Random 302 Redirect (Wordpress CMS)
-
So this new project that i am working on is a redesigned CMS site using Wordpress (php based). Before i started on the project they made a few major updates that include:
- Changed from ID based URLS to SEO friendly URLS
- Added multiple languages in directories
- Due to the new languages they wanted to have the previous home page, www.domain.com, redirect to the proper language based on their IP address. Currently they are using a 301 redirect through a php header. So if i was visiting the site from my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio and i type www.domain.com into the browser. I would automatically redirect to www.domain.com/en and i would have the option to switch languages if needed.
The issue:
When i first added their site into SEOMoz the crawl returned a large amount of 302 redirects coming from their old homepage www.domain.com. So i took a look at the header calls using IE's webmaster tools and Firebug in Firefox. In both profilers it showed the same problem.
- Before the 301 header redirect there was a 302 redirect called first
- When viewing the response header it mentioned an x-pingback of some file that didn't even exist on the site: www.domain.com/xmlrpc.php
This is obviously a huge issue because any link value from the old homepage will be lost due to the 302 not passing the value. I have tried search the almighty Google for help but it has gotten me no where. I have a hunch it is something to do with Wordpress but that is based on nothing but my gut. Any help is greatly appreciated.
I got to get that 302 gone or changed to a 301
Regards - Kyle
-
Interesting, not sure. Did you ever check out the theme?
-Brent
-
The funny thing is, i didn't find a solution nor did i mark this as anwsered...
It looks like someone on the SEOMoz staff thought it was done?
-
Hey Kyle,
I see you set the question as answered. What did it end up being?
-Brent
-
Brent - thank you for finding my post, i thought it was forever lost!
They had created a custom template, however i will still suggest them try the TAC plugin just incase. I will post the results once i get them.
Thanks again - Kyle
-
Hi Kyle,
Did they build the Wordpress template themselves? The pingback is a little suspicious, download the plugin called TAC and see if it brings up any hidden code. I had a similar problem where I was working on a site that was using a free theme and had a 302 in the header which made the site struggle in rankings. As soon as I figured out that it was in fact the free theme causing the issue I got it removed and traffic 10x'ed (not much as they were getting like 5 visitors a day) in roughly a week.
It's hard to help without seeing the site but let me know what TAC reports and if it's clean we'll dig deeper.
-Brent
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Index Page Redirect to Home Page? Best Practices...
Hi, I am wondering what the best practice is when a site has an index page and a home page? I have two pages, listed below, and want to know if I should 301 redirect my "index" page to my standard home page. The home page is where I would like all traffic to fall on for our website. Additionally, I used the rel=canonical tag years ago on the index page to indicate that the home page is the main content. Home Page - https://www.1099pro.com/ (PA 45) Home Page Canonical: rel="canonical" href="https://www.1099pro.com/"/> Index Page - https://www.1099pro.com/index.asp (PA - 33) Index Page Canonical: rel="canonical" href="https://www.1099pro.com/"/> It seems to me that there is some extra juice that could be passed to my home page (which is the page that ranks highly for our major keywords) by 301 redirecting the index page. Is there any reason why I should not do that? Really appreciate any help - especially with extra explanations - for the simple minded like me ;)! -Michael
Web Design | | Stew2220 -
How long should an old site redirecting to a new site remain activated on a server?
Once I switch a site to a new domain (with links to corresponding/relative pages), will I have to keep the old site live forever for those links to work, or how long should I wait before I inactivate the old site on our server?
Web Design | | jwanner0 -
Should our Wordpress blog have the same theme as Magento store?
We installed the Magento 'Aheadworks' extension for our blog but it's quite limited as to what blogging capabilities it has. We are now considering integrating Wordpress for our new blog, but keeping both on the same domain to increase the domain authority. My question is, should we keep the same theme throughout? The blog should be informative and not sales based, so we was thinking of ditching the whole theme for the blog and not having our category navigation bar. Yes we can still have internal linking which may drive traffic from the blog to the web store. We have been recommended the Wordpress Integration by Fishpig but I understand this carries through the Magento theme so I'm not sure exactly how it works. Could Wordpress plugins cause issues with our Magento store or shouldn't we be worried about this?
Web Design | | Jseddon920 -
Post CMS-Switch Actions
I have recently switched a site from oscommerce (an ecommerce CMS) to Wordpress (using WooCommerce plugins). I have already placed automatic redirect rules for all the products and product categories. It has now been 2 weeks since the new CMS went live. However, the site is receiving approximately 30% less traffic than it used to. The new site has a cleaner layout, is responsive design. As I mentioned, the old product and product category URLs are being redirected to the new WordPress URLs. Any other ideas? Do you think its just Google penalizing for changing site structure? On the plus side, I see structured data and rich snippets showing up in Google SERPs for the site. The site is www.vrtack.com
Web Design | | amitramani0 -
Redirect From .aspx to .html if already indexed - Website Redesign
Hi Guys I would like to know if somebody could possibly shed some light on this for me. We are in the process of re-designing our site, but we are keeping all of our content in terms of site structure, internal linking etc. the same. Now we were wondering if it would be a SEO best practice for us to change our pages' extension from .aspx to .html and just put a re-direct from the aspx to the html pages. Or should we keep everything as is, and maybe just revise our on-page seo efforts as well as do some more link-building. I just have to note that we are currently ranking very well for top positions and obviously all these pages are already nicely indexed. And then another question I have is with regards to our mobi site of this same website.Our dev team created it using Responsive Web Design, but they decided to implement techniques that show and hide content based on what device you are viewing it on. So when viewing it on your desktop, it will show content as per normal, but when viewing it on a mobile device it will hide this content and show the content formatted for that specific mobile device. So we are obviously sitting with a case of dup content here.Is this technique acceptable, or is there a workaround/different way of implementing this? Thanks In Advance Dave
Web Design | | DavidZA10 -
Migrating a site to Wordpress
I've recently been converting our old website to a wordpress based website and been working on the new version of the site on a subdomain. Now at the stage when I am getting ready to let the site go live and just wondering exactly how to do this so I have minimal downtime? Looking in the wordpress control panel there is the setting to enter the address of the site if you want it to be different from the directory it has been installed within - is this a good idea (i.e. is it stable if I do this? good for seo, bad for seo or makes no difference?)? or should I manually install everything in the root myself (if I do this is there a way to direct people to the temp version of the site on the subdomain? Any tips, do and don't s would be appreciated as I want to do this right!
Web Design | | Jon-C0 -
Home page redirect - will this cause an SEO problem
Hello, We are using Wordpress to build a wiki site. The wiki plugin we're using (Wordpress Wiki lite) can only be set up on an internal page like nlpwiki(dot)org/wiki Can we redirect the home page to the /wiki subdirectory and use nlpwiki(dot)org/wiki as our home page? I've never done that, just wondering if it will be indexed as the home page or if there are any connonical issues. Thanks!
Web Design | | BobGW0 -
301 redirects from old site to new
hey all, we just did a site redesign and have less pages on the new site than the old. is it bad to redirect multiple pages from the old site to the same page on the new? for example redirect ...com/apps ...com/android ...com/mobile and point them all to....com/custom-apps thanks!
Web Design | | jaychow0