Is there an easier way to implement 301 redirects when converting a site to WordPress

Is there an easier way to implement 301 redirects when converting a site to WordPress - If a page has internal and external outgoing links to redirecting URLs, it’s returning 3xx (301, 302, etc.) HTTP status codes standing for redirection. This issue means that the page does not exist on a permanent or temporary basis. It appears on most of the popular web browsers, usually caused by a misconfigured website. However, there are some steps you can take to ensure the issue isn’t on your side. You can find more details about redirecting URLs by reading the Google Search Central overview. In this article, we’ll go over how you can fix the Is there an easier way to implement 301 redirects when converting a site to WordPress error on your web browser. Problem :

I have just converted a website to WordPress. The old site has hundreds of hard-coded html files, and the new site does not match the old site's directory structure or file naming system (bad SEO in the original site), so I can't place any "blanket" 301 redirects. Its been at least 2 months, and the old links are still appearing in Google searches, despite a google-friendly sitemap.xml.

Do I need to hardcode a 301 for every individual page in my htaccess file, or am I just misunderstanding 301s and apache? Is there some other way I can update Google about the fact that my entire site structure has changed?

Solution :

Based on the information you provided I'd say it doesn't look like there is an easy way for you to easily do a bulk 301 redirect, either programmatically or with a blanket .htaccess rule. It looks like you will need to manually do one for each page you migrated over to the new site.

Each page will need it's own 301 as you will want to make sure every link for each page is properly redirected to its new page. Otherwise every page on your new site will be considered new and start from scratch with PR, etc. If you had a lot of incoming links it may be a hassle to do but is very well worth it.

Google search with the string site:mysite.com to get a full dump of all the URLs that are indexed, or go ahead and use Google's Webmaster's Tools and get a list of 404's from them. Then, yes, you will need to manually construct a 301 redirect list.

You can import a file into WordPress › Redirection « WordPress Plugins to generate redirections and log them, too.

I suggest you another plugin for wordpress, that i use on two sites administered by me, EggPlants 301 redirects. This plugin don't fill the .htaccess file with new rules, but use the internal routing system of wordpress. With this you can import the redirect rules by a cvs file, getted from the google webmaster tool and editet to include the new path.

If there are any patterns at all to the redirects then you can cut down on the number of redirects in the htaccess file.

We hope that this article has helped you resolve the seo, search-engines, apache error in your web browsers. Enjoy browsing the internet uninterrupted!