How is it possible to 301 specific pages to a new domain?

[Brocberry]

The old site is small, only 100 pages or so, and about 10 of them are particularly useful. I would like to 301 those 10 pages to 10 similar pages on the new site, and also 301 the other 90 pages to the new site... the new site's home page, I suppose.

Does it make sense to do this and if so how?

I think if I simply 301 the whole of the old domain to the new one, the juice will be shared among the new site's page equally which is not what I want. I know where the htaccess file is and I can 301 a page within a domain but I'm at a loss with this. Thanks for any help.

EDIT:

I'm hoping for something like this:

old.com/page_1  >>  new.com/page_A

old.com/page_2  >>  new.com/page_B

... and 8 more of those

And then the other 90 pages:

old.com/Remaining pages  >>  new.com/index

[Matt-Williamson]

To me it doesn't make sense to redirect a page using a permanent redirect that tells the search engines the old page has moved to multiple new pages - the new page should only exist in one location from a duplicate content and link juice point of view. I think that would be an improper use of a 301 redirect. You could group pages and point the old page to the first page of each group.

Also note as far as I am aware this is not possible as a 301 redirect will send you to a single location not multiple when you type the old address, so you could point 10 pages at 120 other than creating 10 index pages which group those 120 and pointing one of the 10 original at each of them...

[Brocberry]

Hi Matt,

It will be one-to-one:

old.com/page_1  >>  new.com/page_A

old.com/page_2  >>  new.com/page_B

... and 8 more of those

And then the other 90 pages:

old.com/Remaining pages >> new.com/index

[Matt-Williamson]

Sorry my confusion - when you said "301 those 10 pages to 120 similar pages on the new site". Then your idea is correct it will be best to redirect your old page to a specific new one - I have done this successfully many times myself.

You can does this with your .htaccess - easiest way for you would be to use this:

http://www.webconfs.com/htaccess-redirect-generator.php

When using the tool you only need to initiate the rewrite engine once then just copy the last line for each url redirect:

include this only once:

Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine on

[Brocberry]

Sorry Matt, that was a bad typo. I've changed that now... I meant 301 those 10 pages to 10 similar pages".

Thanks very much for the link. I might just have to test this with a dormant domain and see if it works, but my worry is that the command to redirect the whole domain will override the commands to redirect the individual pages.

RewriteEngine on

#I would have ten of these:

rewriterule ^index.phproute=product/product&product_id=52(.*)$ http://www.new.co.uk/products/new$1 [r=301,nc]

######## As I would prefer not to do the above for all 100 pages, I would need a way to redirect the remaining pages. I don't know if the following accomplishes this as it's simply a command to redirect the domain?
#######

Options +FollowSymLinksRewriteEngine onRewriteRule (.*) http://www.new.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

[Matt-Williamson]

Hi - yeah place all your specific redirects first and then add you blanket redirect at the end.

[Brocberry]

Thanks Matt

The domain-to-domain redirect works but the page-to-page doesn't, even when the page-to-page is the only instruction below "RewriteEngine on".

[Matt-Williamson]

try this below 

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.newdomain.com/newpage.html
```

[Brocberry]

For some reason it doesn't work. I've changed the fifth line below for posting here, but the four lines above it is the code that I used in the htaccess. Because it's a 1and1 server which use php4 as default, it has an extra line to use php 5, which the site has always had. The domain-to-domain 301 works ok with this extra line.

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php

Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine On

Redirect 301 /index.php?route=product/product&product_id=51 http://www.newdomain.com/new-page

[Matt-Williamson]

I think the issue you are having is because you are redirecting a dynamic URL and this is what is causing the problem. There was Q&A on here regarding this ages ago I will try and find it and let you have the link - unless we have an expert that wants to step in..

Try adding a rewrite condition before a rewrite rule:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} route=product/product&product_id=51 

[Brocberry]

SOLUTION:

Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine On

#redirect this type of url www.old.com/index.php?everything-after-the-question-mark to a new url

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^everything-after-the-question-mark$ RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.new.com/new-page? [L,R=301]

#change the above for every specific url with a query string that you want to send to a specific url

#for capturing the rest of the site's query string urls and sending them to a single page - the home page in this example:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*)$ RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.new.com? [L,R=301]

#www.old.com doesn't have a query string so needs its own 301:

Redirect 301 / http://www.new.com

[Brocberry]

Thanks Matt, that put me on the right track. I have posted a full solution is you need it anytime.

[Matt-Williamson]

Glad it helped and the explanation below is nicely done.