I have a question about the impact of a root domain redirect on site-wide redirects and slugs.
-
I have a question about the impact (if any) of site-wide redirects for DNS/hosting change purposes.
I am preparing to redirect the domain for a site I manage from https://siteImanage.com to https://www.siteImanage.com. Traffic to the site currently redirects in reverse, from https://www.siteImanage.com to https://siteImanage.com.
Based on my research, I understand that making this change should not affect the site’s excellent SEO as long as my canonical tags are updated and a 301 redirect is in place. But I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a potential consequence of this switch I’m not considering. Because this redirect lives at the root of all the site’s slugs and existing redirects, will it technically produce a redirect chain or a redirect loop? If it does, is that problematic?
Thanks for your input!
-
@mollykathariner_ms said in I have a question about the impact of a root domain redirect on site-wide redirects and slugs.:
I have a question about the impact (if any) of site-wide redirects for DNS/hosting change purposes.
I am preparing to redirect the domain for a site I manage from https://siteImanage.com to https://www.siteImanage.com. Traffic to the site currently redirects in reverse, from https://www.siteImanage.com to https://siteImanage.com.
Based on my research, I understand that making this change should not affect the site’s excellent SEO as long as my canonical tags are updated and a 301 redirect is in place. But I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a potential consequence of this switch I’m not considering. Because this redirect lives at the root of all the site’s slugs and existing redirects, will it technically produce a redirect chain or a redirect loop? If it does, is that problematic?
Thanks for your input!When implementing site-wide redirects for DNS/hosting change purposes, it's essential to consider the potential impact on SEO and any potential issues that may arise. In your specific case of redirecting from https://siteImanage.com to https://www.siteImanage.com, there are a few things to keep in mind.
Firstly, updating your canonical tags and implementing a 301 redirect is indeed the recommended approach to maintain SEO value during the domain redirection process. These measures ensure that search engines understand the change and transfer the ranking signals appropriately.
Regarding your concern about redirect chains or loops, it's important to handle the redirects correctly to avoid any negative consequences. If the current redirect from https://www.siteImanage.com to https://siteImanage.com exists, and you add a new redirect from https://siteImanage.com to https://www.siteImanage.com, it could potentially create a redirect chain or loop.
To prevent this issue, you should ensure that the old redirect from https://www.siteImanage.com to https://siteImanage.com is removed once the new redirect is in place. This way, you have a single 301 redirect directly from the non-www version to the www version of the site, without creating a redirect chain.
By implementing the redirect correctly and ensuring there are no redirect chains or loops, you can minimize any potential negative impact on SEO. It's always a good practice to carefully monitor your website's performance after making such changes to address any unforeseen issues promptly.
If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to ask.
-
@mollykathariner_ms Redirecting a domain from https://siteImanage.com to https://www.siteImanage.com should not have a significant impact on the site's SEO as long as you handle the redirect properly. However, you are correct in considering the possibility of redirect chains or loops, which can have negative consequences if not handled correctly.
A redirect chain occurs when there are multiple redirects in a sequence before reaching the final destination. For example:
https://siteImanage.com redirects to https://www.siteImanage.com
https://www.siteImanage.com redirects to https://www.siteImanage.com/page1
https://www.siteImanage.com/page1 redirects to https://www.siteImanage.com/page2
If you have a redirect chain like this, it can impact performance and user experience, as each redirect adds an additional request and increases the page load time.On the other hand, a redirect loop occurs when two or more pages continuously redirect to each other. For example:
https://siteImanage.com redirects to https://www.siteImanage.com
https://www.siteImanage.com redirects back to https://siteImanage.com
A redirect loop can prevent users from accessing your site and negatively affect search engine crawling and indexing.To avoid these issues, it's important to set up a proper redirect from https://siteImanage.com to https://www.siteImanage.com. You should implement a single 301 redirect from the non-www version to the www version of the site. This ensures that all traffic, including search engines and users, is directed to the correct URL in a single step.
Once you have implemented the 301 redirect, it's a good practice to update the canonical tags on your web pages to reflect the preferred URL (https://www.siteImanage.com). This helps search engines understand the preferred version of your site and consolidate ranking signals.
By implementing the redirect correctly and updating the canonical tags, you should be able to make the domain change without significant negative consequences for SEO. However, it's always a good idea to monitor your site's performance and rankings after the switch to ensure everything is functioning as expected.
-
Depending upon how you've set up your previous redirects, it could be a problem, but I suspect you'll be fine.
In my experience, a small redirect chain won't cause a massive issue and unless you already have some multi-step redirects going on, your new plan won't put you at risk of more than two steps anyway. Obviously, a loop would cause serious issues, but I don't think you are at risk of this.
Your redirects should be relative to absolute, i.e. /oldpage to https://siteImanage.com/newpage. In this case, you would just need to update your absolute paths to the new url. If you ensure these are matched first, then you would only have one redirect regardless of whether the client hits the www or non-www domain. If the full domain redirect is matched first, you'll end up for two steps for those people hitting only pages on the old domain
If your redirects are matching based on relative links and redirecting to relative urls (as some plugins do), i.e. /oldpage redirects to /newpage, then you'll end up with a two-step process if someone follows an old link; First, the site will redirect from non-www to www, and then it will redirect to the correct page.
If you have redirects such as "https://siteImanage.com/oldpage" redirecting to "https://siteImanage.com/newpage" then you would create a two-step process again, first to the new page and then to the new domain. Of course, your redirects wouldn't work on the new domain as they wouldn't match, which may or may not be a problem for you.
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
-
302 Redirect Question
After running a site crawl. I found two 302 redirects. The two redirects go from: site.com to www.site.com & site.com/products to www.site.com/products How do I fix the 302 redirect and change it to a 301 redirect? I have no clue where to start. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Ryan_1320 -
Do you still loose 15% of value of inbound links when you redirect your site from http to https (so all inbound links to http are being redirected to https version)?
I know when you redesign your on website, you loose about 15% internally due to the 301 redirects (see moz article: https://moz.com/blog/accidental-seo-tests-how-301-redirects-are-likely-impacting-your-brand), but I'm wondering if that also applies to value of inbound links when you redirect your http://www.sitename.com to https://www.sitename.com. I appreciate your help!
Technical SEO | | JBMediaGroup0 -
.htaccess redirect question
Hi guys and girls Please forgive me for being an apache noob, but I've been trawling for a while now and i can't seem to find a definitive guide for my current scenario. I've walked into a but of a cluster$%*! of a job, to rescue a horribly set up site. One of many, many problems is that they have 132 302redirects set up. Some of these are identical pages but http-https, others are the same but https-http and some are redirects to different content pages with http-http. A uniform redirecting of http to https is not an option so I'm looking to find out the best practice for reconfiguring these 302s to 301s within .htaccess? Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | craig.gto0 -
Lost pagerank due to domain redirect
Dear All, My customer has been merged by a larger organization. They redirected the old domain with 301 which had a pagerank of 6 to a new domain which is 0. Is there any chance how i could recover the pagerank and pass it to the new domain? If yes what is your opinion? Thank you,M.
Technical SEO | | SebestynMrton0 -
Redirect non www. domain to WWW. domain for established website?
Hey guys, The website in question has been online for more than 5 years but there are still 2 versions of the website. Both versions are indexed by Google and of course, this will result in duplicate content. Is it necessary to redirect the non-www domain to the www. domain. What are the cons and advantages? Will the www. links replace the non-www links when it comes to keyword rankings? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | BruLee0 -
Multiple Domains for One Site
We are building a site for a new miniature golf course. They have a long name, which they don't want me to mention, but it's equivalent to a name like Golden State Golf and Putt. They also have a restaurant with its own name and brand that will be a part of the mini golf course and its website, much how Hotel websites have their restaurants on their sites. Before becoming our client they purchased golfandputt.com and want to go with this domain for simplicity sake. In addition to this domain name they purchased 7 others that contain the bussiness' full name in some way, such as: goldenstategolfandputt.com goldenstategolfandputt.net, goldenstategolf-guitar.com etc., As well as: 3 variations of the golfandputt.com domain 3 variations of the restaurants name They wish to have all of these redirect to the main website or the restaurant page to "help with SEO," as they told me. From what I have researched on SEOmoz it seems better to simply optimize the website for Golden State Golf and Putt and the restaurant page for the restaurant's name. Additionally, I'm worried that redirecting the domains to the site will actually hurt them in rankings. If someone can shed some light on what the best practices for this sort of situation are I'd be much appreciative. Apologies in advance for the lengthy explanation but its a bit of a unique situation.
Technical SEO | | TVI0 -
Htaccess redirects how many can i have and does it slow site down
I have had to redesign my site this year www.in2town.co.uk because my hosting company made a huge mistake while trying to update the joomla on my site which resulted in me losing thousands of pages and links. What i would like to know is, i have put some of the old urls in my htaccess file but i would like to know how many old urls i can have in my htaccess file as i am unsure how to use it properly. my idea was, to have some of the lost url links to my site and put them in my htaccess file and have them pointing to similar pages. not sure if this is a good idea or not. i think i have lost a few hundred good links but i would like to know if these urls in the htaccess file would slow down my joomla site any advice would be great.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Site drop in SERPS after domain down for three plus weeks
Have had a clients site that has been staple in the SERPS for the last four years that we have worked on it. However they had hosting issues a couple of months back which they didn't sort for two to three weeks. Since there the main keyword has bounced around between 24th and 44th in the google results. The drop ties in with the hosting issue but the client does seem to believe that this is the source of the issue. Can someone point me towards some online articles that would explain this for them. Some of the keywords have not suffered as badly but the one key term is still in the mid 20's. I am sure it is suffering a minus 20 for the keyword as it was normally 4th or 5th in the results. We don't host the site and the client had know idea were it was hosted. What is so annoying is that it is us who pointed out the site was down. Thanks in advance everyone 🙂
Technical SEO | | highwayfive0