301 to Intermediate Page then Rel=Canonical from Intermediate to target page
-
Hi
I'm working on an eCommerce site and don't have direct access to the CMS. I had requested developers to provide me a facilty to 301 via htaccess however this is working slight differently. I need guidance from experts whether it's okay or not:
Old Page: example.com/old
Target New Page: example.com/new
After Implementing the redirect, It redirects to an intermediate page or in other words, The same target URL with a question mark added:
example.com/new? (notice the question mark in the new URL)
This intermediate page has a canonical tag for the exact target URL.
So,
if I 301 redirect example.com/old
to example.com/new? (Intermediate page)
and If the intermediate page example.com/new? has a canonical tag for the exact target URL (example.com/new), Will I be able to pass the link juice and authority of old page to the new page?
-
Sorry - I got an email that you left a response, but then it was gone(?) Might be a system glitch. Could you reply again?
-
It's not ideal. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to guess how Google will interpret that, and it can vary a lot with the situation. In theory, a 301+canonical could work like a chained 301-redirect. A two-link 301 chain isn't great, but it's not awful, and it will pass some link-juice. A 301+canonical is probably slightly worse, in practice, I doubt the outcome is consistent across sites.
Keep in mind, too, that a 301 lands the user on a new URL, whereas a canonical doesn't. So, this could cause more people to link to the intermediate page, bookmark it, etc. (also not ideal).
I'm curious - why can you set up a 301 to an intermediate page but no to the target page. It seems like you'd need more CMS access to do what you did then solve the original problem.
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
-
Missing canonical tag error - office pages
Moz is throwing an error for our office pages (10 office pages in the format /office/location-1; /office/location-2 etc) but the content is different. How should we handle the canonical tag? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | AztekMedia0 -
Description tag not showing in the SERPs because page is blocked by Robots, but the page isn't blocked. Any help?
While checking some SERP results for a few pages of a site this morning I noticed that some pages were returning this message instead of a description tag, A description for this result is not avaliable because of this site's robot.s.txt The odd thing is the page isn't blocked in the Robots.txt. The page is using Yoast SEO Plugin to populate meta data though. Anyone else had this happen and have a fix?
On-Page Optimization | | mac22330 -
Canonical URL, cornerstone page and categories
If I want to have a cornerstone "page", can I substitute an actual page with a category archive of posts "page" (that contains many posts containing the target key phrase)? This way, if I make blog posts about a certain topic/ key phrase (example "beach weddings") and add a canonical URL of the category archive page to the individual posts, am I right then to assume google will see the archive page as the cornerstone page (and thereby won't see the individual posts with the same key phrase as competing)?
On-Page Optimization | | stephanwb0 -
Page Not Indexed
Hi Guys I wrote and published an article last night on my site but it is yet to be indexed. This is strange as articles are usually indexed pretty quickly. Could you have a quick look and see what the problem is? http://www.rankmytri.com/tomtom-running-and-triathlon-watch/ Also all my Blog posts (in the blog section of the site) are not indexed as well (and I dont think they have been for a while) yet I dont have any messages from Google in my webmaster tools. Thoughts? Thanks in advance Ross
On-Page Optimization | | ross88guy0 -
Please review page for on page SEO
I'm working on an adult dating site review blog and am hoping to build links to the category pages. It's a wordpress blog so the posts are categorised by topics. However can you tell me if there is enough content on the page for google to identify what the page is about? The problem is that the content of each category pages is pulled from the posts. What I think is needed is some static text on the page 2-300 words that use the keyword. Here's an example of a page targeting the keywords 'online dating'. http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com/category/online-dating/
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK
[editor's note -- thumbnails on site may not be appropriate for some workplaces] Will the page rank like this if there are a good amount of authorative links or does the page itself need work?0 -
Rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on?
Very simple, Why would a website (and I have seen tons doing this) link the rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on? Example: somepage.htm has a canonical tag linking to somepage.htm I thought the idea of this tag was to tell google if 2 pages are similar, this page is the original, and it's this page which should be indexed and the page with the tag on should pass all PR to the original. Maybe im wrong and someone can help me out to understand this.
On-Page Optimization | | activitysuper0 -
Blog page outranks static page for KW -- why?
Blog page ranks 10 in Google, while the static page is on page 7. What makes it more interesting is that the blog page scores an "F" with the Term Target tool while the static page scores an "A". Static page has more inbound links and a mR/mT of 3.89/ 4.54 vs. 3.71/ 4.14 for the blog page. Any ideas on how to approach this one?
On-Page Optimization | | 540SEO0 -
Recreate missing pages or just use 301 redirect?
Hi, on the Competitive Comparison section of the "link analysis" page the top 5 sites are linking to pages on my site that no longer exist. I'm wondering if it is worthwhile to recreate these pages that no longer exist or if I should just use a 301 redirect to some page on my site that has related info. Thanks for your suggestions.
On-Page Optimization | | PillarMarketing0