Is it redundant to include a redirect to my canonical domain (www) in my .htaccess file since I already have the correct rel="canonical" in my header?
-
I've been reading the benefits of each practice, but not found anyone mentioning whether it's really necessary to do both? Personally I try to stay clear of .htaccess rewrites unless it's absolutely necessary, since because I've read they can slow down a website.
-
I'd like to just add that a 301 redirect passes the same amount of page rank as a regular link would.
Pretty much there's no reason not to use a 301 in your htaccess. Go for it!
-
It would take a helluva lot of .htaccess rules to noticeably slow down a site, HOP. (We're talking many hundreds at least, if not more.)
The 301 redirect is a vastly stronger signal to the search engines than the canonical - which even Google says is treated as a "suggestion" not a directive.
The other huge benefit of the 301 is it standardises the URL all visitors will see in their address bar, so when they copy/paste to create a link (for example) they're always getting the canonical version.
Even though it's now considered that a 301 doesn't lose much juice (at least in Google, no word from Bing), I still much prefer that as many of my visitors are linking directly to the canonical version as possible. This is vastly more likely with the 301 consolidating the address that is visible.
So to me, using the 301 is essential. Adding the canonical is proactive to deal with other possibilities like unexpected variables getting added by outside sources for example, or even just Analytics utm tracking tags.
Make sense?
Paul
-
No it is not redundant as they are essentially two different things. You absolutely need to do redirect in htaccess via 301.
Canonical tags are used for duplicate content, not redirection. Google does not consider the canonical tag a directive but instead choose it to be a "helpful hint." If you have two pages at entirely different URLs with the majority of the content identical, that is when you need that Canonical tag.
For non-www to www issues, you really need to use a 301 redirect. Don't feel nervous about doing so. Every site does. Or at least, every site worth a darn does.
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
-
"translation" of code in htaccess file
Hi everyone! I am a newbie to the whole SEO and html thing and I am trying to get a better understanding of the "behind the scenes" part of my website. I hope I can find someone here who can translate a piece of code for me that I have in my htaccess file: Options -Multiviews
On-Page Optimization | | momof4
Options +FollowSymLinks
rewritecond $1 !^(index.php|public|tmp|robots.txt|template.html|favicon.ico|images|css|uploads)
rewritecond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
rewritecond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
rewriterule ^(.*)$ index.php?link=$1 [NC,L,QSA] I know that something is getting redirected to the index file, but what (or when) exactly? Does the word "robots"mean that search engine crawlers are getting redirected here? And is this good or bad (in terms of SEO)? Or is this redirecting people who try to get to my robots/ template or image files?? Thanks in advance for any answers!0 -
How can I fix multiple 404 errors with Wildcard htaccess redirect
Hi all I hope that someone can help.... How can I fix multiple 404 errors with Wildcard htaccess redirect The url in question is: How can I fix multiple 404 errors with Wildcard htaccess redirect http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/listing/search/Category/luxury_hotels_venues_uk_wedding_venues/exclusive_use_venues/letter/c http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/listing/location/uk-england/bedfordshire-weddings/franklin-park http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/deal/location/uk-england/chorley-weddings/curtis-bay etc, going to http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business the above is just a few examples, google webmaster is showing over 8.000 404 page not found errors. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Taiger0 -
Recommendation: Add a canonical URL tag referencing this URL to the header of the page.
Please clarify: In the page optimization tool, seomoz recommends using the canonical url tag on the unique page itself. Is it the same canonical url tag used when want juice to go to the original page? Although the canonical URL tag is generally thought of as a way to solve duplicate content problems, it can be extremely wise to use it on every (unique) page of a site to help prevent any query strings, session IDs, scraped versions, licensing deals or future developments to potentially create a secondary version and pull link juice or other metrics away from the original. We believe the canonical URL tag is a best practice to help prevent future problems, even if nothing is specifically duplicate/problematic today. Please give example.
On-Page Optimization | | AllIsWell0 -
Duplicating content on multiple domains
Hey guys, I've started working with a new client recently called Resource Investing News. I'm more a Social Media person, though I do have SEO experience. RIN has about 40 URLs all of which have original news content published on them. One SEO-related issue that I can see here though is that the primary domain re-publishes all of the original content that the other URLs do. In other words: resourceinvestingnews.com will have an article on it that is also published on goldinvestingnews.com with the same date stamp and a link out to the original article. E.g. http://resourceinvestingnews.com/42539-molybdenum-goes-far-beyond-steelmaking.html http://molyinvestingnews.com/5301-molybdenum-steelmaking-vehicle-demand-electronics-lubricant.html Does anyone have an idea if this is something that should be reviewed and/or whether the content is being negatively affected in search? Many thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | blahblahblah20150 -
Robots.txt file
Does it serve any purpose if we omit robots.txt file ? I wonder if spider has to read all the pages, why do we insert robots.txt file ?
On-Page Optimization | | seoug_20050 -
How could I avoid the "Duplicate Page Content" issue on the search result pages of a webshop site?
My webshop site was just crawled by Roger, and it found 683 "Duplicate Page Content" issues. Most of them are result pages of different product searches, that are not really identical, but very similar to each other. Do I have to worry about this? If yes, how could I make the search result pages different? IS there any solution for this? Thanks: Zoltan
On-Page Optimization | | csajbokz0 -
What's the best practice for implementing a "content disclaimer" that doesn't block search robots?
Our client needs a content disclaimer on their site. This is a simple "If you agree to these rules then click YES if not click NO" and you're pushed back to the home page. I have this gut feeling that this may cause an upset with the search robots. Any advice? R/ John
On-Page Optimization | | TheNorthernOffice790 -
Www1 and www domain
hi, I have a client who has an e-commerce business. My client does not want to fill the pages with too much content and has set up a www1 version with the same domain-name as the www. The plan is to create a lot of content and push www1 in ranking and then sending users (via links) to the www for ordering. Although there will be no duplicate content published on www and www1 this seems like an odd strategy, especially since the www already has a good page rank, and I'm not sure about how engines view a www.domain.com and www1domain.com situation even with unique content in each. Any thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | vibelingo0