Updated old blog url, now 404

[Dots1]

Still working through optimizing my site - I learned that many of my blog post titles were too long. I read a post here that indicated Weebly automatically updates the redirect for blogs when you make an url change to an old blog, no 301 Redirect required.

I made numerous adjustments yesterday. I just did another site audit that indicates many of the changed blogs are showing as 404, example below...

How does one complete a 301 redirect for these? The only selection is the blog page? Or am I jumping the gun and these redirects would still be pending?

[Bernadette3]

Hi @Dots. We automatically redirect when you publish to a new domain from a subdomain. What is the old and new domain name, please? 

[Dots1]

Its not an old domain/new domain, just updated blog post urls. www.dotsleadership.com

[Dots1]

Sorry, I may have used the wrong language. I'm talking about updating permalinks!! 

[Bernadette3]

I don't think you can setup a 301 redirect to a blog post. It will only work on the blog page itself. What is one of the old/new urls?

[Dots1]

See the snippet above....

[whitemonkey]

u can change the blog post titles.... but best leave the perma links as they were....as the word... perma suggests... its permanant.. that screwed me up before    ...  and i had all these old urls.....   which i couldnt delete..   other wise......   on the old pages  i deleted all the text    and put my own message: "sorry, this page has now been moved to   xxxxx"       it looked crap    but   slightly better than a 404 error...

[Dots1]

Yah well, hence why I did the research before I made the changes so its frustrating if it actually didn't work right - I only did about 25 of them, errrrgghhhh!!!!!!!! I shall find the post I found - the answer was by Adam so I figured it was good to go. 

[Dots1]

Perhaps I misread this?  I am hopeful it was OK to edit them and if not then I will need some help in solving for having done so. Thanks for your help everyone.

[whitemonkey]

i just know from personal experience..... changing the permalink   gave me a head ache with old undeletable urls   which did not get auto  re directed   etc....   may be i was doing it wrong... or some thing extra  i didnt do....

at that time i only had std pages and not blog pages    and i 301 re directed them..    but this seemed to expire after 3 months.....

so now with  my new blog...... i think very carefully about the permalink on blog pages     and dont think about editing them...

and some times it takes ages for google to index ur pages     but once indexed,    seems u cant get rid of them....  major flaw   from G ..   except when i deteled the old site completely  then it was gone...

[whitemonkey]

did u re submit the new urls/permalinks to Google?

[whitemonkey]

cos i see that the new url of 'difficult -people-know-all'  which is ur new url for the part 1' post gives me  as per the  2nd pic below.  : ie   its not on Google

where as   site:dotsleadership.com/blog/difficult-people   gives me  as per 1st pic below.   ie   shows the old url

[Dots1]

Haven't done that for each post as yet! Hmmmmmm....and thanks so much for this! Ever a learning experience.

[whitemonkey]

try submitting 1 page (the part 1 page.. with new url obviously,for starters) to  google and submitting a site map....... ursite.sitemap.xml   and i will see what shows up.

to see if any page is on Google..... u type in

site:dotsleadership.com/blog/difficult-people 

     and everything that starts   with that url will show up ( or not as the case may be)

site:dotsleadership.com/blog/   will show u EVERYthing thats on BLOG      hope u get the drift    

[Dots1]

Thanks, resubmitted that one. the sitemap part though, do you have to do it again? I thought by requesting index that it adds it to the sitemap??

[whitemonkey]

im re freshing : site:dotsleadership.com/blog/difficult-people-know-all to see what gives. i normally do the sitemap.xml thing.. then stariaght away inspect the url https://www........... etc know-all and request indexing and within 5 mins its normally showing up on google.... when i type site:dotsleadership.... etc know-all for example

[whitemonkey]

sorry,, its hard to explain submit ursite.sitemap.xml then inspect : https://www.dotsleadership.com/blog/difficult-people-know-all then onces its whirled around, request indexing

[Dots1]

I submitted each of that particular series for indexing AND a new site map, and also created a redirect to the blog page for each using the old (long) link.

Shall see if it works, so far the 404 i still showing up on the old link. If I have to do 301 redirects for each post it will suck, but rather that than the 404.  Lesson learned, right - I also appreciate google indexing can take a bit.

Thanks again for your kind assistance 

[whitemonkey]

suggest just re submitt the new urls first.......

submitting a sitemap asks google to crawl ur site but to me, it seems when u inspect the url and request indexing (again) after u have change things like content, it does it a bit quicker.

lets see if its shows the new url when searching site:dotsleadership.com/blog/difficult-people-know-all

cos i am hoping that weebly DOES automatically redirects and then u wont have to re direct all ur modified pages

[whitemonkey]

sucess i hope....

part 3 is on with the new url ????? https://www.dotsleadership.com/blog/difficult-people-critic     thsi is PART 3 new url    ????

pls confirm

site:dotsleadership.com/blog/difficult-people-know-all   gives :   

[Dots1]

Yes it is! So that's a good start. Now just the old links...404's to sort out Pretty sure Google will prefer the shorter urls.