301 by category rather than page?

[PerchDigital]

Hi Guys

It is possible (and best practice) to 301 a category as a whole rather than every page within the category.

I was asked this by a developer the other day, and it was something I'd not considered before as I've always done it by page.

It seems there's some wordpress plugins out there that do it.

Thanks in advance.

[Cornel_Ilea]

Hi Gareth,

I guess it should work like this in a web.config:

<match url=".*"></match>

<add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^domain.co.uk/category/$"></add>

<action type="Redirect" url="http://www.domain.co.uk/category/{R:0}" redirecttype="Permanent"></action>

[GregFindley.co.uk]

Hi Gareth,

Will the content within the category be moved to another category, or is it being taken down altogether?

[PerchDigital]

Hi Greg

The content will remain the same and remain in the same category, the only thing that'll change is the name and slug of the category itself.

[GregFindley.co.uk]

Hi Gareth,

The redirection plugin should cover this for you - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/

http://davidwalsh.name/wordpress-category-slug

[PerchDigital]

Hi Greg

Cool, thanks. I probably didn't ask the question as clearly as I should. I realise there are plugins out there than can do this, but I really wanted to know whether this had any SEO implications. I've never considered redirecting by category, only by page, so wanted to know what other SEO's thought on this.

[Cornel_Ilea]

As far as I know there is no SEO difference between 301 redirecting a page or a category.

Cornel

[GregFindley.co.uk]

Sorry Gareth, misread on that part, how many posts/pages are there within the category you're looking to change? Does the category level have many links pointing in?

[wattssw]

Based on this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA&feature=player_embedded

I believe there is nothing wrong with redirecting entire directories. Matt seems to suggest one could even redirect multiple pages to a homepage, and while this isn't ideal, its a legitimate method recognized by Google.

[PerchDigital]

There's actually about 20 categories that would ideally have a new slug and the number of posts in each category varies between about 10 in each to around 50.

Is there a limit on the number of posts in a category before we start running into issues?