Old Blogs
-
We have several blogs on our site for a range of products we no longer stock. Would you set up a redirect for these - and how long would you keep it in place?
-
@Caroline_Ardmoor Yes, it is generally recommended to set up redirects for blogs or any other pages that no longer exist or have been removed from your site. Redirects ensure that users and search engines are directed to relevant content instead of encountering broken links or errors.
To set up redirects, you can use the .htaccess file if you're using Apache server or utilize the redirection module if you're using Nginx. Here's an example of how to set up a redirect using the .htaccess file:
-
Open your .htaccess file located in the root directory of your website.
-
Add the following line to create a redirect:
Redirect 301 /old-blog-url.html http://www.example.com/new-blog-url.html
Replace "/old-blog-url.html" with the URL path of the old blog and "http://www.example.com/new-blog-url.html" with the URL of the corresponding new blog or an alternative relevant page.
- Save the .htaccess file.
Regarding how long you should keep the redirect in place, it depends on the specific circumstances. If you have permanently removed the product and its corresponding blog posts, a 301 redirect (as shown above) is appropriate, indicating that the content has permanently moved. In this case, it is generally recommended to keep the redirect in place indefinitely to maintain a good user experience and preserve any SEO value associated with the old URLs.
However, if there is a chance that the products or related content might return in the future, you may consider using a temporary redirect (302 or 307) instead. Temporary redirects indicate that the content has temporarily moved, and you can specify a shorter timeframe for keeping the redirect in place.
In any case, regularly monitoring your website's analytics and traffic patterns can help you assess whether the redirects are still necessary or if any updates are required based on user behavior.
-
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
-
403 Errors Issue
Hi, all! I've been working with a Wordpress site that I inherited that gets little to no organic traffic, despite being content rich, optimized, etc. I know there's something wrong on the backend but can't find a satisfactory culprit. When I emulate googlebot, most pages give me a 403 error. Also, google will not index many urls which makes sense and is a massive headache. All advice appreciated! The site is https://www.diamondit.pro/ It is specific to WP Engine, using GES (Global Edge Security) and WPWAF
Technical SEO | | SimpleSearch0 -
How to boost the number of visitors to a specific page
Hello, Payday loan consolidation, debt settlement, credit card settlement, and debt consolidation are just a few of the pages I have. While walking through the search console dashboard, I noticed that while the position is improving, but impressions and traffic are decreasing, indicating a significant disparity. Please advise on how to resolve the issue.
Link Building | | OVLG0 -
Solved How to solve orphan pages on a job board
Working on a website that has a job board, and over 4000 active job ads. All of these ads are listed on a single "job board" page, and don’t obviously all load at the same time. They are not linked to from anywhere else, so all tools are listing all of these job ad pages as orphans. How much of a red flag are these orphan pages? Do sites like Indeed have this same issue? Their job ads are completely dynamic, how are these pages then indexed? We use Google’s Search API to handle any expired jobs, so they are not the issue. It’s the active, but orphaned pages we are looking to solve. The site is hosted on WordPress. What is the best way to solve this issue? Just create a job category page and link to each individual job ad from there? Any simpler and perhaps more obvious solutions? What does the website structure need to be like for the problem to be solved? Would appreciate any advice you can share!
Reporting & Analytics | | Michael_M2 -
Bulk redirection of blogs
Hi all, we're going to changing the url structure of our website. Moving from: /news-and-views/blog/thisistheblogpost to /blog/thisistheblogpost (ie removing the /news-and-views/ portion of the url). There's approximately 300 posts. I have 2 questions - will this have an impact on domain wide authority? and is bulk 301 redirects the best solution? The blogs themselves don't get a huge amount of traffic but we just want to make sure we don't do something that will be penalized by search engines.
Technical SEO | | francisclark2 -
Advice for rapidly declining ranking-- can an old indexed sitemap cause this?
Hi Everyone, Today, I woke up to a dramatic page rank decline (nearly 20 positions) for a client's website (eacoe.org). When I looked in Webmaster tools, I noticed that the site was just indexed yesterday by Google (a request that the webmaster had submitted back in April of this year). Would this re-indexing event have caused the sharp decline? In Webmaster Tools, I don't see many errors (one 404 error that we are planning on fixing). I likewise see no Manual Actions/ penalties brought up by Google about our site. My first concern is that the re-indexing led to rank decline, but I'm not entirely sure if I should be focusing on something else. And if it is the re-indexing, what are there any recommended steps of attack? Thanks for your help! -Bruce
Technical SEO | | dynedge0 -
Redirect old URL's from referring sites?
Hi I have just came across some URL's from the previous web designer and the site structure has now changed. There are some links on the web however that are still pointing at the old deep weblinks. Without having to contact each site it there a way to automatically sort the links from the old structure www.mydomain.com/show/english/index.aspx to just www.mydomain.com Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Internal linking with Old Content
Hello, I have a sports website in which users write their opinions about the sporting events that take place every day throughout the year. Each of these sporting events generates a new page or URL indicating the match with date. For example: www.domain.com/baseball/boston-v-yankees-04-24-2012-1234.html The teams face several times a year, and each match creates a different URL or page. I would like to link old pages to new pages and vice versa. How would you recommend these pages to be linked? Linking them to each other or linking old pages to new pages that are generated or otherwise? I would appreciate your orientation and help in this case. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | NorbertoMM1 -
What's the best way to transplant a blogger blog to another domain?
So I have this client who's got a killer blogger blog—tons of inbound links, great content, etc. He wants to move it onto his new website. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there isn't a single way to 301 the darn thing. I can do meta refresh and/or JavaScript redirects, but those won't transfer link juice, right? Is there a best practice here? I've considered truncating each post and adding a followed "continue reading…" link, which would of course link to the full post on the client's new site. It would take a while and I'm wondering if it would be worth it, and/or if there are any better ideas out there. Sock it to me.
Technical SEO | | TheEspresseo0