Multisite migration – 301 redirects and SEO

  • wasana

    (@wasana)


    12 years, 2 months ago

    I’m hoping for a referral to an expert, or even better get some clear advice here.

    I’d appreciate some feedback on SEO questions – and particularly need specific info on 301 redirects and what to use in .htaccess…

    I need to migrate a large number of domains currently on their own separate WP installations to a multisite network.

    Instead of working on resolving all the permalinks, paths of images and links etc and cleaning up the content/database etc before migrating and then dealing with import/export of the xml files – I want to simply 301 redirect existing URL’s to brand new pages/posts.

    I want to maximize keeping SEO link juice

    In lieu of just a ‘move all’ redirect pointing all the URL to the new index page I would like to break things out a bit and get SEO link juice for targeted landing pages.

    So a couple of ‘decision-tree’ questions come to mind:

    1) How would it be possible to redirect all posts from a ‘category’ to a singe URL? and would it be possible to point SOME category’s posts to specific URL and ALL OTHERS categories/posts to the index page URL or some other URL?

    2) will 301 redirects have issues with multisite subdomains getting mapped to domains…? (concerned about too many redirects either not working or getting flagged by search engines)

    3) Would doing a 301 redirect from say, 50 post/page URL’s to 1 URL deliver link juice from all those pages, making the new page super strong? (realizing that there is some percentage loss for each page) — this is actually tough to determine reading a gazillion guru blogs

    4) Would standard DNS Zone for multisite be enough (*wildcard) or is some other DNS tweaking needed?

    my current gameplan is to first create a new multisite installation on a new VPS with good server specs (lots of RAM), dedicated IP, using a brand new domain for the primary site.

    primarysite.com (multisite subdomain installation)
    subdomain1.primarysite.com (site1)
    subdomain2.primarysite.com (site2)

    I’ll park all the domains in cpanel; use the WPMUDEV.org “blog template” and “batch create” plugins to create and format sites and
    I then will load these sites with content.

    Then will use WPMUDEV.org ‘domain mapping’ to point
    subdomain1.primarysite.com to domain1.com
    subdomain2.primarysite.com to domain2.com

    edit the htaccess with appropriate 301 redirects of old URL’s to new URL’s

    then update nameservers at the registrar

    I think this makes sense if I can get the htaccess updated with the right 301 redirect code – but I have no idea what to put in the htaccess

    sorry for long post… but big project.

    Thanks for your help

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    12 years, 2 months ago

    CAVEAT! All wpmudev.org plugins are behind a paywall and are only supported on their site. We cannot help you with specific questions to those plugins, as (most of us) don’t use them and have no access to the code.

    1) How would it be possible to redirect all posts from a ‘category’ to a singe URL? and would it be possible to point SOME category’s posts to specific URL and ALL OTHERS categories/posts to the index page URL or some other URL?

    .htaccess would be the easiest. If you wanted category foobar to point to foobar.com, it would be this:

    RewriteRule ^category/foobar(.*) http://foobar.com [L,R=301]

    If you wanted them to go to foobar.com/postname, just toss a /$1 on the end of foobar.com above and you’re GTG 🙂

    You would have to do it for each category that way, unless you want to get really tricksy with it. How many are we talking about?

    2) will 301 redirects have issues with multisite subdomains getting mapped to domains…? (concerned about too many redirects either not working or getting flagged by search engines)

    Not really. Once you have the new sites up on Multisite, ask Google to re-crawl the new URL and everything catches up.

    3) Would doing a 301 redirect from say, 50 post/page URL’s to 1 URL deliver link juice from all those pages, making the new page super strong? (realizing that there is some percentage loss for each page) — this is actually tough to determine reading a gazillion guru blogs

    No, you get no linkjuice from a 301. A 301 says “I have moved.” Linkjuice would be if I link to your page, not if you link to yourself. If you were giving juice for 301s, you’d be able to game the system really well and that would be bad 🙂

    4) Would standard DNS Zone for multisite be enough (*wildcard) or is some other DNS tweaking needed?

    Depends on your server. I mapped a domain just by parking it, and that’s enough.

    Thread Starter wasana

    (@wasana)

    12 years, 2 months ago

    Thanks for your response

    but still a little shaky with:

    RewriteRule ^category/foobar(.*) http://foobar.com [L,R=301]

If you wanted them to go to foobar.com/postname, just toss a /$1 on the end of foobar.com

    if I want category/foobar to go to foorbar.com/post99 how would that work?

    BTW: Matt Cutts says that Page Rank and Anchor Text does flow through 301’s — how much your new URL gets, and how well it rates for authority, is up to googlebot and the algorithm

    Thanks

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    12 years, 2 months ago

    Flow through != ‘gain linkjuice’

    That is if I move domain.com/blahblah to domain.com/fooblah, all the points I had for blahblah transfer to fooblah. However, if I make a BUNCH of other links blahfoo, foobarblah etc, and 301 them all to fooblah, AND start linking there, I don’t get extra juice for the flow, I get the same juice as I would have for just fooblah on it’s own. You KEEP your juice, you don’t get extra cups.

    if I want category/foobar to go to foorbar.com/post99 how would that work?

    RewriteRule ^category/foobar(.*) http://foobar.com/post99 [L,R=301]

    IF you wanted /category/foobar/postname to go to foobar.com/postname, it’s

    RewriteRule ^category/foobar/(.*) http://foobar.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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