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
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • 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.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      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.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • 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.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • 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.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • 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. DNS or 301 Website Redirect

    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.

    DNS or 301 Website Redirect

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    5
    4967
    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.
    • bloomnation
      bloomnation last edited by

      We are running a marketplace site, so we have thousands of vendors selling their products on our site. Each vendor has a Profile page and we are soon to launch a premium store-front that is white label.

      Many of these vendors will want to point a custom url to their premium store-front (which is a sub domain of the marketplace) and we are trying to get an understanding of how we should instruct them to point their url in a way that will give the main marketplace site the seo juice.

      We also want to understand what will show up in the address bar.  Will it be their url or our sub domain?

      Will any of the marketplace seo juice boost their url local listing status?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Cyrus-Shepard
        Cyrus-Shepard last edited by

        Hi Evgeny,

        Good question. For starters, one thing to keep in mind from the beginning is that link juice flowed to subdomians don't pass the same link juice as would links to the same domain. So while these links and/or redirects may help the individual storefronts to rank - assuming there is sufficient link juice behind them - it doesn't necessarily help your root domain.

        Of course, the way around this is to link these individual storefront subdomains to your main domain, making sure to vary the anchor text and do it in a non-spammy, Penguin friendly way.

        Okay, onto the main question. In my experience working with 100's of clients, the best way to get them to redirect to your site is anyway they can. 🙂 Seriously, it's almost impossible to choose a single method that works for all vendors, so I think it's probably best to offer a variety of solutions, such as changes in DNS, server-side redirects, .htaccess , etc.

        You may even need to offer tech support to manually make these changes for your client. Although this is a sticky area fraught with headaches. (I know from experience)

        In some cases, it may pass better link juice if you merely have the vendors link to you, instead of going through the trouble of a redirect. Links can carry relevancy signals that 301's can't, and redirects can often loose much of their relevancy if the target page(s) differ too much from the original.

        Regardless, if you choose to go the redirection route, you'll want all of your redirects to be 301's, no matter what method you choose. The URL in the browser will be your subdomain. (There are ways to do URL masking, but you don't want to go there)  A common practice is to have the name of the vendor in the subdomain, such as vendor.yoursite.com.

        Hope this helps!  Best of luck with your SEO!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • legalseo
          legalseo @bloomnation last edited by

          Got it. 301 to your server where it's parsed. The details are here:
          http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9896877/dns-redirect-domain-to-subdomain

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • bloomnation
            bloomnation @legalseo last edited by

            Chas, thanks for the response.

            My question may not have been very clear.  I am going to be creating premium store-fronts for the vendors in the marketplace that will act as a stand alone website.  Many of the vendors will be using this premium store-front as their new stand alone website  and will want to redirect their current domain www.vendor.com to my sub domain www.vendor.marketplace.com.

            What is the best way to do this?  Use a DNS or 301 redirect and what are the pros and cons?  (ie url in the address bar, seo juice to marketplace, seo juice to local vendor)

            Thanks

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

              So you want your cake and eat it too? 😉 Don't we all! I think getting a thousand links to the root domain would be satisfaction enough.

              One way would be to have the entrance page for all vendors be the same page. Each vendor would have a section on an auto scrollable layer (but without user scrolling).

              Each vendor would have a distinctive page section href anchor IBL

              <a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </a<span>name="ABCstore">.ABC Store info and links <a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </a<span>name="XYZstore">.XYZ Store info and links
              Each vendor would have a unique looking URL but all created urls would look the same to the bots, as they would ignore all to the right of the hashtag.
              http://store.yourdomain.com/index.html#ABCstore, http://store.yourdomain.com/index.html#XYZstore, etc.

              When the page loads the tagged vendor would display in the "open" area of the page for that layer so each vendor would appear to be unique.

              The drawback would be the size of the page and number of links out.

              bloomnation 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

              • Kahuna_Charles

                Someone redirected his website to ours

                Hi all, I have strange issue as someone redirected website http://bukmachers.pl to ours https://legalnibukmacherzy.pl We don't know exactly what to do with it. I checked backlinks and the website had some links which now redirect to us. I also checked this website on wayback machine and back in 2017 this website had some low quality content  but in 2018 they made similar redirection to current one but to different website (our competitor). Can such redirection be harmful for us?  Should we do something with this or leave it, as google stop encouraging to disavow low quality links.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kahuna_Charles
                1
              • aaronfernandez

                Do bulk 301 redirects hurt seo value?

                We are working with a content based startup that needs to 301 redirect a lot of its pages to other websites. Will give you an example to help you understand. If we assume this is the startups domain and URL structure www.ourcompany.com/brand1/article What they want to do is do a 301 redirect of www.ourcompany.com/brand1/ to www.brand1.com I have never seen 301 as a problem to SEO or link juice. But in this case where all the major URLs are getting redirected to other sites i was wondering if it would have a negative effect. Right now they have just 20-30 brands but they are planning to hit a couple of hundreds this year.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aaronfernandez
                0
              • GeezerG

                How to handle potentially thousands (50k+) of 301 redirects following a major site replacement

                We are looking for the very best way of handling potentially thousands (50k+) of 301 redirects following
                a major site replacement and I mean total replacement. Things you should know
                Existing domain has 17 years history with Google but rankings have suffered over the past year and yes we know why. (and the bitch is we paid a good sized SEO company for that ineffective and destructive work)
                The URL structure of the new site is completely different and SEO friendly URL's rule. This means that there will be many thousands of historical URL's (mainly dynamic ones) that will attract 404 errors as they will not exist anymore. Most are product profile pages and the God Google has indexed them all. There are also many links to them out there.
                The new site is fully SEO optimised and is passing all tests so far - however there is a way to go yet. So here are my thoughts on the possible ways of meeting our need,
                1: Create 301 redirects for each an every page in the .htaccess file that would be one huge .htaccess file 50,000 lines plus - I am worried about effect on site speed.
                2: Create 301 redirects for each and every unused folder, and wildcard the file names, this would be a single redirect for each file in each folder to a single redirect page
                so the 404 issue is overcome but the user doesn't open the precise page they are after.
                3: Write some code to create a hard copy 301 index.php file for each and every folder that is to be replaced.
                4: Write code to create a hard copy 301 .php file for each and every page that is to be replaced.
                5: We could just let the pages all die and list them with Google to advise of their death.
                6: We could have the redirect managed by a database rather than .htaccess or single redirect files. Probably the most challenging thing will be to load the data in the first place, but I assume this could be done programatically - especially if the new URL can be inferred from the old. Many be I am missing another, simpler approach - please discuss

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GeezerG
                0
              • Steven_Macdonald

                Switching from HTTP to HTTPS: 301 redirect or keep both & rel canonical?

                Hey Mozzers, I'll be moving several sites from HTTP to HTTPS in the coming weeks (same brand, multiple ccTLDs). We'll start on a low traffic site and test it for 2-4 weeks to see the impact before rolling out across all 8 sites. Ideally, I'd like to simply 301 redirect the HTTP version page to the HTTPS version of the page (to get that potential SEO rankings boost). However, I'm concerned about the potential drop in rankings, links and traffic. I'm thinking of alternative ways and so instead of the 301 redirect approach, I would keep both sites live and accessible, and then add rel canonical on the HTTPS pages to point towards HTTP so that Google keeps the current pages/ links/ indexed as they are today (in this case, HTTPS is more UX than for SEO). Has anyone tried the rel canonical approach, and if so, what were the results? Do you recommend it? Also, for those who have implemented HTTPS, how long did it take for Google to index those pages over the older HTTP pages?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Steven_Macdonald
                0
              • shloy23-294584

                SEO impact difference between a URL Rewrite and 301 redirect

                Hi guys and girls! Just putting a new site live, we changed the URL from one thing to another and I created a 301 file redirecting the urls like for like. The developer installing it has created a different file with columns like: RewriteRule ^page/ http://www.site/page [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^/page/ http://www.site/page [R=301,L] What's the difference? The page redirects but is there a difference between the 301 redirect and this URL rewrite in terms of SEO and link value?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shloy23-294584
                0
              • abargmann

                301 vs 410 redirect: What to use when removing a URL from the website

                We are in the process of detemining how to handle URLs that are completely removed from our website? Think of these as listings that have an expiration date (i.e. http://www.noodle.org/test-prep/tphU3/sat-group-course). What is the best practice for removing these listings (assuming not many people are linking to them externally). 301 to a general page (i.e. http://www.noodle.org/search/test-prep) Do nothing and leave them up but remove from the site map (as they are no longer useful from a user perspective) return a 404 or 410?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abargmann
                0
              • SEOTGT

                301 or 302 Redirects to Mobile Site

                When it's detected that a mobile device is accessing the site it has the ability to redirect from www.example.com to m.example.com. Does it make more sense to employ a 301 or 302 redirect here? Google says a 301 but does not explain why (although usually I stick to "when in doubt, 301") . It seems like a 302 would prevent passing link juice to the mobile site and having mobile-optimized results also showing up in Google's index. What is the preference here?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOTGT
                0
              • Hyrule

                Splitting one Website into 2 Different New Websites with 301 redirects, help?

                Here's the deal. My website stbands.com does fairly well. The only issue it is facing a long term branding crisis. It sells custom products and sporting goods. We decided that we want to make a sporting goods website for the retail stuff and then a custom site only focusing on the custom stuff. One website transformed and broken into 2 new ones, with two new brand names. The way we are thinking about doing this is doing a lot of 301 redirects, but what do we do with the homepage (stbands.com) and what is the best practice to make sure we don't lose traffic to the categories, etc.? Which new website do we 301 the homepage to? It's rough because for some keywords we rank 3 or 4 times on the first page. Scary times, but something must be done for the long term. Any advise is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance. We are set for a busy next few months 🙂

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hyrule
                0

              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
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority 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.