Multiple 301 redirects considered a redirection chain?
-
I need to redirect a ton of duplicate content, so I want to try
redirect 301 /store/index.php /store
redirect 301 /store/product-old /store/product-new
redirect 301 /store/product-old1 /store/product-new1
redirect 301 /store/product-old2 /store/product-new2
redirect 301 /store/product-old3 /store/product-new3
redirect 301 /store/product-old4/file.html /store/product-old4/new4/file.html
and then a whole bunch of old dead links to homepage.
So we've had /index.php redirected to / on other parts of the site for awhile, and for the most part /store is a friendly URL, but then we have tons of dup content and work arounds that preceded my job here. I'm wondering if those redirects above would be considered a redirection chain? Since the all the redirects below the /index.php -> /store count on that one redirect.
Thanks for any insight you may be able to give!
-
301 redirecting an old, no longer existing page to the homepage or any other page (I'd suggest using the closest matching existing page) is certainly not a violation of google's guidelines.
-
As far as 'header redirect' are you talking about a meta refresh redirect rather than a 301 htaccess redirect? I thought meta refresh redirects were not necessarily a good thing to do in the eyes of search engines?
Also, isn't redirecting a URL of a page that no longer exists to the home page actually a violation of Google's guidelines?
I'm currently doing a project to resolve many 404s being reported in Google Webmaster account.
Many of them are simply malformed URLs (live URLs with a period at the end or a comma or an equal sign, etc.) from the referrer's side - yet some carry a vaulable backlink authority, so they should be 301'd, in my opinion to the intended URL, when that is obvious.
However, if there is no longer a close match page - say for an old but valued backlink - to ideally redirect to, is it OK to - in attempt to retain the backlink value - redirect what are really 404 pages to the homepage or a top landing page? If so, is there a limit to the number of redirects to resolve a 404?
Thanks for any clarification of the issue raised above.
-
Ask if you can do header code injection where you can dump code blocks in the header.
-
Yeah I might have to seek help on the magento boards.
-
WP has to have a 404 handler someplace in their admin section. At least the dead pages you can redirect, but I do not know if WP will 301 those.
Then yes, you have to use your .htaccess file to shift those pages. What a mess! Write them all down and carefully map them out. I would still test the page to see if it has any inbound links, if not, I might let the 404 handler handle that link to save editing.
I would also as WP or Magento or their message boards if any of them have this same problem and see if there are any plug-in fixes.
-
There are both indexed and internally linked urls that need to be redirected properly. Using two CMS's WP and Magento and I'm not too much of a php wiz so I really am not following. besides the product pages still being linked there are like 1000 more 404 pages that need to be redirected to the homepage. Would mod rewrite be better here?
And Barry, yes I guess so, just found out about it, trying to understnad wth is goin on here. Looks like mage redirects a couple times on its own as well? Who knows, it's puttin me to sleep lol. Hopefully I can find out more tomorrow. Thanks for the answers guys +1
-
Are you using Magento's funny built in redirect tool? I've never really understood how that worked
-
Wow, this is not fun
Yes, you can get down the chain too many times and your browser just pukes. And likely Google will give up.
- Test the OLD page(2) to see if it has any inbound links or page authority. If not, then a redirect is not necessary. Yes, the page still might be indexed, but I would do a header redirect with a 301 instead of using the .htaccess file. It is on the fly and much cleaner.
Depending on how your site is coded, you can test the page in PHP.
- Find incoming URL
- Test against database
- Send to new location
Simply take the incoming URL and pull the location in the _HEADER. Then look at your database that you set up with all these redirects. Then redirect the user to the new page and 301 the redirect in the header.
All the work you do is then in the database. Look at Google Webmaster for 404 pages and adjust the database. I would also then state that if I found no URL within the database (good or old) then I would redirect to the home page and 301 that. This way you do not lose any link juice and keep your 301 chain down to one dynamic hop.
I hope that helps
-
No trouble I'm quick with the mouse. That's why I like doin this stuff around 4am haha. Thanks anyway Barry.
You might be onto something, it's magento which I have limited to no knowledge of how it redirects, I'm sure that's the deal I'll look into it but after I need sleep soooo tired
-
I might bow out gracefully before I get you in any more trouble But I'll see what I can replicate and test What would be the raw URL of the electronics pages?
Is it actually rewriting from something like /store/index.php?id=electronics or is it /store/electronics.php (or even /store/electronics/index.php)? Or are you on a CMS that make it hard to tell?
-
redirect 301 /store/index.php /store
redirect 301 /store/electronics1 /store/electronics
that's pretty much it
-
Talk me through it again then, please.
You're trying to get to /store/product-new1 and you're getting a 310?
Did I get the redirect thing mixed up and actually there's another redirect because the real URL would be /store/product-new1/index.php?
-
Error 310 (net::ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS): There were too many redirects.
-
Yeah there's certain cases, sometimes all, where /old will go through the first /index.php redirect to be able to get to /new
Yeah I guess you have a point, but for some reason it feels wrong. Google hasn't crawled this site for almost a month lol. So when it finally does, everything's gonna be so different it might just be like AHHH.
Thanks for the help.
-
If I understand correctly I'm going to say no (with a low degree of certainty :D).
So /store/product-old1 you are assuming already goes through /store/index.php?id=product-old1 (or similar) to produce that first url?
So to get to /store/product-new1 from a link to /store/product-old1 you're wondering how many steps your .htaccess puts it through?
I'll have to let somebody with better .htaccess skills than mine confirm, but I think it's all resolved as one, in sequence, if it's on the same server (and set up correctly). I'm maybe talking nonsense though.
However if it was a chain then, for example, somebody going to my WordPress site using mysite.com/page1 would end up at www.mysite.com/redirected-page1/ and after hitting about 4 redirects (www, permalinks, redirect and trailing slash) and I've not seen anything to suggest that it's a problem.
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
-
Can anyone please explain the real difference between backlinks, 301 links, and redirect links?which one is better to rank a website? i am looking for the help for one of my website
Can anyone please explain the real difference between backlinks, 301 links, and redirect links? which one is better to rank a website? I am looking for help for one of my website vacuum cleaners
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hshajjajsjsj3880 -
Irrelevant backlinks - will 301 redirect cleanse the relationship?
My client has thousands of clients for whom they provided websites that used to reside in a subdirectory of their own domain. They moved them to their own domains but there are tens of thousands of backlinks on those sites pointing back to the original domain. Those backlinks are completely irrelevant and are probably hurting them by sending the wrong signals to Google on what this site really is about. My question is will the 301 redirect be enough to cleanse the relationship between my client and all their clients' sites or should I ask the client to clean up all those backlinks on their clients' sites and remove their domain from the target urls? That's a huge job, obviously.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | katandmouse0 -
301 Redirect? How to leverage the traffic on our old domain.
I've seen multiple questions about this but there's a few different answers on ways to approach it. Figured I'd personally ask for our situation. Any advice would be appreciated. We formed a new company with a new name / domain while at the same time buying an existing company in our industry. The domain and site of the company we acquired is ranking for some valuable keywords and still getting a significant amount of traffic (about half of what our new site is getting). A big downside has been, when they moved that site to a different server, something happened to where the site became uneducable so it's full of bad pricing and information. Because of that, we've had a maintenance page up for a little bit because it was generating calls to our sales team (GOOD) but the customer was having seen incredibly incorrect information (BAD) Rather than correcting those issues or figuring out why the site is un-editable, we just want to find a way where we can leverage that traffic and have them end up at our new site. Would we 301 redirect the entire domain to our new one? If we did that would the old domain still keep the majority of it's page rank?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HuskyCargo1 -
Can an incorrect 301 redirect or .htaccess code cause 500 errors?
Google Webmaster Tools is showing the following message: _Googlebot couldn't access the contents of this URL because the server had an internal error when trying to process the request. These errors tend to be with the server itself, not with the request. _ Before I contact the person who manages the server and hosting (essentially asking if the error is on his end) is there a chance I could have created an issue with an incorrect 301 redirect or other code added to .htaccess incorrectly? Here is the 301 redirect code I am using in .htaccess: RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /([^/.]+/)*(index.html|default.asp)\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^(([^/.]+/)*)(index|default) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www.example.com)?$ [NC] RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L] Could adding the following code after that in the .htaccess potentially cause any issues? BEGIN EXPIRES <ifmodule mod_expires.c="">ExpiresActive On
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimmiedawn
ExpiresDefault "access plus 10 days"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType text/plain "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType application/x-icon "access plus 1 year"</ifmodule> END EXPIRES (Edit) I'd like to add that there is a Wordpress blog on the site too at www.example.com/blog with the following code in it's .htaccess: BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress Thanks0 -
Interlinking multiple websites
Most websites (for example) Zalando intern link there other CC tld domains to the root. For example: On http://www.zalando.nl/damesschoenen-pumps/ the links in the footer go to the other CC tld's: http://www.zalando.es , zalando.co.uk etc. Does anyone have experience with the fact if you would interlink to the relevant page on the other CC tld;s.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TjeerdvZ
For example: http://www.zalando.nl/damesschoenen-pumps/ links to http://www.zalando.co.uk/womens-shoes-heels/ in stead of linking to the homepage ?
In theory this would give more relevance intern linking. Looking forward to hear if anyone tried or experienced this and what the results where?0 -
How long for a 301 redirect to pass PR?
Hi, How long does it take for a 301 redirect to pass PR/Juice to the new domain it's redirecting to? From what I understand you tell Google in Webmaster tools this domain is now going to this domain and then setup a file on the old domains hosting to redirect to the new. And that's it! If that is correct how long does it take? 2 days, 2 weeks, months, maybe never??? Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
301 - do i change old links once 301 is in place?
Hey all, I'm about to setup a 301 on a website that has pretty good SEO rankings and I have the ability to change all the old inbound links that point to the old site, to the new site - should I leave them pointing to the old site that has the 301 on it or change all the old inbound links to the new domain name? Which has better SEO value? Thanks for helping, Anthony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grenadi0 -
301 redirect from .html to non .html?
Previously our site was using this as our URL structure: www.site.com/page.html. A few months ago we updated our URL structure to this: www.site.com/page & we're not using the .html. I've read over this guide & don't see anywhere that discusses this: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection. I've currently got a programmer looking into, but am always a bit weary with their workarounds, as I'd previously had them cause more problems then fix it. Here is the solution he is looking to do: The way that I am doing the redirect is fine. The problem is of where to put the code. The issue is that the files are .html files that need to be redirected to the same url with out a .html on them. I can see if I can add that to the 404 redirect page if there is one inside of there and see if that does the trick. That way if there is no page that exists without the .html then it will still be a 404 page. However if it is there then it will work as normal. I will see what I can find and get back. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, BJ
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seointern0