CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpapache.htaccessmod-rewritehttp-redirect
user3569292
user3569292

Reputation: 73

301 redirect vs mod-rewrite for passing link juice

I have a bunch of subcategory index pages on the root level of my site that I inherited from a previous developer with unnested url's like www.example.com/Category1_Index.php. My effort is to "friendly-ize" these to www.example.com/category1/subcategory1/ and so forth.

Here is the mod-write rule I am implementing for the individual url's:

RewriteRule   ^category1/subcategory1/?$   Category1_Index.php  [NC]

My dilemma is, am I passing the link juice (at least 90% of it) from the old url to the new one this way? Or am I missing something? Is a 301 redirect needed instead? (I'm actually unclear after days of research.)

A couple of things for the record:

  1. I implemented these rewrites over a month ago and many of the url's are STILL showing up in Google (leading me to wonder about split link juice value).
  2. Our site has lost quite a lot of traffic since implementing.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 139

Answers (1)

Salman Arshad
Salman Arshad

Reputation: 272086

Seems like you changed the URL of your pages from this:

www.example.com/Category1_Index.php

to this:

www.example.com/category1/subcategory1/

But you did not redirect your *.php URLs to the friendly version. This causes two problems straight away:

  • You have duplicate content e.g. Category1_Index.php shows same content as /category1/subcategory1/.
  • Or worse if the *.php pages no longer work e.g. they return 404 error.

The latter causes additional problems:

  • Users coming to your website following *.php link (from a bookmark, external link or search engine results page) get an error.
  • Your old links will be removed from search engine results gradually.

The solution is to 301 redirect *.php pages to their friendly version. This informs search engines and browsers that the address of page has changed. You still need to use URL rewriting.

Upvotes: 1

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