A Really Specific Question about 301 Redirect Strategies

[Daaveey]

Hi there:

As part of a site redesign project, we've been doing a lot of 301 redirects, as we retire old URLs or rename them. My question is: is it necessary to redirect ALL old URLS? What about URLs with no links and low authority? Are these really necessary to redirect, since they're not referenced on the web and there's obviously a global redirect happening at the level of the root domain?

Just curious; I'm not sure I've ever really understood this...

[DonnaDuncan]

Hi David,

Is it necessary to redirect ALL old URLs_**? **_

No.

The old URLs will continue to show up in search results for some time. Your global redirect will make sure visitors and link juice gets appropriately routed, but you do want those URLs to eventually get dropped from the index. The best way to encourage search engines to do that is to not create a specific redirect.