Will I lose Link Juice when implementing a Reverse Proxy?
-
My company is looking at consolidating 5 websites that it has running on magento, wordpress, drupal and a few other platforms on to the same domain. Currently they're all on subdomains but we'd like to consolidate the subdomains to folders for UX and SEO potential.
Currently they look like this:
After the reverse proxy they'll look like this:
I'm curious to know how much link juice will be lost in this switch. I've read a lot about site migration (especially the Moz example). A lot of these guides/case studies just mention using a bunch of 301's but it seems they'd probably be using reveres proxies as well.
My questions are:
- Is a reverse proxy equal to or worse/better than a 301?
- Should I combine reverse proxy with a 301 or rel canonical tag?
- When implementing a reverse proxy will I lose link juice = ranking?
Thanks so much!
Jacob
-
Two servers? The existing one to process the redirects and a new one to handle the reverse proxy. Or vice versa. So the DNS for the old domain would point to a server that does the redirects. However, the server that hosts the site will be set to reverse proxy.
Another way of looking at this concept would be to take down and redirect the old site, and to start a new site, with the exact same files/database, that will be used to serve the content in the subdirectory/folder.
Ask what they think of that idea. I certainly don't have all the answers to every situations, but will do my best to help you find a workable solution.
-
Hey Everett,
My dev team says it's extremely difficult to do a 301 with the reverse proxy because the reverse proxy needs the domain in order to create the reverse proxy. If we place a 301 redirect it won't be able to access the domain and will be broken.
We're unable to do a server to server process because we're using load balance applications. Do you have any recommendations with this situation?
Thanks,
Jacob
-
That's good to know. I'll follow that.
Some of the articles I read made it sound like reverse proxy was another form of 301, but it didn't make sense. Now I know why.
Cheers,
Jacob
-
You need to do both.
The reverse proxy isn't about SEO so much as the ability to use subdirectories instead of subdomains, even though the subdirectories are hosted on different servers. You have to use a reverse proxy for the technological requirements of using a subdirectory (folder) instead of a subdomain when you're hosting sites on different servers but want to combine them on the same domain.
The 301 Redirects will ensure the users (including search engines) that visit the old URL on the subdomain get forwarded on to the new URL in the subdirectory. This is what preserves pagerank, and provides a good user experience. Do not keep the content available at the old URLs; Do not allow those URLs to return a 404 Status. 301 Redirect them.
I hope that clarifies your situation.
-
My dev team would prefer a reverse proxy. Is there a reason you'd rather do a 301 than a reverse proxy?
When reading this article https://moz.com/blog/what-is-a-reverse-proxy-and-how-can-it-help-my-seo it seemed that doing a reverse proxy would be preferable to just a bunch of 301's. Is that not the case?
-
It is getting over complicated. First principal is do not harm. I would not recommend a reverse proxy. 301'ing each page carry's the juice over. A 301 does everything you need.
However prior to any 301's I would be auditing each sub domain for a penalty - ie you could be pushing a penalty to the main site. So i would suggest a very thorough audit. If in doubt rel canonical that page.
Hope that assists.
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
-
If I deindex a page then will Google stop counting those links pointing to it?
Hey everyone, I am deindexing some posts of my website as I think they are not providing any value to the users. My question is that if I deindex a post and it has some good quality links pointing to it, will google stop those links counting for my website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bunnypundir0 -
Link Types For Link Building
Hi i have a SEO agency we work with who are building quality guest post links for us, however they are also building forum, profile, blog comments
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spyaccounts14
and directory based links. 60% of their links they are building are high quality, relevant guest posts while the other 40% are the other link types. The 40% seem to be relevant directories, forums, blog comments, etc. They said they build other link types because it diversifies the link building and profile rather then just building high quality guest posts. As just building one link type can leave a footprint. What are your thoughts on this? Cheers.0 -
Using rel="nofollow" when link has an exact match anchor but the link does add value for the user
Hi all, I am wondering what peoples thoughts are on using rel="nofollow" for a link on a page like this http://askgramps.org/9203/a-bushel-of-wheat-great-value-than-bushel-of-goldThe anchor text is "Brigham Young" and the page it's pointing to's title is Brigham Young and it goes into more detail on who he is. So it is exact match. And as we know if this page has too much exact match anchor text it is likely to be considered "over-optimized". I guess one of my questions is how much is too much exact match or partial match anchor text? I have heard ratios tossed around like for every 10 links; 7 of them should not be targeted at all while 3 out of the 10 would be okay. I know it's all about being natural and creating value but using exact match or partial match anchors can definitely create value as they are almost always highly relevant. One reason that prompted my question is I have heard that this is something Penguin 3.0 is really going look at.On the example URL I gave I want to keep that particular link as is because I think it does add value to the user experience but then I used rel="nofollow" so it doesn't pass PageRank. Anyone see a problem with doing this and/or have a different idea? An important detail is that both sites are owned by the same organization. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThridHour0 -
Do links from twitter count in SEOMoz's Toolbar link count?
I am using the Chrome extension and looking at a SERP, when a page is said to have 2000 incoming links, does that include tweets with a link back to this page? What about retweets. Are those counted separately or as one? And what about independent tweets that have exactly the same content (tweet text + link)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davhad0 -
Linking across categories
On a website when I link across in the same category should all the categories all pear on each page. Let's say I have 6 categories and 6 pages should I have the 6 links on all the pages ( such as A, B, C, D, E, on page 1 ( let's imagine this page is page F ), then on page A have link B, C D, E, F and so on for the 6 pages ( meaning all the links appear on all the pages across the category ) or should i just have let's say 3 links on page 1 ( link A, B, C ) , then link ( D, E, F ) on page 2, then A, E, F on page 3, link B, C F on page 4 and so on... ( which means that i vary the links that appear and that it is naturally ( at least I think ) going to boost the link that appears the most of the 6 pages ? I hope this is not too confusing, Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Too many links?
I've recently taken over a site from another agency, which has hundreds of linking root domains. These domains are of very low quality and, in my opinion, are being ignored by Google. Is it best to 'clean up' some of these links, or leave them and start building quality links? I just don't want to waste time cleaning link profiles if there's no need.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | A_Q0 -
How And/Or If To Prune Footer Links
Hi, I have a site with a site-wide footer that currently has 28 internal links.The footer terms are the terms the pages are focused on. This footer is on every page of the site (hundreds of pages). Some pages of my site have 10 or so additional links pointing to internal and external pages (besides the footer) and some pages (like the homepage) have about 50 links besides the footer. I'm going for a half dozen new terms with new pages that I would be adding to the site-wide footer. Do you think I should trim the existing footer before adding these new terms? I guess I would remove the terms that show no real hope of ever getting to page one... like pages stuck in the 40s. Or, pages I for whatever reason don't care much if they rank or not. Would trimming it to a smaller number do more to help the remaining linked pages/terms? What do you think? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Migrating multiple sites and trying to save link juice
I have an interesting problem SEOmozers and wanted to see if I could get some good ideas as to what I should to for the greatest benefit. I have an ecommerce website that sells tire sensors. We just converted the old site to a new platform and payment processor, so the site has changed completely from the original, just offering virtually the same products as before. You can find it at www.tire-sensors.com We're ranked #1 for the keyword "tire sensors" in Google. We sell sensors for ford, honda, toyota, etc -- and tire-sensors.com has all of those listed. Before I came along, the company I'm working for also had individual "mini ecommerce" sites created with only 1 brand of sensors and the URL to match that maker. Example : www.fordtiresensors.com is our site, only sells the Ford parts from our main site, and ranks #1 in Google for "ford tire sensors" I don't have analytics on these old sites but Google Keyword Tool is saying "ford tire sensors" gets 880 local searches a month, and other brand-specific tire sensors are receiving traffic as well. We have many other sites that are doing the same thing. www.suzukitiresensors.com (ranked #2 for "suzuki tire sensors") Only sells our Suzuki collection from the main site's inventory etc We need to get rid of the old sites because we want to shut down the payment gateway and various other things those sites are using, and move to one consolidated system (aka www.tire-sensors.com) Would simply making each maker-specific URL (ie. fordtiresensors.com) 301 redirect to our main site (www.tire-sensors.com) give us to most benefit, rankings, traffic etc? Or would that be detrimental to what we're trying to do -- capturing the tire sensors market for all car manufacturers? Suggestions? Thanks a lot in advance! Jordan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JordanGodbey0