Huge httaccess with old 301 redirects. Is it safe to delete all redirects with no traffic in last 2 months?
-
We have a huge httaccess file over several MB which seems to be the cause for slow server response time.
There are lots of 301 redirects related to site migration from 9 months ago where all old URLs were redirected to new URL and also lots of 301 redirects from URL changes accumulated over the last 15 years.
- Is it safe to delete all 301 redirects which did not receive any traffic in last 2 months ?
- Or would you apply another criteria for identifying those 301 that can be safely deleted?
- Any way to get in google analytics or webmaster tools all 301 that received traffic in the last 2 months or any other easy way to identify those, apart from checking the apache log files ?
-
Aleyda, this is super useful , thanks a lot for this excellent advice.
I will still need to do some research on how to best compile a comprehensive list of incoming links, as moz and search console data is still kind of limited for this purpose. -
Hi there,
The best way to identify if it's already safe to eliminate the 301 redirects from a previous Web migration/redesign is to verify if the old pages (you need to have a list of those old URLs) that were redirected in the past:
- Are still crawled and indexed? (You can check the indexation easily in Google with "site:" directly, and then if you identify these old URLs in Google Search Console Search Analytics, by filtering by pages). If so, which pages? Are they also ranking still well for relevant terms? Which ones? Identify why is still ranking instead of the new version of the page: Is the redirect correctly implemented? Going to a new version that is really relevant? The old pages being linked from internal or external sources that are passing high value? What's the historical and trend of crawling activity of those pages over time? Is it going down? (that you can analyze via logs).
- Are still getting traffic? Identify which source: is it organic search traffic? referral from other sites? You can check this by verifying the URLs activity from the old site version in Google Analytics.
- Are still being linked? A must if you're still ranking with these pages and traffic. Verify which sources are still linking to them and which are the one passing the highest value. Make the most to update these links to go to the new URL versions to stop passing value and traffic to the old URLs.
If you verify that these old URLs are not indexed, nor getting visibility or traffic anymore either from organic search or any other traffic source, then it's ok to eliminate the redirects.
Nonetheless, if they are still getting visibility & traffic you will need to keep the redirects, otherwise you will lose those visitors (and also give a bad user experience). The goal in this case would be to ask the previous questions among others to identify the reason why are they still being indexed, linked, etc. and update the relevant links, content, etc. to change this behavior and help Google to catch up with the URLs migrations.
I hope it helps
-
The problem is: It is delaying server response time to 1,5 seconds on average and is increasing significantly server load. We are talking here about more than 19.ooo rows with hundreds of rewrite rules based on URL patterns. So we have a pressing need to take action.
Is there a way to easily identify those URLs that triggered a 301 in the last 2 months? Doing it based on the apache logs seems a bit daunting as I did not find a tool that filters from the apache logs the 301s. Can I get this information from analytics or any other way easily?
-
Hi there,
Does it represent a problem for you, having those redirects in the htaccess?
Personaly, and in a SEO perspective, I will never delete the 301s redirects done in any site.The fact that those pages havent recieved traffic doesn't mean that the old URL might have any links or authority that is now redirected to the actual URL.
Here you have a Q&A question, answered by some experts:
How long should I keep the 301 redirect file - Moz Q&AHope it helps.
GR.
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
-
URL Too Long vs. 301 Redirect
We have a small number of content pages where the urls paths were setup before we started looking really hard at SEO. The paths are longer than recommended (but not super crazy IMHO) and some of the pages get a decent amount of traffic. Moz suggests updating the URLs to make them shorter but I wonder if anyone has experience with the tradeoffs here. Is it better to mark those issues to be ignored and just use good URLs going forward or would you suggest updating the URLs to something shorter and implementing a 301 redirect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | russell_ms0 -
Redirecting Old Websites to New Websites
Hi Everyone, We are about to take down a number of websites in favour of a new singular B2B hub and would be looking to redirect all of these sites to the new home. For SEO purposes, what would be the best way to do this? Due to the difference in setups and scale of the site, it would be difficult to correctly match up each page to page between the sites for individual 301 redirects. Could someone advise on the best plan of action? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chbiz0 -
Is it ok to 301 redirect this previously algorithmicly penalised site?
Hi All, Is it OK to 301 redirect site A to site B? Site A: http://goo.gl/P9Zp2y Site B: http://goo.gl/ySDCzb The story - in 2013 site a seemed to be penalised with some kind of anchor text algorithm penalty - SEO couldnt fix, so created site B and turned site A into a holding page with a no follow link to new site. SEO company worked on disavow file etc, implemented in late 2013 301 redirect site A to B in late 2013 - SEO advised to stop 301 about 8 weeks later... This was my fault i didnt realise the implications of a redirect... Stopped the redirect, but too late, as site B dropped in rankings in early 2014 - new disavow files uploaded to both sites, but damage seems done now. No longer have a SEO company, and i would ideally like to 301 redirect site A to B, as it looks messy having a holding page - but wanted to check if SEO would still strongly advise against that? please advise James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | isntworkdull0 -
HTTPS Login on HTTP Site | 301 or 302 Redirect?
I've searched the forum on this and online and can't seem to find a definitive answer. Some e-commerce sites that are http use a 302 redirect to the https login while other sites use a 301 redirect. I know 302 is generally not recommended but in this case it may make sense. Can anyone advise on the correct practice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CallMeNicholi0 -
301 redirect w/ dynamic pages to static
I am trying to redirect old dynamically created pages to a new static one (single page). However, when I implement the redirects, it still uses part of the old dynamic url. For instance... dynamic.php?var=example1 dynamic.php?var=example2 dynamic.php?var=example3 should all redirect to: static.html. However, they are redirecting to: static.html?var=example1 static.html?var=example2 static.html?var=example3 The page is resolving fine, but I don't want google to misinterpret the new static page as numerous page with dup content. I tried this in PHP on the dynamic.php page as follows, but it the problem above persisted: header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheDude
header('Location: http://www.mysite.com/static.html'); I tried doing it in my .htaccess file as follows, but the problem persisted: redirect 301 /info/tool_stimulus.php?var=example1 http://www.mysite.com/static.html
redirect 301 /dynamic.php?var=example2 http://www.mysite.com/static.html Can anyone solve this in PHP or w/ htaccess? Help!!! 🙂0 -
How to conduct catch 301 redirects & have the separate 301 redirects for the key pages
Hi, We've currently done a site migration mapping and 301 redirecting only the sites key pages. However two GWT (Google Webmaster Tools) is picking a massive amount of 404 areas and there has been some drop in rankings. I want to mitigate the site from further decline, and hence thought about doing a catch 301 - that is 301 redirecting the remaining pages found on the old site back to the home page, with the future aim of going through each URL one by one to redirect them to the page which is most relevant. Two questions, (1) can I do a catch 301 and if so what is the process and requirements that I have to give to the developer? (2) How do you reduce the number of increasing 404 errors from a site, despite doing 301 redirects and updating links on external linking sites. Note: The server is apache and the site is hosted on Wordpress platform. Regards, Vahe
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vahe.Arabian0 -
Need advice on 301 domain redirection
Hello friends, We have two sites namely spiderman-example.com & avengers-example.com which sells the same product listed out under similar categories, since we are about to stop or put down the site “avengers-example.com” because we just want to concentrate in bringing up a single brand called spiderman-example.com. “Spiderman-example” has comparatively more visitors and conversion rates than ''avengers-example'' ie. 90 % more traffic and conversion. Avengers-example has a small fraction of loyal customers who still search for the brand-name & there are a hand-full of potential keywords those ranking on its own. So is it advisable to redirect Avengers-example to spiderman-example using 301-redirect? Will this help to gain any link-juice from Avengers-example? If so how can we effectively redirect between two domain’s with minimal loss in page authority & linkjuice to enhance ''spiderman-example''? Off beat:These names "Avengers" and "Spiderman" were just used as an example but the actual site names has no relation to the ones mentioned above.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | semvibe0 -
Should I 301 Poorly Worded URL's which are indexed and driving traffic
Hi, I'm working on our sites structure and SEO at present and wondering when the benefit I may get from a well written URL, i.e ourDomain / keyword or keyphrase .html would be preferable to the downturn in traffic i may witness by 301 redirecting an existing, not as well structured, but indexed URL. We have a number of odd looking URL's i.e ourDomain / ourDomain_keyword_92.html alongside some others that will have a keyword followed by 20 underscores in a long line... My concern is although i would like to have a keyword or key phrase sitting on its own in a well targeted URL string I don't want to mess to much with pages that are driving say 2% or 3% of our traffic just because my OCD has kicked in.... Some further advice on strategies i could utilise would be great. My current thinking is that if a page is performing well then i should leave the URL alone. Then if I'm not 100% happy with the keyword or phrase it is targeting I could build another page to handle the new keyword / phrase with the aim of that moving up the rankings and eventually taking over from where the other page left off. Any advice is much appreciated, Guy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guycampbell0