on my laptop I don't have the code to hand. I will update in a few hours when back in the office for you, but your point 1 is correct.
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
-
Responsive Code Creating Duplicate Content Issue
Good morning, Our developers have recently created a new site for our agency. The site is responsive for mobile/tablets. I've just put the site through Screaming Frog and I've been informed of duplicate H2s. When I've looked at some of the page sources, there are some instances of duplicated H2s and duplicated content. These duplicates don't actually appear on the site, only in the code. When I asked the development guys about this, they advised this is duplicated because of the code for the responsive site. Will the site be negatively affected because of this? Not everything is duplicated, which leads me to believe it probably could have been designed better... but I'm no developer so don't know for sure. I've checked the code for other responsive sites and no duplicates can be found. Thanks in advance, Lewis
Technical SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
What coding works for SEO and what coding doesn't?
Hi: I recently learned about inline styles and that Google started penalizing sites for that in October. Then I was told that Wix and Flash don't work (or work well) either for SEO as the engines won't crawl them (I think). Does anyone know of a blog that goes over everything that doesn't work so that I could recognize it when I look at someone's code. Anyone know of such a resource? Cheers, Wes
Technical SEO | | wrconard0 -
Duplicate Page Titles Warnings, htaccess Rewrite & Canonical Links.
Hey guys, Just signed up for a pro account and I am getting Duplicate Page Title warnings on links that are duplicate, rewritten for SEO, but have a canonical href tag. I have two sets of links in my store: SEO friendly: http://www.mysite.com/item/iphone-case Operational link: http://www.mysite.com/shop/product.php?pid=11 This operational link however has a href canonical tag pointing to the SEO friendly link as being the primary link. My question is; Do I need to worry about this Duplicate Page Title Warning if I am using a canonical tag on the Operational link pointing to the SEO friendly link? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | jason3600 -
Help needed please with 301 redirects in htaccess file.
In summary, we're currently having issues with our htaccess file. 301 redirects are going through to the new described URL but in addition the new URL is followed by a ? and the old URL. How can we get rid of the ? and previous URL so they don't appear as an ending. None of the examples we've found re this issue online appear to work. Can anyone please offer some advice? Can we use a RewriteRule to stop this happening? Here's a summary of the htaccess file REDIRECT CODE BEGINS HERE LONG LIST OF REDIRECTS, which appear to be set up perfectly fine. REDIRECT CODE ENDS DirectoryIndex index.php <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On Options +FollowSymLinks
Technical SEO | | petersommertravels
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond $1 !^(images|system|themes|pdf|favicon.ico|robots.txt|index.php) [NC]
RewriteRule ^.htaccess$ - [F]
RewriteRule ^favicon.ico - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L]</ifmodule> DirectoryIndex index.php0 -
Mod Rewrite / .htaccess avoid duplicate content
I have been searching and testing for hours but cannot find a solution. I am able to get a URL to display with out the file exntension. i.e domain.com/file instead of domain.com/file.php The problem is both versions of the URL above work, therefore a duplicate content issue. How can I force the URL with the file extension not to resolve and give a 404 error? Or just redirect to the non extension URL? IF it helps here is my code. Options +FollowSymLinks
Technical SEO | | MiamiWebCompany
RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ $1.php [L,QSA]0 -
How much impact does bad html coding really have on SEO?
My client has a site that we are trying to optimise. However the code is really pretty bad. There are 205 errors showing when W3C validating. The >title>, , <keywords> tags are appearing twice. There is truly excessive javascript. And everything has been put in tables.</keywords> How much do you think this is really impacting the opportunity to rank? There has been quite a bit of discussion recently along the lines of is on-page SEO impacting anymore. I just want to be sure before I recommend a whole heap of code changes that could cost her a lot - especially if the impact/return could be miniscule. Should it all be cleaned up? Many thanks
Technical SEO | | Chammy0 -
Suggestions on good framework/code for building an optimized website?
There seem to be quite a few template, framework, and theme options for building a site optimized for search. I'm currently looking at Socrates and Genesis premium themes for Wordpress. Does anyone have experience or suggestions on these resources?
Technical SEO | | ksracer0 -
Omniture tracking code URLs creating duplicate content
My ecommerce company uses Omniture tracking codes for a variety of different tracking parameters, from promotional emails to third party comparison shopping engines. All of these tracking codes create URLs that look like www.domain.com/?s_cid=(tracking parameter), which are identical to the original page and these dynamic tracking pages are being indexed. The cached version is still the original page. For now, the duplicate versions do not appear to be affecting rankings, but as we ramp up with holiday sales, promotions, adding more CSEs, etc, there will be more and more tracking URLs that could potentially hurt us. What is the best solution for this problem? If we use robots.txt to block the ?s_cid versions, it may affect our listings on CSEs, as the bots will try to crawl the link to find product info/pricing but will be denied. Is this correct? Or, do CSEs generally use other methods for gathering and verifying product information? So far the most comprehensive solution I can think of would be to add a rel=canonical tag to every unique static URL on our site, which should solve the duplicate content issues, but we have thousands of pages and this would take an eternity (unless someone knows a good way to do this automagically, I’m not a programmer so maybe there’s a way that I don’t know). Any help/advice/suggestions will be appreciated. If you have any solutions, please explain why your solution would work to help me understand on a deeper level in case something like this comes up again in the future. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | BrianCC0