Does 301 redirection have any disadvantages?

[m4s4l]

I have a joomla 1.0.13 website which has around 400 indexed page on google. Now i m planning to upgrade it to 1.7.3. But the seo component (opensef) dont have updated version for 1.7.3 , it means urls will change. And i have some critically important positions on google and dont want to loose them. If i do 301 redirection for each URL (old to new one) , do i loose anythink like Pagerank or backling etc. , is this best choice or do you have any other idea for me ?

Thanks in advance to all helpers ;)

[tedster]

Welcome to the forums, m4s4l.

Matt Cutts has mentioned a couple times in the past year that a small amount of link equity is lost with each redirect. He said about 15% for each hop, as I remember.

Other than that, the biggest issues I know of co,e from having some kind of technical issue when the redirects go live - it can a long time to dig out of that kind of trouble, so definitely test well before you push URL changes live. In fact, I'd suggest looking for a solution that doesn't require changing your URLs, even if that means postponing things for a bit.

[m4s4l]

Hi tedster , i m very welcome . Its great to get reply in a couple of minutes ! 10x

i wish i can find a way that keeps URLs . Actually i dont have any idea except 301 Redirection. What if i hire a Joomla expert to manage this problem ?

[g1smd]

Before you make any changes make sure you save a copy of the site:example.com SERPs for your site (preferably with 100 results per page), relevant webmastertools reports (such as lists of internal links) and the scan file and the report from Xenu LinkSleuth.

When you do migrate the site, the old URL to new URL redirects must be in place as soon as the old site is removed. Check recent Joomla releases for the instructions about redirecting. These are to be found within the enclosed example htaccess file in the root folder of the installer.

[enigma1]

Matt Cutts has mentioned a couple times in the past year that a small amount of link equity is lost with each redirect.

Yes, the problem is, he said it for external redirects (domain1 to domain2). I haven't seen a discussion about internals redirects. He avoided the subject in a couple of questions I read about, presumably because of the complications with internal redirects manifest themselves from links exposed from within the site, then treated as errors. We had a long discussion about it before and many do not realize the differences and requirements.

So you have a site with good ranking pages and you want to update the software. No redirects. You keep the same links for the good ranking pages no matter what mods you need to do to the software. It's that simple.

[m4s4l]

Ok then , lets say i prefer keeping the same URLS. But i dont know how to do that in joomla 1.7.3 ? I think i have to define the old URL's to the new pages which will have almost the same content . Is there any solution, component etc to be able to do that ?

[lucy24]

Yes, the problem is, he said it for external redirects (domain1 to domain2). I haven't seen a discussion about internals redirects. <snip> many do not realize the differences and requirements.

Awwwk! Several years of trying to beat into people's heads the difference between an external redirect and an internal rewrite, and now you go and use the term "external" in a completely different sense. No wonder people keep asking the same questions over and over again next door in Apache.

Still wish someone had Definitive Information on whether mechanical redirects (with/without www, directory-slash etc) count for anything. The robot itself can't tell the difference; does something further up the line filter them out?

Overlapping...

Is there any solution, component etc to be able to do that?

Funny you should say that...

[enigma1]

No wonder people keep asking the same questions over and over again next door in Apache.

And they will ask for an eternity, since they get the impression from what they read, they can drive a cruiser liner with an oar.

If you don't know how to modify the software you should either leave it as is or hire someone who knows the software inside/out. And make sure you keep a complete site backup to reverse it if need be.

I know there are web applications out there than can keep any type of URLs and work regardless if you have Apache or IIS or any other server environment, but I don't know about the one you use.

Definitive Information on whether mechanical redirects (with/without www, directory-slash etc) count for anything.

Yes they can count for duplicate content and in general site trouble, created with some lousy apache rewrites I see all the time. Many are displayed as soft 404 errors on gwt.