• BBgmoro

        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.

          Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

          Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

          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.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Get found
        • 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

          Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
          Moz API

          Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

          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. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
        4. Changing URL structure of date-structured blog with 301 redirects

        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.

        Changing URL structure of date-structured blog with 301 redirects

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO
        3
        8
        1723
        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.
        • IanOBrien
          IanOBrien last edited by

          Howdy Moz,

          We've recently bought a new domain and we're looking to change over to it. We're also wanting to change our permalink structure. Right now, it's a WordPress site that uses the post date in the URL. As an example:

          http://blog.mydomain.com/2015/01/09/my-blog-post/

          We'd like to use mod_rewrite to change this using regular expressions, to:

          http://newdomain.com/blog/my-blog-post/

          Would this be an appropriate solution?

          RedirectMatch 301 /./././(.) /blog/$1

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • MonicaOConnor
            MonicaOConnor @IanOBrien last edited by

            Yes, sorry, I missed that part! That looks great.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • IanOBrien
              IanOBrien @MonicaOConnor last edited by

              Thanks! Yes, in my original post, I ask if the format of the mod_rewrite is correct for a 301 redirect. I realize we need 301 redirects. I am wanting to do it so I don't have to do a direct 1 to 1 for every page:

              We'd like to use mod_rewrite to change this using regular expressions, to:

              http://newdomain.com/blog/my-blog-post/

              Would this be an appropriate solution?

              RedirectMatch 301 /./././(.) /blog/$1

              MonicaOConnor 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • MonicaOConnor
                MonicaOConnor @IanOBrien last edited by

                Whether you use a mod_rewrite or a 1 - 1 301, the end result is a 301 redirect. If you are changing the URL at all, even from http to https, you will need to tell Google that the URL has moved, hence, the 301 redirect. If you do not 301 redirect your old URLs you will lose all SEO value, traffic and link juice for the old URLs.

                Does that make sense? Setting the redirects in Apache is simply a shortcut to the 301 step. Whichever path you take, you are ending at a 301.

                And the syntax you wrote above looks correct for the rewrite script.

                IanOBrien 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • IanOBrien
                  IanOBrien @MonicaOConnor last edited by

                  Hey Monica! Thanks for your response.

                  On Apache, you can set redirects before the server sends you to the domain. This is a preferred method for us. Erica was kind enough to suggest using WP to do so, but with thousands of blog posts, this really isn't an option to do a 1 to 1 301 redirect for every post.

                  Because of that, we're looking at **mod_rewrite **instead of a 301 plugin or using .htaccess, but I'm a little fuzzy on the appropriate syntax for it to work correctly.

                  MonicaOConnor 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • MonicaOConnor
                    MonicaOConnor @IanOBrien last edited by

                    Even if you are moving away from WP, you will set up your redirects the same way. You can do that through the HTAccess file to make sure that they are pointing to the correct pages on your new site.

                    IanOBrien 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • IanOBrien
                      IanOBrien last edited by

                      Thanks for the response!

                      I should have mentioned that we are moving away from WP on the new domain.

                      MonicaOConnor 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • EricaMcGillivray
                        EricaMcGillivray last edited by

                        I'd go in and change the structure in WP and then 301 the old URLs with the redirect. Then your new posts going forward will only have the cleaned up URL structure and the old ones will be properly 301'd for all the SEO goodness.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • 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

                        • Jackson21

                          Changing Url Removes Backlink

                          Hello MOZ Community, I have question regarding Bad Backlink Removal. My Site's Post's Image got 4 to 5k backlinks from unknown sites and also their is no contact details on their site so that i can contact them to remove. So, I have an idea for which i want suggestion " If I change the url that receieves backlinks" does this will remove backlinks? For Example: https://example.com/test/ got 5k backlinks if I change this url to https://examplee.com/test-failed/ does this will remove those 5k backlinks? If not then How Can I remove those Backlinks? I Know about disavow but this takes time.

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jackson21
                          0
                        • amberprata

                          301 Redirects for Multiple Language Sites in htaccess File

                          Hi everyone, I have a site  on a subdomain that has multiple languages set up at the domain level: https://mysite.site.com, https://mysite.site.fr ,  https://mysite.site.es , https://mysite.site.de , etc. We are migrating to a new subdomain and I am trying to create 301 redirects within the htaccess file, but I am a bit lost on how to do this as it seems you have to go from a relative url to an absolute - which would be fine if I was only doing this for the english site, but I'm not. It doesn't seem like I can go from absolute url to an absolute url - but I could be wrong. I am new to editing the htaccess file - so I could definitely use some advice here. Thanks.

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amberprata
                          0
                        • EcommRulz

                          Does Google Index URLs that are always 302 redirected

                          Hello community Due to the architecture of our site, we have a bunch of URLs that are 302 redirected to the same URL plus a query string appended to it. For example: www.example.com/hello.html is 302 redirected to www.example.com/hello.html?___store=abc The www.example.com/hello.html?___store=abc page also has a link canonical tag to www.example.com/hello.html In the above example, can www.example.com/hello.html every be Indexed, by google as I assume the googlebot will always be redirected to www.example.com/hello.html?___store=abc and will never see www.example.com/hello.html ? Thanks in advance for the help!

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommRulz
                          0
                        • BrandBuilder

                          New Site (redesign) Launched Without 301 Redirects to New Pages - Too Late to Add Redirects?

                          We recently launched a redesign/redevelopment of a site but failed to put 301 redirects in place for the old URL's. It's been about 2 months. Is it too late to even bother worrying about it at this point? The site has seen a notable decrease in site traffic/visits, perhaps due to this issue. I assume that once the search engines get an error on a URL, it will remove it from displaying in search results after a period of time. I'm just not sure if they will try to re-crawl those old URLs at some point and if so, it may be worth it to have those 301 redirects in place. Thank you.

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandBuilder
                          0
                        • ShaqD

                          Change url structure and keeping the social media likes/shares

                          Hi guys, We're thinking of changing the url structure of the tutorials (we call it knowledgebase) section on our website. We want to make it shorter URL so it be closer to the TLD. So, for the convenience we'll call them old page (www.domain.com/profiles/profile_id/kb/article_title) and new page (www.domain.com/kb/article_title) What I'm looking to do is change the url structure but keep the likes/shares we got from facebook. I thought of two ways to do it and would love to hear what the community members thinks is better. 1. Use rel=canonical I thought we might do a rel=canonical to the new page and add a "noindex" tag to the old page. In that way, the users will still be able to reach the old page, but the juice will still link to the new page and the old pages will disappear from Google SERP and the new pages will start to appear. I understand it will be pretty long process. But that's the only way likes will stay 2. Play with the og:url property Do the 301 redirect to the new page, but changing the og:url property inside that page to the old page url. It's a bit more tricky but might work. What do you think? Which way is better, or maybe there is a better way I'm not familiar with yet? Thanks so much for your help! Shaqd

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ShaqD
                          0
                        • BeytzNet

                          How to 301 redirect old wordpress category?

                          Hi All, In order to avoid duplication errors we've decided to redirect old categories (merge some categories).
                          In the past we have been very generous with the number of categories we assigned each post. One category needs to be redirected back to blog home (removed completely) while a couple others should be merged. Afterwords we will re-categorize some of the old posts. What is the proper way to do so?
                          We are not technical, Is there a plugin that can assist? Thanks

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
                          0
                        • MyNet

                          How To 301 Redirect .html pages

                          I need to redirect a page/URL that is purely .html to a new location.  I don't know how to do this.  All the redirects I can find are for server side code pages .php/.aspx etc.  From my understanding I can't put a server side redirect in a .html file.  I am hosting on a microsoft server, however the new page I am redirecting to is .php.  I am running some WordPress (.php) files on the server.  I need to make it redirect before the old page loads so visitors don't start reading something that is about to get redirected Can someone please help me?

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyNet
                          0
                        • AndreVanKets

                          Is it safe to redirect multiple URLs to a single URL?

                          Hi, I have an old Wordress website with about 300-400 original pages of content on it. All relating to my company's industry: travel in Africa. It's a legitimate site with travel stories, photos, advice etc. Nothing spammy about. No adverts on it. No affiliates. The site hasn't been updated for a couple of years and we no longer have a need for it. Many of the stories on it are quite out of date. The site has built up a modest Mozrank value over the last 5 years, and has a few hundreds organically achieved inbound links. Recently I set up a swanky new branded website on ExpressionEngine on a new domain. My intention is to: Shut down the old site Focus all attention on building up content on the new website Ask the people linking to the old site to my new site instead (I wonder how many will actually do so...) Where possible, setup a 301 redirect from pages on the old site to their closest match on the new site Setup a 301 redirect from the old site's home page to new site's homepage Sounds good, right? But there is one issue I need some advice on... The old site has about 100 pages that do not have a good match on the new site. These pages are outdated or inferior quality, so it doesn't really make sense to rewrite them and put them on the new site. I call these my "black sheep pages". So... for these "black sheep pages" should I (A) redirect the urls to the new site's homepage (B) redirect the urls the old site's home page (which in turn, redirects to the new site's homepage, or (C) not redirect the urls, and let them die a lonely 404 death? OPTION A: oldsite.com/page1.php -> newsite.com
                          oldsite.com/page2.php -> newsite.com
                          oldsite.com/page3.php -> newsite.com
                          oldsite.com/page4.php -> newsite.com
                          oldsite.com/page5.php -> newsite.com
                          oldsite.com -> newsite.com OPTION B: oldsite.com/page1.php -> oldsite.com
                          oldsite.com/page2.php -> oldsite.com
                          oldsite.com/page3.php -> oldsite.com
                          oldsite.com/page4.php -> oldsite.com
                          oldsite.com/page5.php -> oldsite.com
                          oldsite.com -> newsite.com OPTION 😄 oldsite.com/page1.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                          oldsite.com/page2.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                          oldsite.com/page3.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                          oldsite.com/page4.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                          oldsite.com/page5.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                          oldsite.com -> newsite.com My intuition tells me that Option A would pass the most "link juice" to my new site, but I am concerned that it could also be seen by Google as a spammy redirect technique. What would you do? Help 😐

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndreVanKets
                          1

                        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 - 2026 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.