When mass redirecting URLs from the old site, can I redirect everything to the home page of the new site for SEO?

Question

I need to redirect thousands of URLs to my new site (its the same domain, but now is on Wordpress), I don't want to lose all the SEO from the old posts, but I don't know how to redirect each old link to his new link (First idea). My question is: Will maintain the SEO if i redirect all the old links to the domain?(Second Idea)

First idea:

Old URL: domain.net/article/title/article_id

Redirect to:

New URL: domain.net/index.php/year/month/day/tile

Second idea:

Old URL: domain.net/article/title/article_id

Redirect to:

New URL: domain.net

Answer 1

In order to maintain SEO, you need to redirect old URL to new URL. Like for like. If there is no discernable pattern that maps the old URL to the new then you have to redirect each URL separately by identifying all the old and new URLs.

So, your "first idea" is really the only option. You can perhaps limit the number of URLs you need to redirect by identifying the URLs that are indexed by the search engines (ie. Google) or are linked to by external sites.

Your "second idea" (redirect all old URLs to the homepage) is not really a good idea. Search engines will likely treat this as a soft-404 and will give a bad user experience. (Also, how to you differentiate between "old URLs" and URLs that just don't exist?)

New URL: example.com/index.php/year/month/day/tile

Aside: If index.php is still part of the URL then you aren't making use of mod_rewrite/.htaccess to create the "prettiest" URLs. Any reason why not?