How important is having a 301 redirect?
-
Is having a 301 redirect a must for rankings when it comes to the www and non-www version of a site?
I am on the bottom of page 1 for my main key phrases but I can't do a 301 redirect with my web host that I've been with for over a year.
I've been considering changing web host (currently with Yahoo) but I also have concerns about transferring the site and the impact it might have because of the changing ip address.
So my options are
- Stay Put
- Change Web host
Which would you recommend?
-
I took a look at bronxpad.com in opensiteexloreer.org.
If this is the website you are referring to, when you implement these 301 redirects make sure you also redirect bronxpad.com/index.html and www.bronxpad.com/index.html to www.bronxpad.com, for the same reason as the non-www to the www.
-
GoDaddy would work, and in my experience, they offer great customer service.
-
If you have links pointing to both, then a 301 redirect will help your website's domain and page authority, which will help your rankings.
Any reputable US hosting company should be fine.
-
Any recommendations on hosting providers? I am based out of the Bronx in New York.
-
I have links pointing to both versions but the majority being the www version. I am based out of New York and I was wondering if hosting with a New York Web host would benefit or not.
-
The reason we 301 redirect non-www to www is to make sure search engines do not index two versions of your website. You can check it though a Google search: "site:yoursite.com"
This will give you all of the pages indexed by Google. If there is a yoursite.com and www.yoursite.com in the results, two versions are indexed, and a 301 redirect might allow you to rank even higher.
If there are two versions indexed, I would consider changing your host if you can secure a properly located IP address. Changing your sites IP address can affect rankings due to geo-location, so make sure it is properly geo-located. Most reputable hosting companies can easily take care of this.
-
David is right, you need to check the links made to both the non www and www version. Normally Google recommends 301 redirect because if there are some links made to your non www version then 301 redirect will pass link value (link juice) of non www version to www version (or vice versa).
If there are not much links made to your non www version, then I guess there is not much to worry and you can just keep it as it is (If its really hard to do it as it is in your case).
-
Also, in regards to changing hosts, I wouldn't worry about the IP address implications too much. As long as you move to a reputable host you should be fine.
-
The non www to www is often used to consolidate links, if you had external links pointing to both versions of your domain. Without being able to inspect your site, specifically if you have an issue with links pointing to each version of the domain, it's hard to say how much of an impact it will have. Still a best practice to put in place to avoid the issue though.
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
-
Will URLS With Existing 301 Redirects Be as Powerful As New URLS In Serps?
Most products on our site have redirects to them from years of switching platform and merely trying to get a great and optimised URL for SEO purposes. My question is this: If a product URL has alot of redirects (301's), would it be more beneficial to me to create a duplicated version of the product and start fresh with a new URL? I am not on here trying to gain backlinks but my site is tn nursery dot net (proof:)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tammysons
I need some quality help figuring out what to do.
Tammy0 -
Is domain authority lost if you create a 301 redirect but mark it as noindex, nofollow?
Hi everyone, Our company sells products in various divisions. While we've been selling Product A and Product B under our original brand, we've recently created a new division with a new domain to focus on a Product B. The new domain has virtually no domain authority (3) while the original domain has some (37). We want customers to arrive on the new domain when they search for key search terms related to Product B instead of the pages that previously existed on our main website. If we create 301 redirects for the pages and content on the main site and add noindex, nofollow tags, will we lose the domain authority that we have from our original domain because the pages now have the noindex, nofollow tags? I read a few blog posts from Moz that said there isn't any domain authority lost with 301 redirects but I'm not sure if that is true if the pages are noindex, nonofollow. Do you follow? 🙂 Apologies for the lengthy post. Love this community and the great Moz team. Thanks, Joe
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jgoehring-troy0 -
301 redirection help needed!
Hi all, So if we used to have a domain (let's say olddomain.com) and we had a new site created at newdomain.com how do we properly setup redirects page to page. Caveat, the urls have changed so for instance the old page oldomain.com/service is now newdomain.com/our-services on the new site. Do we need to have hosting on the old site? Do we need to setup individual 301s for each page corresponding to the new page? Just looking for the easiest way to do this CORRECTLY. Thanks, Ricky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley3 -
301 redirect with DNS?
Quick question. Is it possible to 301 redirect a non-www to www. (properly in terms of SEO) with DNS (C Name, A name, or other) ..have searched around and found conflicting information. Would like to know a definite answer. I usually implement all 301 redirects with htaccess. However have a client situation where we only have access to the CMS, but which does have DNS settings. thanks in advance, Greg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregDixson0 -
Shopify Redirects
I work for a company who has a few url issues. One url is www.randomwords.com/random/type:random The other is www.randomwords.com/random/type-random What is the best way to go about this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MasonInteractive0 -
Effect SERP's internal 301 redirects?
I'm considering installing Wordpress for my website. So I have to change the static URL's from /webpage.html to /webpage/. Yet I don't want to lose in the SERP's. What should I expect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wellnesswooz1 -
Is it ok to redirect
Hello my question is presently we holding one .com for our website and i see in analytics some time people typing .es version of our site too.. which is not registered yet. is it ok to buy that .es extension and do a redirect to our .com version ? thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | idreams0 -
Reverse Proxy better than 301 redirect?
Are reverse proxies that much better than 301 redirects? Should I invest the time in doing this? I found out about reverse proxies here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-a-reverse-proxy-and-how-can-it-help-my-seo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianmcc0