302 redirects, canonicalise or redirect (301)?
-
Hey Guys,
I am fairly new to 'technical' SEO as I was lucky enough in my old role to have technical expertise in the team for things like this, now I am learning myself and it is a slow and painful process, so your expertise is soooo much appreciated! My I.T. dept say that I have 3 instances on my website where the Hybris platform is creating a 302 redirect automatically - the first:
- URL doesn't exist - Hybris creates a temp 302 - the system does not create case sensitive url's
| http://www.example.fr/Example/Marques/0180/brand/CHANEL | URL doesn't exist | TRUE | 302 |
| http://www.example.fr/Example/Marques/0015/brand/Giorgio-Armani | URL doesn't exist | TRUE | 302 |
| http://www.example.fr/fr/Example/marken/0507/brand/lancome | URL doesn't exist | TRUE | 302 |I believe these are being redirected due to the fact that capital letters are being created in the url.
- Multi-lingual redirects
I have a German and French version of my site and whenever any switches from one URL to the other using our language selector a 302 is created.
- Dynamic URL elements
Dynamic url elements and special characters are being created in the URL, I am not sure where this is happening, but my I.T. department would like me to go and see whether this is something that can be created by a browser.
If anyone has any similar problems or have any advice or insights even, I would love to hear from you! Thanks
-
Thank you Ethan, Yes I will recommend a 301 redirect to the I.T. guys, but I do think that my I.T. guys wont like me much
Please can I ask - why would I need to create more content to canonicalise it if I already have two url's? Would I not just add code to both pages?
If the page 1 url exists and temp redirects it to the page 2 url, would I not just add code to both pages? Or if I add code to the page 1 url, would it be exactly the same to the other variations?
Please teach me this as I will need to explain it to the I.T. dept as this was there recommendations. I think I will most definitely need tech help moving forward!
Thanks a lot for your time!
-
Thanks Patrick,
This is indeed helpful. I have read these links; SO:
-
Redirects should be 301.
-
I need to add href lang tags (for google and bing) on my website and I need to look more into geo targeting in more detail.
- Do you recommend I need to find out why these urls are being created? and yes this has also crossed over with the duplicate content project we are running too. But 301's are a solution until I figure out why these url's are being created so we can get it fixed.
I will check the sitemap today.
Thanks for your advice
-
-
Hi there
I recommend learning the best practices for redirects, as well as hreflang attributes and language tags - you should also read into country targeting your sites in Google and Bing - this is a big deal for international SEO and targeting.
I would also look into your dynamic URLs by reading through this resource from Google on potential duplicate content - this will help you categorize and manage your URLs, helping Google understand their purpose. You should also check your internal links and sitemap to make sure that there are not dynamic URLs listed there.
This will require your web development team as well, so make sure they read and understand these resources, both for current and future situations. Some of this has the tendency to get pretty technical and indepth so if you need help, know that Moz has a fantastic Recommended Companies page to help.
That being said, 301 redirects are preferred by search engines, 302s passes 0% link juice and most cases should not be used, and all URLs (and their dynamic variations) should have a canonical tag to the preferred URL.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
Do a 301, there's no need to create more content just to canonicalize it. 302's aren't too bad, but the permanent redirect is best practice.
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
-
Help with 302 Temporary Redirect warning via MOZ crawl
Hi Guys, This is my first post so hopefully I'm using the forum correctly. MOZ crawl tells me that I have 35 pages with a temporary redirect The URL column displays 302 Found along with the http:// URL Redirection Location column shows the corresponding https:// URL This all seems pretty self explanatory. However, I’ve checked my .htaccess file and I can’t see any 302 references in it. I'm trying to figure out where the 302 redirects are from and how I can make them permanent Please can anyone help me out? My .htaccess looks like it needs a little tidy (there are 2 if blocks) <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
Web Design | | ianalannash
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.mysite.com/$1 [R,L]</ifmodule> BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [R=301,L]</ifmodule> END WordPress0 -
I have a site that has a 302 redirect loop on the home page (www.oncologynurseadvisor.com) i
i am trying to do an audit on it using screaming frog and the 302 stops it. My dev team says it is to discourage Non Human Traffic and that the bots will not see it. Is there any way around this or what can I tell the dev team that shows them it is not working as they state.
Web Design | | HayMktVT0 -
New ecommerce site: Close old site and full domain redirect or keep it linking to new site?
We have rebranded and are working on our new site (B). Our old site (A) has a much higher domain/page authority than our new site. Currently we have the original Site A still there, with all links/pages pointing to the new Site B when people click. I am unsure whether we'd be best to close down the Site A completely and do a full domain redirect to Site B. Site A: 10 years age and has a moderate amount of links to it.
Web Design | | ModowestNZ
Homepage - PA: 24 DA:11 Site B: 6 months age, few links
Homepage - PA: 1 DA:2 My concern with the full domain redirect is that the indexed/ranking pages would dissapear. The benefit is less brand confusion for our niche range of party accessories.0 -
What is the longest you would go back to ressurrect links that should have been 301's?
I have never thought of anything beyond a site that was possibly developed a month or two ago, but an interesting possible client has come along and begs a question. They had their site "redesigned" in April 2014 and it appears whomever did the work did not realize what a 301 was for. Using ahrefs or MajesticSEO, they have gone from roughly 15,000 referring pages to 500 and the time line perfectly intersects the redesign. Sooooo, just wondering if any of you geniuses has ever gone back that far to try and pull off a 301.... I am actually just thinking of a link building / content marketing plan but thought it was an interesting question. Thanks for the help, Robert
Web Design | | RobertFisher1 -
How do I move a 200+ website properly with 301 redirect?
I tried to search for the answer but didnt find any direct answers. I need to move a 200+ site to a wordpress site. How am I suppose to 301 redirect all of them? Do I need to create the new pages first then have webmaster use ssh and 301 the entire list? Can anyone link me to a 1,2,3 step instructions for a huge website move? Im sure there are other issues that I need to know about.
Web Design | | bryonstout0 -
What happens if I 301 Redirect my homepage to a different page on site
If i were to 301 redirect the index page of my website to a page in a different subdirectory of my site would that adversely affect SEO? Does your home page need to be in the root of your site? I'm asking because a developer has told me that it would be best to do that since he needs to install OpenCart on the root of our domain...
Web Design | | SheffieldMarketing0 -
Home page redirect - will this cause an SEO problem
Hello, We are using Wordpress to build a wiki site. The wiki plugin we're using (Wordpress Wiki lite) can only be set up on an internal page like nlpwiki(dot)org/wiki Can we redirect the home page to the /wiki subdirectory and use nlpwiki(dot)org/wiki as our home page? I've never done that, just wondering if it will be indexed as the home page or if there are any connonical issues. Thanks!
Web Design | | BobGW0 -
Show root domain (that is 301 redirected) in SERP?
Hi, If I have the domain name www.businessname.com.au pointing (using 301 redirect) to a particular page on a business directory site (eg www.bizdirectory.com.au/businessname), is it possible to have the URL www.businessname.com.au displayed in the Google search results rather than the destination page of www.bizdirectory.com.au/businessname? Thanks in advance,
Web Design | | blackrails
Adam0