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I've been looking at previous threads on 301 redirects, and seem to conclude that it's a safe way of moving pages within my domain without damaging PR and Google friendliness! If anyone thinks otherwise, I'd sure appreciate it if you'd let me know as I need some reassurance on this one!
I have a couple of questions though that I couldn't find answers to.
1) Once I setup the redirects in htaccess, can I just delete the old duplicate pages without worry, or should I leave them there a while?
2) Should I update my DMOZ and other listings manually?
Any help much appreciated.
Thanks
Can you tell me why you are not a fan of redirects? Do you have any experience of it messing things up from a spidering point of view?
1) Make your site with the future in mind. I can't tell you how many people I see asking about changing domains, 301 redirects, and the like.
If you set your site up correctly to begin with - you should never need to do this.
2) Google isn't the only search engine out there - you'll be lucky if the other ones can handle this.
3) Google SHOULD NOT penalize you for this. If you are only worried about google - then hey - go ahead. I also don't know how well google will handle the transfer of PR -- it might work fine, but I can't imagine google spends a good portion of time trying to make sure this is the case. There are always bugs.
4) When you do a 301 redirect - the url changes instantly in the browser window (well close to instantly).
Some people - including those that have linked to you might not like this.
Some places may have programs in place to detect if their links are being redirected.
If you have a quality site - this might not be a problem.
Basically it comes down to this:
I can't think of many legitimate reasons to do a 301 redirect except lack of planning or mistake. You have to take on possible disadvantges - with no real advantages (other than what would be there if you had done it right the first time).
I am NOT picking on you - I have needed to do this, and hey - if you need to too - that is fine.
Just make sure this isn't part of some cheme that isn't going to help you in the end anyway.
My 2 cents.
What u say makes complete sense. I must admit that my reason for wanting to move files is more down to a lack of foresight, as one of the sections of my site is growing much quicker than anticipated. For this reason I wanted to move them all to a new folder one level below root.
I guess my only worry was how it would affect my search positions, and at the moment I'm getting valuable traffic from search engines other than Google, which I don't want to lose. I'm beginning to think if some SEs don't like 301s then I'd be better putting up with one messy directory :-)
Thanks again for the thoughts.
I agree with Chris_R that redirects should be minimized and that planning ahead is good. However, like many others, I continue to learn things about security, scripting, and other issues that can make redirection necessary. And sometimes - like most people - I just discover that I made a mistake some time after the fact.
Redirection to a new URL is much better than returning a 404-Not Found response.
A 404-Not Found response should be the last resort, and really means that one of the above methods should be implemented.
The 301, 302, and 303 response all provide a new URL, which the User-agent (e.g., browser) can use to update it's address bar. This makes the redirection visible to the user. Smart robots like Googlebot will take appropriate action based on the response code. Others will muddle around for months, until they see the links pointing into your site change, and then (usually) they will update their database and the new URL will appear in their search index some time later. But there a few which are very slow!
Internal redirects such as simple URL rewriting using mod_rewrite under Apache, substitute one URL string for another, and then use the new one to look up the correct file to serve. You can use this method if you don't want to update the browser's address bar and if don't mind keeping the URL rewrite in place indefinitely.
Redirects, when done using the appropriate method are safe.
Yes, you should ask the manually-edited directories like ODP to update their listings.
It's a pain one way or the other, and as Chris_R says, should be avoided.
HTH,
Jim
That's all really useful information and I appreciate the time you've taken in replying.
I guess my dilemma now is whether to do 301 redirects (which still seems to be the best option for me in the light of what you and Chris have said), or whether to just leave the current structure 'as is', which means I will end up with one giant directory at some point in the near future.
I guess as we say in the UK it's all 'swings and roundabouts!'. My inclination at the moment is to do the redirects in anticipation of certain sections of my site growing quickly in the coming months - a kind of 'cut my losses' philosophy.
Anyway, I'll mull it over some more b4 commiting myself. Thanks again for the detailed replies guys.
In your specific case, I agree on "cutting your losses". Get control before it eats you!
No time like the present!
Cheers,
Jim
Most people have said I should keep the pages since they are fine, but I do not want to take any chances with getting PRO. And if something on the site isn't done for the visitor experience, I am trying to get rid of it, just to be sure.
My question is whether I should just delete the pages for the subdomains or should I use the htaccess file to redirect them all to my home page?
And if I redirect them all to one page, will this look like duplicate content since each of those subdomains will be displaying the same page?
I can't think of many legitimate reasons to do a 301 redirect except lack of planning or mistake.
Are there any resources or helpful tips on doing it right the first time? Some pitfalls to think about...
