• seohunters9

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. On-Page Optimization
        4. How long should I leave an existing web page up after a 301 redirect?

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        How long should I leave an existing web page up after a 301 redirect?

        On-Page Optimization
        3
        6
        1185
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • ScottMcPherson
          ScottMcPherson last edited by

          I've been reading through a few of blog posts here on moz and can't seem to find the answer to these two questions:

          How long should I leave an existing page up after a 301 redirect? The page old page is no longer needed but has pretty high page authority. If I take the old page down—the one that I'm redirecting from—immediately after I set up the 301 redirect, will link juice still be passed to the new page?

          My second question is, right now, on my index.html page I have both a 301 redirect and a rel canonical tag in the head. They were both put in place to redirect and pass link equity respectively. I did this a couple years back after someone recommended that I do both just to be safe, but from what I've gathered reading the articles here on moz is that your supposed to pick one or the other depending on whether or not it's permanent.

          Should I remove the rel conanical tag or would it be better to just leave it be?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • ScottMcPherson
            ScottMcPherson @BlueprintMarketing last edited by

            That's very helpful. And that article was a good read. Appreciate the help!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • BlueprintMarketing
              BlueprintMarketing @ScottMcPherson last edited by

              Hi Scott,

              you should only have the canonical tag on the URL that represents the home page.

              So if you are home page is www.mysite.com you would only have a canonical tag their

              does that make sense?

              Essentially you should not use the canonical tag on a page that is not going to be in Google's index

              If you are already 301 redirecting your index.HTML using Regex or whatever method it will not need to tag in addition.

              More info

              http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/learn/seo/canonicalization

              http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps

              All the best,

              Tom

              vBIK2cg.gif

              ScottMcPherson 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • ScottMcPherson
                ScottMcPherson @Chris.Menke last edited by

                One thing I kind of left out is that on my home page (index.htlm) my canonical is just set to www.mysite.com, and the redirect is just to redirect non-www request to www request. So I just wasn't sure if I should remove that canonical since the redirect is already taking care of it? Both the canonical and the redirect have been there for approximately about 2 years so the redirect already kicked in a long time ago.

                I don't think that leaving the canonical there would devalue the page at all, but just want to get another opinion.

                BlueprintMarketing 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • BlueprintMarketing
                  BlueprintMarketing @Chris.Menke last edited by

                  Hi Scott,

                  If you are looking for somebody to confirm what Chris said I agree 100%.

                  If you are backlink has value keep it in place. As long as possible.

                  If you have done a redirect on a back link you know has no value meaning no one is going to it directly nor does it have any back links of any value pointing to it. Six months is a very safe cutoff time.

                  If you are doing a redesign you want to map your redirects

                  http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/06/02/how-to-retain-at-least-95-of-your-organic-traffic-after-a-site-redesign/

                  All the best,

                  Thomas

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • Chris.Menke
                    Chris.Menke last edited by

                    Scott,

                    Keep in mind that redirects happen at the server, before the user agent even gets to the page contents of a URL. That means that a rel=canonical tag on a page that has been redirected is not seen by the bot/user agent.  So, once redirected, the page of content that had been available at a URL is no longer accessible by anyone or anything on the web.  When Google sees the 301 redirect, it reassigns (most of) the value it had given to the original URL to the new URL.

                    If a URL has back links pointing to it and the URL is redirected,  the redirect should stay in place for as long as the back link has value.  If there are no back links pointing to a URL that has been redirected, 6 months is a safe bet for leaving the URL in place.  Here's Mat Cutts on that topic...

                    BlueprintMarketing ScottMcPherson 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 4
                    • 1 / 1
                    • First post
                      Last post

                    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.

                    • See all categories

                    Related Questions

                    • RMATVMC

                      Web Core Vitals and Page Speed Insights Not Matching Scores

                      We have some URLs that are being flagged as poor inside Search Console in the Web Core Vitals report. For example, the report is saying that some pages have too many CLS issues. When looking into things we can do to update we have noticed that when we run the same page using the PageSpeed Insights tool we are not getting the same bad scores. This is making it hard for us to actually know what needs to be addressed. Nor can we tell if a change actually fixed the issue because in PageSpeed Insights there is not an issue.  Has anyone else had similar issues. If so have you found a way to fix it?

                      On-Page Optimization | | RMATVMC
                      0
                    • crichardson1992

                      Should I redirect a popular but irrelevant blog post to the home page?

                      Hi. I'm trying to get my website; www.ciphr.com , to rank for keywords relevant to "HR Software" in the UK.  It's a highly competitive industry and we rank ~mid to low on page one for some of our ideal keywords that are highly relevant and high volume. Years ago we took the decision to blog about topics more loosely related to the world of work. One of our blog posts, about plants in the office https://www.ciphr.com/advice/plants-in-the-office/   is popular. It gets decent traffic and consistently builds backlinks to the post without any further effort on our part. The specific page has a PA of 46 and DA of 55 with >500 domains linking to it.  This compares to our home page with a PA of 47 and 700 linking domains. It is typically the home page that ranks for our money keywords "HR Software" "HR Systems" in the UK. Because this blog post is so loosely related to our actual business, the traffic it generates is highly unlikely to  turn into a customer of ours. I am considering redirecting the blog post to the home page to pass link juice to the home page. The concern I have is that, based on the anchor text and contextual signals from linking pages, Google might then infer that our home page is less relevant for our money keywords and more relevant for "plants". Are my concerns unfounded? What are your thoughts? Should I redirect the blog post to the home page? Another internal page?  Keep the blog post live? Thanks

                      On-Page Optimization | | crichardson1992
                      2
                    • baystatemarketing

                      My site auto redirects http to https. This is causing redirect chains. What can I do?

                      I noticed that Moz flags a lot of redirect chain issues on my site. I realized that this is mostly because the site automatically redirects http to https, and when I create a new URL (when a URL changes, for example) it is automatically flagged as a chain. Example: http://www.example-link Auto directs to: https://www.example-link Which is then redirected to: https://www.example-link-changed (when the address actually changes) I don't seem to have any control over changing where the initial http redirect goes. Any advice on fixing this problem?

                      On-Page Optimization | | baystatemarketing
                      0
                    • Parker818

                      Should we rename and update a page or create a new page entirely?

                      Hi Moz Peoples! We have a small site with a simple site navigation, with only a few links on the nav bar. We have been doing some work to create a new page, which will eventually replace one of the links on the nav bar. The question we are having is, is it better to rename the existing page and replace its content and then wait for the great indexer to do its thing, or perm delete the page and replace it with the new page and content? Or is this a case where it really makes no difference as long as the redirects are set up correctly?

                      On-Page Optimization | | Parker818
                      0
                    • Jacob_A

                      Should I optimize my home-page or a sub-page for my most important keyword

                      Quick question: When choosing the most important keyword set that I would like to rank for, would I be better off optimizing my homepage, or a sub page for this keyword. My thinking goes as follows: The homepage (IE www.mysite.com) naturally has more backlinks and thus a better Google Page Rank. However, there are certain things I could do to a subpage (IE www.mysite.com/green-widgets-los-angeles ) that I wouldn't want to do to the homepage, which might be more "optimal" overall. Option C, I suppose, would be to optimize both the homepage, and a single sub-page, which is seeming like a pretty good solution, but I have been told that having multiple pages optimized for the same keywords might "confuse" search engines. Would love any insight on this!

                      On-Page Optimization | | Jacob_A
                      2
                    • BruceA

                      How to 301 redirect, without access to .htaccess and to a new domain

                      There are few ways to do this and I would like to ask other Mozzers if they have found the best way. We have a site .co.uk and are moving it back to .com.  However we do not have any access to the site folders for .co.uk.  (We have to move it anyway as our provider is withdrawing their service). We have built our URL 301 redirect file and it is ready to go, but how to impliment it? We can repoint .co.uk to another site, and then redirect all traffic for each URL but this is quite messy, or just forget trying to 301 each page and just rediect the whole site.
                      the .com has more authority already, but we ready do not want to frustrate visitors who are using a link to reach a product, only to find they hit our homepage and not the product. Your thoughts would be very welcome or other ideas Bruce

                      On-Page Optimization | | BruceA
                      0
                    • OasisLandDevelopment

                      What is on page links?

                      Hi - i would like to know exactly what an on page link is? i understand the linking system however cant work what exactly what an on page link is? Thanks

                      On-Page Optimization | | OasisLandDevelopment
                      0
                    • CMC-SD

                      How much juice do you lose in a 301 redirect?

                      Our site has a number of, shall we say, unoptimized URLs. I would like to change the URLs to be more relevant; if a page is about red widgets, the URL should be www.domain.com/red-widgets.html, right? I'm getting resistance on this, however, based on the belief that you lose something significant when you 301 an old URL to a new one. Now, I know that if you have a long chain of redirects, the spiders will stop following at some point, and that is a huge problem. That wouldn't apply if there's only one step in the chain, however. I've also heard that you lose some link juice in a 301, but I'm unsure how serious that problem actually is. Is it small enough that we'd win out in the long run with better-optimized URLs?

                      On-Page Optimization | | CMC-SD
                      0

                    Get started with Moz Pro!

                    Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                    Start my free trial
                    Products
                    • Moz Pro
                    • Moz Local
                    • Moz API
                    • Moz Data
                    • STAT
                    • Product Updates
                    Moz Solutions
                    • SMB Solutions
                    • Agency Solutions
                    • Enterprise Solutions
                    • Digital Marketers
                    Free SEO Tools
                    • Domain Authority Checker
                    • Link Explorer
                    • Keyword Explorer
                    • Competitive Research
                    • Brand Authority Checker
                    • Local Citation Checker
                    • MozBar Extension
                    • MozCast
                    Resources
                    • Blog
                    • SEO Learning Center
                    • Help Hub
                    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                    • How-to Guides
                    • Moz Academy
                    • API Docs
                    About Moz
                    • About
                    • Team
                    • Careers
                    • Contact
                    Why Moz
                    • Case Studies
                    • Testimonials
                    Get Involved
                    • Become an Affiliate
                    • MozCon
                    • Webinars
                    • Practical Marketer Series
                    • MozPod
                    Connect with us

                    Contact the Help team

                    Join our newsletter
                    Moz logo
                    © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                    • Accessibility
                    • Terms of Use
                    • Privacy

                    Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.