Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI
      Moz Local

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Multiple 301 redirects for a HTTPS URL. Good or bad?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Multiple 301 redirects for a HTTPS URL. Good or bad?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    5
    6
    22974
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • jasondexter
      jasondexter last edited by

      I'm working on an ecommerce website that has a few snags and issues with it's coding.

      They're using https, and when you access the website through domain.com, theres a 301 redirect to http://www.domain.com and then this, in turn, redirected to https://www.domain.com.

      Would this have a deterimental effect or is that considered the best way to do it. Have the website redirect to http and then all http access is redirected to the https URL?

      Thanks

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • rishil
        rishil last edited by

        My personal rule of thumb - as few redirect jumps as possible. Three main reasons:

        1. User journey + Browsers - Sometimes when there are too many redirects taking place, some browsers find it difficult to follow through and would simply not load the page.  Also, even if there were only 2-3, the browser may load, but users on slower connections may find it tiresome waiting for content to load.

        2. As ThompsonPaul highlights, you COULD lose some link value due to dilution through 301 redirects.

        3. Multiple 301 redirects are often used by spammers and I foresee in the near future these causing a lot of ranking headaches. The older the site, the longer the chain might end up - for example, imagine you had a product at:

        https://domain.com/product1
        Links to that page exist at domain.com/product1

        The journey would be: domain.com/product1 >http://domain.com/product1 > https://domain.com/product1

        Now imagine a year down the line, product 1 is discontinued and you decide to redirect https://domain.com/product1 to domain.com/product2

        Imagine your journey now:

        domain.com/product1 >http://domain.com/product1 > https://domain.com/product1 > domain.com/product2 >http://domain.com/product2 > https://domain.com/product2

        This could carry on indefinitely in the lifetime of the site...

        Best solution: Decide what version of the site you want to use and simply try and use only one redirect, not a chain. Periodically check for chained redirects and resolve as you go along. (I try and do this bi annually).

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • ThompsonPaul
          ThompsonPaul last edited by

          To answer your specific question, Jason, yes, there's an issue with those URLs going through two consecutive redirects.

          Each redirect, like any link, costs a little bit of "link juice". So running through two consecutive redirects is wasting twice as much link juice as if the origin URL redirects immediately to the final URL without the intermediate step. It's not a massive difference, but on an e-commerce site especially, there's no point in wasting any. (Some folks reckon the loss could be as high as 15% per link/redirect.) Plus, I've occasionally seen problems with referrer data being maintained across multiple redirects (anecdotal).

          Hope that answers your specific question?

          Paul

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • TranslateMediaLtd
            TranslateMediaLtd last edited by

            I agree with Jane. Unless there are reasons why the whole site needs to be secure, it makes more sense for just the areas where sensitive information is being submitted to be SSL encrypted.

            http: requests are processed more quickly than https: ones due to the SSL handshake required to produce the cryptographic parameters for the user's session - so your site would be a little quicker if you weren't using SSL.

            However, if you do decide to use http: rather than https: for the product & category pages like Jane has suggested - you'd need to ensure that the https: versions of these pages redirect to http:... again to avoid duplicate content.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • JaneCopland
              JaneCopland last edited by

              Hi Jason,

              To add to what Yusuf has said, is there a specific reason why the whole site has to use SSL, rather than just the parts of the website where sensitive information is passed? If so, I would be tempted to recommend that the e-commerce pages (products, categories, etc.) remain on HTTP URLs.

              Cheers,

              Jane

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • TranslateMediaLtd
                TranslateMediaLtd last edited by

                Hi Jason,

                It's fine to 301 redirect from http: to https: and it's quite common for sites that use SSL. It's exactly the same principle as redirecting from a non-www to www (e.g. http://example.com to http://www.example.com) - which is considered to be good practice. But there should only be a single redirect. So you should ensure that http://example.com redirects to https://www.example.com without first redirecting to http://www.example.com.

                I would also make sure that all pages (not just the homepage) redirect from http: to https: too to ensure there are no duplicate content issues on the rest of the site.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • KaranX

                  Submitting Same Press Release Content to Multiple PR Sites - Good or Bad Practice?

                  I see some PR (press release) sites where they distribute the same content on many different sites and at end they give the source link is that Good SEO Practice or Bad ? If it is Good Practice then how Google Panda or other algorithms consider it ?

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KaranX
                  0
                • vtmoz

                  Does removal of internal redirects(301) help in SEO

                  I am planning to completely remove 301 redirects manually by replacing such links with actual live pages/links. So there will be no redirects internally in the website. Will this boost our SEO efforts? Auto redirects will be there for incoming links to non-existing pages. Thanks, Satish

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz
                  0
                • VeteransFirstMarketing

                  SEO impact of 301 redirects based on IP addresses from a specific state

                  Hello Moz Community! We are facing an issue that may or may not be unique, but need some advice and/or clarification on the best way to address the issue. We recently rebranded and launched a new site under a new domain and things have been progressing well.  However, despite all the up front legwork on trademarks and licensing, we have recently encountered a hiccup that forces us to revert to the old URL/branding for one specific state.  This may be a temporary issue that lasts a couple of months or it could potentially be in the court system for a couple of years. One potential solution we have discussed is to redirect the new site to the old site based on IP addresses for the state in question.  Looking for any guidance on what type of impact this may have on SEO.  Also open to any other suggestions or guidance on dealing with this situation. Thanks

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VeteransFirstMarketing
                  0
                • Solid_Gold

                  Why is rel="canonical" pointing at a URL with parameters bad?

                  Context Our website has a large number of crawl issues stemming from duplicate page content (source: Moz). According to an SEO firm which recently audited our website, some amount of these crawl issues are due to URL parameter usage. They have recommended that we "make sure every page has a Rel Canonical tag that points to the non-parameter version of that URL…parameters should never appear in Canonical tags." Here's an example URL where we have parameters in our canonical tag... http://www.chasing-fireflies.com/costumes-dress-up/womens-costumes/ rel="canonical" href="http://www.chasing-fireflies.com/costumes-dress-up/womens-costumes/?pageSize=0&pageSizeBottom=0" /> Our website runs on IBM WebSphere v 7. Questions Why it is important that the rel canonical tag points to a non-parameter URL? What is the extent of the negative impact from having rel canonicals pointing to URLs including parameters? Any advice for correcting this? Thanks for any help!

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Solid_Gold
                  1
                • Hatfish

                  What is the best practice for URLs for E-commerce products in multiple categories?

                  Hello all! I have always worked successfully with SEO on E-commerce sites, however we are currently revamping an older site for a client and so I thought I'd turn to the community to ask what the best practices that you guys are experiencing for url structures at the moment. Obviously we do not wish to create duplicate content and so the big question is, what would you guys do for the very best structure for URLs on an E-commerce site that has products in multiple categories? Let's imagine we are selling toy cars. I have a sports car for sale, so naturally it can go in the sports cars category and it could also go in to the convertibles category too. What is the best way you have found recently that works and increases rankings, but does not create duplicate content? Thanks in advance! 🙂 Kind Regards, JDM

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hatfish
                  0
                • LosNomads

                  301 redirection pointing to noindexed pages

                  I have rather an unusual situation where a recently launched affiliate site does not have any unique content as its all syndicated content. For that reason we are currently using the noindex,nofollow meta tags to keep the pages out of the search engines index until we create unique content for the pages. The problem is that due to a very tight timeframe with rebranding, we are looking at 301 redirecting (on a page to page basis) another high authority legacy domain to this new site before we have had a chance to add unique content to it and remove the noindex,nofollow tags. I would assume that any link authority normally passed through the 301 would be lost in this scenario but Im uncertain of what the broader impact might be. Has anyone dealt with a similar scenario? I know this scenario is not ideal and I would rather wait until the unique content is up and noindex tags are removed before launching the 301 redirect of the legacy domain but there are a number of competing priorities at play outside of SEO.

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LosNomads
                  0
                • Stew222

                  Too many 301 redirects?

                  Hey, My company currently has one chief website with about 500-600 other domains that all feature the same material as the chief website.  These domains have been around for about 5 years and have actually picked up some link traffic. I have all of these identical web-pages utilizing rel=canonical but I was wondering if I would be better served, from SEO purposes, to 301 redirect all of these sites to their respective pages on our chief website?  If I add 500 301 redirects, will the major search engines consider this to be black-hat link-building even though the sites are related and technically already feature the same content? For an example, the chief website is www.1099pro.com and I would 301 redirect the below sites to the chief site: 1099softwarepro.com 1099softwarepro.info 1099softwarepro.net 1099softwarepro.biz 1099softwareprofessionals.com 1099softwareprofessionals.info ...you get the point

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stew222
                  0
                • AndreVanKets

                  Is it safe to redirect multiple URLs to a single URL?

                  Hi, I have an old Wordress website with about 300-400 original pages of content on it. All relating to my company's industry: travel in Africa. It's a legitimate site with travel stories, photos, advice etc. Nothing spammy about. No adverts on it. No affiliates. The site hasn't been updated for a couple of years and we no longer have a need for it. Many of the stories on it are quite out of date. The site has built up a modest Mozrank value over the last 5 years, and has a few hundreds organically achieved inbound links. Recently I set up a swanky new branded website on ExpressionEngine on a new domain. My intention is to: Shut down the old site Focus all attention on building up content on the new website Ask the people linking to the old site to my new site instead (I wonder how many will actually do so...) Where possible, setup a 301 redirect from pages on the old site to their closest match on the new site Setup a 301 redirect from the old site's home page to new site's homepage Sounds good, right? But there is one issue I need some advice on... The old site has about 100 pages that do not have a good match on the new site. These pages are outdated or inferior quality, so it doesn't really make sense to rewrite them and put them on the new site. I call these my "black sheep pages". So... for these "black sheep pages" should I (A) redirect the urls to the new site's homepage (B) redirect the urls the old site's home page (which in turn, redirects to the new site's homepage, or (C) not redirect the urls, and let them die a lonely 404 death? OPTION A: oldsite.com/page1.php -> newsite.com
                  oldsite.com/page2.php -> newsite.com
                  oldsite.com/page3.php -> newsite.com
                  oldsite.com/page4.php -> newsite.com
                  oldsite.com/page5.php -> newsite.com
                  oldsite.com -> newsite.com OPTION B: oldsite.com/page1.php -> oldsite.com
                  oldsite.com/page2.php -> oldsite.com
                  oldsite.com/page3.php -> oldsite.com
                  oldsite.com/page4.php -> oldsite.com
                  oldsite.com/page5.php -> oldsite.com
                  oldsite.com -> newsite.com OPTION 😄 oldsite.com/page1.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                  oldsite.com/page2.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                  oldsite.com/page3.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                  oldsite.com/page4.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                  oldsite.com/page5.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                  oldsite.com -> newsite.com My intuition tells me that Option A would pass the most "link juice" to my new site, but I am concerned that it could also be seen by Google as a spammy redirect technique. What would you do? Help 😐

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndreVanKets
                  1

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.