Main page redirect affecting search results?
-
Question.... A recent change was made to our page www.BGU.edu by a marketing person. So now when you type in www.BGU.edu it actually redirects to a different page www.BGU.edu/inquiry
This is a really bad idea isn't it? I do not know enough about SEO to know a lot, and just joined SEOmoz but do I need to tell the admin to change it back?
-
Thank-you!
-
Ah that's ok I'm newbie myself..
When you go to a webpage the website returns a code to let the browser or Google, or who ever is browsing what the current status of the webpage is. Normally you go to a webpage and you are returned a 200, meaning everything is ok, but you dont need to know it all the time so the browser hides it.
If you try and find a page that is not there the server returns a 404 code, often people designing websites try and redirect you to a customised 404 code/error page, so that they can try and retain you, but in the background the server is returning a 404 code to tell the browser it couldn't find the page it wanted.
With a 301 redirect, what we do is force who ever is trying to access that page to go to another page and tell them that its permanent by telling the server to issue a 301 code.
This tells Google that the page is moved to a new location and should be considered the same page for future purposes. Its kinda like going to the post office to tell them you have moved address and to forward all your mail on.
Now you normally do a 301 redirect using a .htaccess file, but that's a whole other can of worms
Although saying all that I'd assumed it was a 301 but I wanted to give you a tool to check them out yourself and tested it. The website is showing a 302 code which is a temporary redirect. Very bad... but then you new you that
Use this http://web-sniffer.net/ and look mid way down under the yellow bar..
Adam
-
Very, very bad idea. To make matters even worse, they've used a 302-redirect, which further compromises the ability of the home page to hold it's rank.
Yes, you need to have the admin change it back, as there doesn't seem to have been any compelling reason for the change. The one bright side is that, because the 302 redirect was used, it will be easier to change it back.
Paul
-
What is the 301? Sorry for being a newbie!
-
Agreed very bad, looks really odd too.
What if you don't have an inquiry but to gain an overall impression of the site?
You could do the same thing with a jquery overlay or just a box for inquiries, but I always think the home page should encapsulate the business in an instant then give you direction for more resources. Why not have a prominent link to the inquiry, or generate lead pages on some of you keywords etc....
Adam
p.s. also all your links to the home page are going to leak link juice with the 301 in place.
-
Thank-you! This is a very small Christian grad school, who is ministry focused not tech focused. I am working with them in social media (which is my area of expertise) but the webpage is such a mess I have to find some solutions there to to make the social media pay off...
Thank-you for making my case clearly.
Fortunatly the IT person is very responsive to my suggestions, even though they do not appear to have much SEO or page management experience.
I have always understood that not only is it rude, but that now they are not getting the main index page indexed... A massive Faux Pas!
-
This is a really bad idea isn't it? In my opinion, it is a very bad idea.
It's best to keep the site locked up so that the marketing people can't monkey with it.
Universities are really bad about managing websites. They change department URLs from egol.edu/chemistry to chemistry.egol.edu and then to chem.egol.edu and then to egol.edu/chem
Somebody gets the idea that they need to change the URLs so they then run wild with it.
Then, thousands of high schools, other universities and other webmasters have linked to these various URLs, which have been changed at whim without redirects. It is really rude to the people who have linked to you and it shows that the university webteam do not plan and don't know what they are doing and are inconsiderate about the people who are willing to send them traffic.
I have a website that links to lots of university resources and we have to check those links every year because university marketing monkeys keep changing them. I am betting that 20 to 30% of the URLs must be edited every year.
Sorry for the rant.
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
-
Does redirecting the existing URLs in the website without reducing our current rankings? The new website runs on the bubble, so it seems there is no provisions to redirect the existing URLs to this platform?
Hi Moz Fans, There are some clarification needed in a website revamping and loosing of current website rank. Please go through the questions and would be great if you like to share some insights on it. 1. We would like to revamp our existing website by joining hands with the bubble visual programming platform. Thus, kindly let us know if there are provisions to redirect the existing URLs to this platform. We would also like to know if this kind of redirecting affects the current website ranking. If yes, how can we redirect the existing URLs in bubble without reducing our current rankings? 2. As a part of the revamping of our website, we would like to enquire about the possibilities of its relaunch via bubble. Does it cause any changes for the current rankings of our website if we redirect the existing URLs via bubble? If yes, is there any provision to redirect the URLs without affecting the current ranking of the website?
Web Design | | OceanAirTravels0 -
Internal Linking: What is the best practice for pages not included in Nav bar?
I never quite understood why internal linking was such a big deal for SEO, but now I'm having second thoughts and perhaps understanding it more. I always thought since most websites have a navigation feature--usually the menu bar located at the top and often another one in the footer--that internal navigation was usually already built in to most websites and therefore, a silly topic to make a fuss over; however, I may be the silly one after all. I am now creating pages that are not included in the navigation so.... What is the best practice for this? If I am creating say, pages for certain locations and those location pages begin to number in the hundreds, it makes my navigation bar a little too cumbersome to have all those pages in a drop down menu. So I made a Locations page and just link to all those pages from that page (and from nowhere else). But now I'm wondering if this could be a bad internal linking practice and perhaps hurt my online visibility as an SEO ranking factor. Is this a crawl problem? And if so, is there a better option that provides a good visitor experience while appeasing the search engines.
Web Design | | Dino640 -
Best Practices for home page design for ecommerce website
I know this question is not directly related to SEO, but I figured I have been getting some good help from this forum, so why not? The website is www.vrtack.com. I am looking to redesign the home page. It is an ecommerce website selling equestrian clothing and leather goods. My goals are: 1. Reduce the very high bounce rate and drop-off rate. 2. Fine tune the relevancy of the website towards a handful of keyword phrases. 3. Engage the visitor to create better click-through and to increase the average time spent on the page/site. 4. Page Loading time is of importance. It has to load quickly. I would love to hear some specific suggestions, examples, best practices.
Web Design | | amitramani0 -
Is it possible to redirect the main www. domain - but keep a subdomain active?
Hi Mozzers, Quick question, which I hope one of you can answer... Let's say I have a website (i) www.example.com and on that a subdomain exists, (ii) subdomain.example.com. Let's say I want to change my main domain from www.example.com to www.newwebsite.com. I'd 301 all content, use GWT to notify Google of a change of address etc etc. Having done that, is it still possible to keep the original subdomain active? So, even though www.example.com has been redirected / transferred to www.newwebsite.com, subdomain.example.com would still exist. If that is possible, what is the implication for Domain Authority? On the one hand, I have transferred the main site (so DA from that will transfer to the new site); but part of that root domain is still active. Make sense? Any answers? Thanks everyone...
Web Design | | edlondon0 -
For a web design firm, should i make a google plus local page or company page?
I have a web design firm located in India, At this moment we are focusing on local clients as the current competition in local market is very low. But in few months we will shift our focus to outsourcing. So I wanted to know if we should make a google plus local page and connect it with my google places account and website or should I make a google plus business page and connect it to website? Our major focus is on seo. Thanks
Web Design | | hard0 -
Schema.org - Right way to mark the pages
Dear all, Almost since we started designing our site, we are using schema microdata. It is not only because of the rich snippets, but because I want the search engines to better understand what we have. For example, the +1 buttom would not work properly without schema microdata, because it kind of ignores the OpenGraph parameters that specified image and description; and since we are a (very small) local bussiness directory (between other things), all our clients have a hand written schema complient description on their lisings, including address, opening ours, telephone number, description, etc. It is hand written by us because the tools avialable are simply not good enough to cover all different scenarios that a listing can present. I have not use, until today, a proper for the homepage, and it is probably the cause that our page lost the nice links below the site description in the google snippet. I did not place it on the body tag, but near the description, closing it inmediately after the description finishs. Now this is solved and we will wait to see if the links come back in the next weeks. Now to the question. Our site has three sections, with three different systems installed, two running wordpress and a third running another script. the main site is the local bussiness directory. The front page is mark as "schema.org/WepPage", and I do not know how to mark the other pages of the main site. I was thinking of marking the listings as "schema.org/ItemPage" since they are related to specific clients. Would you consired it to be right? Then, we have landing pages for the categories, should they be mark as WepPage, or as an Article, or something else? Many thanks in advance for your help, Best Regards, Daniel
Web Design | | te_c0 -
Mobile Site Pages: Word Count Help
Hi there I am doing a mobile website for a client and they asked me what the dieal word count would be per page. They are SEO conciosu but we are not doing SEO on this site. I would just like to know a general rule of thumb. Regards Stef
Web Design | | stefanok0 -
How would restructuring the navigation of my website affect my rankings?
I want to restructure the navigation of my website for a few reasons: 1. It isn't intuitive/clear to the user 2. It is way too big, it has too many links and thus causes the number of links on many pages to be >100. 3. I want to get rid of file extensions as part of the URLs (.html, .php) 4. I want to achieve a "tree"-like navigation system, with categories, subcategories and so on. In the process of cleaning up my website, I had to 301 redirect a lot of duplicate pages, fix broken links, etc. I have a lot of 301 redirects already, and in the process of restructuring the navigation of my website I know I'm going to get more. Will the addition of new 301 redirects have an effect on my rankings? (I'm basically going to be changing all of the URLs) What kind of SEO effect will restructuring the navigation at the top of the page (reducing the # of links on the main menu) have on my site? What is the best strategy to implement in this situation?
Web Design | | deuce1s0