Will a 301 alter URL structures?

[SwanseaMedicine]

Hi all,

I'd like to re-direct page A to page B. The problem is, under page A, I have a number of other pages. So, for example -

www.website.co.uk/A/fake/website

If I re-direct www.website.co.uk/A/ to www.website.co.uk/B/, would the sub-pages then become unusable as a URL? Or would they stay intact because I'm not changing the location of the pages, merely applying a re-direct to the folder that it's in.

Cheers,

Rhys

[dohertyjf]

Hi Rhys! Great question.

Just to be clear, you're talking about this scenario. You have page site.com/page/ and want to redirect it to site.com/page2/, but you also have children of /page/ that are /page/1/ and /page/2/.

You are wondering what happens when you redirect **just **/page/ to /page2/. Is that correct?

If you do a one-to-one redirect, no REGEX and no pattern matching, then /page/1/ and /page/2/ should remain where they are. You are not removing the /page/ subfolder, but are simply forwarding the /page/ URL to /page2/.

If you are also wanted to move /page/1/ to /page2/1/ and /page/2/ to /page2/2/, then you should be sure that those URLs resolve before you redirect the original URL. From a pure SEO point of view, moving all the pages is the right move to keep your URL architecture clean. Though if you are just moving /page/ to /page2/ in order to test things and are going to come back to /page/ eventually, then redirecting the sub pages is not really necessary right now.

Does that help? If you need to clarify more, please do and I can adjust my answer!

[SwanseaMedicine]

Hi John,

Thank you for the very detailed response, that's exactly what I meant. So, the URL for the children of /page/ should stay exactly the same? /page/1/ and /page/2/ aren't controlled by me, but /page/ is, and is outdated so I'm looking to apply a 301 to a new page which we've developed for it.

Assuming I've understood your answer, this should be fine...

Thanks again for your response - very helpful!

Best wishes,

Rhys

[dohertyjf]

Hi Rhys! Yes, that should be fine as long as you do a one-to-one redirect from /page/ to /page2/.

Out of curiosity, why change the URL and not update the content and styles on the current page? You'd save any link equity, keep your URLs consistent, and probably stand a better chance of ranking longterm.

[SwanseaMedicine]

Thanks, John!

Basically, before I started, two pages were created for a directory page. This is now splitting the traffic, but the page we'd like to re-direct has, for some reason, had a number of pages built under it. So, we need to 301 the page without damaging the URL structure of the sub-pages, but I wasn't sure if that was possible!

Hope that makes sense?

Thanks for your help!

Cheers,

Rhys

[dohertyjf]

Hey Rhys, it does indeed and you should be totally fine technically. Though I'd still recommend redirecting the one without subpages from a pure SEO point of view.

And of course, test it on a test server first to make sure there are no other unforeseen issues!

[SwanseaMedicine]

Thanks, John!