Expires Header
-
We are considering adding expires header to our site. If we add this meta tag to expire for a certain date, but we do not make any changes to the site after it expires, can you be penalized for this?
-
No. The expires directive is merely there to tell the browser "this content is at least good until date X", so that the browser doesn't need to fetch it if it's got it cached.
So let's say you've got a dynamically-generated page called widgets.php, and it pulls a list of products, latest pricing, availability etc. from the database. Let's say you style the page with an external stylesheet.css, you've got some awesome wacky UI stuff in Javascript in an external wackystuff.js, and your images for navigation on the site are in /img/nav (but product images, which maybe can change more frequently) are in /img/products.
You might NOT set the Expires header on your .php files and folders, as those should be considered to expire the second after the browser fetches them. You might set the Expires header for the CSS file to a week out; same with the JS and the /img/nav folders, as those only change with a major update to the site. You might set the Expires header date for the /img/products folder to maybe an hour or two, so that if a person is flipping back and forth between pages, the browser will use the cached product image for a little while before forcing a refetch of it.
Make sense?
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
-
Dealing with Expired & Reoccurring Content At Scale
Hello, I have a question concerning maintenance & pruning content with a large site that has a ton of pages that are either expired OR reoccurring. Firstly, there's ~ 12,000 pages on the site. They have large sections of the site that have individual landing pages for time-sensitive content, such as promotions and shows. They have TONS of shows every day, so the # of page to manage keeps exponentially increasing. Show URLs: I'm auditing the show URLs and looking at pages that have backlinks. With those, I am redirecting to the main show pages.
Technical SEO | | triveraseo
-However, there are significant # of show URLs that are from a few years ago (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015) that DON'T get traffic or have any backlinks (or ranking keywords). Can I delete these pages entirely from the site, or should I go through the process of 410-ing them (and then deleting? or ...?)Can you let 410's sit?)? They are in the XML sitemap right now, so they get crawled, but are essentially useless, and I want to cut off the dead weight, but I'm worried about deleting a large # of pages from the site at once. For show URLs that are still obsolete, but rank well in terms of kewyords and get some traffic...is there any recommended option? Should I bother adding them to a past shows archive section or not since they are bringing in a LITTLE traffic? Or ax them since it's such a small amount of traffic compared to what they get from the main pages. There are URLs that are orphaned and obsolete right now, but will reoccur. For instance, when an artist performs, they get their own landing page, they may acquire some backlinks and rank, but then that artist doesn't come back for a few months. The page just sits there, orphaned and in the XML sitemap. However, regardless of back-links/keywords, the page will come back eventually. Is there any recommended way to maintain this kind of situation? Again, there are a LOT of URLs in this same boat. Promotional URLs: I'm going about the same process for promotions and thankfully, the scale of hte issue is much less. However, same question as above...they have some promotional URLs, like NYE Special Menu landing pages or Lent-Specials, etc, for each of their restaurants. These pages are only valid for a short amount of time each year, and otherwise, are obsolete. I want to reuse the pages each year, though, but don't want them to just sit there in the XML sitemap. Is there ever an instance where I might want to 302 redirect them, and then remove the 302 for the short amount of time they are valid? I'm not AS concerned about the recycled promotional URLs. There are much fewer URLs in this category. However, as you can probably tell, this large site has this problem of reoccurring content throughout, and I'd like to get a plan in place to clean it up and then create rules to maintain. Promotional URLs that reoccur are smaller, so if they are orphaned, not the end of the world, but there are thousands of show URLs with this issue, so I really need to determine the best play here. Any help is MUCH appreciated!0 -
H1 Headers and Unique Content
Should my H1 header contain the same keywords in the same order, verbatim as my SEO title or some variation of them? Or does it matter?
Technical SEO | | keeot0 -
Why would an image that's much smaller than our Website header logo be taking so long to load?
When I check http://www.ccisolutions.com at Pingdom, we have a tiny graphic that is taking much longer to load than other graphics that are much bigger. Can anyone shed some light on why this might be happening and what can be done to fix it? Thanks in advance! Dana
Technical SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Mozbar sees the 301, but no other header checker does
Ok, why does Mozbar see this 301 redirect, but no other checker can? Original URL: http://www.horizon-bcbsnj.com Current URL: http://www.horizonblue.com/ The dev company uses meta refreshes set to zero (html), javascript redirects (randomly), and 301 redirects (asp) that can't be verified with any other header cheker other than Mozbar. Is mozbar correct and the other checkers wrong? Or is mozbar "special" and the search engine bots do not see the 301 at all just like Rexswain, internetmarketingninjas, SEObook, webconfs, etc don't recognize the 301 either? They all say 200 OK.
Technical SEO | | CharlesRiverInteractive0 -
Google Impressions Drop Due to Expired SSL
Recently I noticed a huge drop in our clients Google Impressions via GWMT from 900 impressions to 70 overnight on October 30, 2012 and has remained this way for the entire month of November 2012. The SSL Cert had expired in mid October due to the notification message for renewal going to the SPAM folder and being missed. Is it possible for an SSL expiry to be related to this massive drop in daily impressions which in-turn has also effected traffic? I also can't see any evidence of duplicate pages (ie. https and http) being indexed but to be honest I'm not the one doing the SEO therefore haven't been tracking this. Thanks for your help! Chris
Technical SEO | | MeMediaSEO0 -
DropDown Menu with 175 links in headers, Can it hurt SEO?
I'm planning to add a dropdown menu in my online store header. The dropdown menu will have about 175 options with 175 internal links to different products. Can it hurt my SEO for aving more then 175 internal links on my header. This header will be on every pages. Thank you, BigBlaze
Technical SEO | | BigBlaze2050 -
Grabbing Expired Domains
How hard is it to grab expired domains? I have my eye on a domain that is expiring in 3 days, but I don't think it's quite that simple. Doesn't it go through months of waiting to become available? Is there an easy way to grab domains that are set to expire? Are the services that offer this type of service good? And who do you guys recommend?
Technical SEO | | applesofgold0 -
Is there a work around for Rel Canonical without header access?
In my work as an SEO writer, I work closely with web designers and usually have behind the scenes access. However, the last three clients who hired me have web designers that are not allowing admin access to anyone else (including the clients) outside of their companies/small business. Is there a work around for the Rel Canonical element that usually is placed in the header? I am using All-In-One-SEO plug-in to address part of this issue. Sage advice or discussion on this is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | TheARKlady0