Question concerning a 302 Redirect
-
Hi!
I've already done some research on redirects, but I still have a question concerning a 302 redirect implemented at the homepage of a website.
The Website www.domainA.com has a 302 redirect to www.domainA.com/content/.... Also all subsequent pages have the /content/ directory in their URLs: e.g domainA.com/content/products
-
First thing I was wondering about, was the use of a redirect to a new site using an additional directory /content/... Why would anyone do this? Would it be enough to replace the 302 with a 301 redirect, or would you recommend to change the entire structure and eliminate this /content/ directory? The most logical structure would be www.domainA.com/products/.., and not www.domainA.com/content/products, right?
-
Second thing: Given that 302 means temporary redirect, what are the actual implications when redirecting from domainA.com to domainA.com/content? I've heard that 302 redirects don't pass linkjuice and are detrimental for the site's rankings... What are the actual implications concerning the example above (302 redirect from domainA.com to domainA.com/content ?
Would be great to get some advice about the first problem and maybe some insights about the second one concerning 302s in general.
Thanks in advance!
Cheers,
Chris
-
-
That's fine, I think in that case, they didn't really know why they did it, so it will certainly help them to know, that there's better options around.
Thanks again for your insights and time, you helped me a lot with that one!
Cheers,
Chris
-
I am in agreement with you Christoph.
I do not see any value in adding a "content" directory. From a user stand point, it is not helpful.
The only reason to have a /content directory is if there is a need for it on the server. Sometimes there is shared hosting involved or other considerations that I am not aware of, so I prefer not to criticize others for their choices without knowing all the facts that their decision was based upon.
-
Hi Ryan,
thanks for your reply and your view on this. I think I've already read the article by Matt Cutts, but as I've been working in SEA so far, the technical aspects of SEO are still the area where I have to catch up the most. But you've definitely helped me with that one
Coming back once again to the actual website, that I mentioned. Concerning the /content/ directory, you said that it would depend on the perspective. What I meant with "The most logical structure would be www.domainA.com/products/.., and not www.domainA.com/content/products, right?" was that the /content/ directory may be detrimental for the ranking of sub-pages, as subsequent pages, which are lower in the hierarchy like domainA.com/content/products/shoes would be one level deeper than if it was domainA/products/shoes. In the former case, the sub-page "Shoes" would be one click further away than in the latter. So for the sub-page "shoes" it would be "better" to be located one level up, right?
In the specific case, the homepage is permanently redirected from domainA.com to domainA.com/content/, but they did it with a 302 redirect.
So in this case it would be better to use a 301 or change the URL structure, so that no redirect is necesary (e.g: domainA.com/products/shoes). Would that be suitable options according to you?
-
There are many great pages written on this topic. An older but relevant article from Matt Cutts: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-discussing-302-redirects/
In short, a 302 would only ever be used if the move was temporary. You are correct in that they do not pass a link's value. I would only use a 302 to resolve a temporary problem.
A 301 passes 90%+ of the link's value, but there is some loss. That is why you would prefer not to use it, especially if the move was temporary. Using multiple 301s in a chain can be especially bad for this reason.
First thing I was wondering about, was the use of a redirect to a new site using an additional directory /content/... Why would anyone do this?
There are some very good reasons. It sounds like they originally had the site located in the root directory of their web server, and did a re-organization of their file structure. Their site is now contained in the content directory. Perhaps they set up a new CMS which required this change.
The most logical structure would be www.domainA.com/products/.., and not www.domainA.com/content/products, right?
It depends on your perspective. For example, if you have a WordPress blog site or other CMS paired with forum software, then the wordpress site is often set up at the root domain. The forum software would be in a directory such as /forums or perhaps /content. If it was my site then the products would be located off the root directory as you suggest, but others could certainly offer it within the /content directory.
what are the actual implications when redirecting from domainA.com to domainA.com/content?
It depends. A well established site will often have a lot of link value for their home page. That value would be lost with the 302. There is nothing specifically detrimental per se. It is more of missed opportunities.
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
-
Sub Domain Redirect
Hey Everyone, Here is the situation : Currently, a website's sub domain is being redirected to the main website home page. We're having issues getting the sub domain pages indexed. Just want to confirm that it is because of the redirect on the sub domain URL. Should we kill the sub domain redirect and set it up as it's own page? Will that solve the indexing issue for the sub domain pages. More explanation below: subdomain.domain.com currently redirects to domain.com We're having issues indexing pages belonging to the sub domain ( subdomain.url.com/page1 or subdomain.url.com/page2) Appreciate your input in advance. Cheers,
Technical SEO | | SEO5Team0 -
Magento SEO question
Hello Moz Community, I am wondering if these magento settings are correct for seo. www.domain.com 301 > www.domain.com/main-language www.domain.com/main-language/main-keyword (index & follow) www.domain.com/main-language/main-keyword/shopby/size-m (index & follow & canonicalized to www.domain.com/main-language/main-keyword) All layered navigation links are no-follow
Technical SEO | | mhenze0 -
301 Redirect Timing Questions
Hey all, Quick question on 301 redirects and the timing of creating them when transitioning from an old site to a new site. Does the timing matter? Can redirects interfere with DNS propigation (which seemed to happen to us when we did redirects minutes after redirecting someone's DNS A record to now point to the new site) And lastly, how long AFTER a new site launch can one still submit redirects and not lose the google juice? All the best,
Technical SEO | | WorldWideWebLabs0 -
Mobile website question
Hi Mozzers, A website I manage has a mobile friendly version of their main website and a /m version as well. I was wondering if anyone had any experience in the best way of handling this? Should we just get rid of the /m version and tag the mobile friendly version? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | KarlBantleman0 -
Rel no follow question
Hello, I probably already know the answer to this question. But, When you use a rel no follow tag on an internal link or external link. Will the google bot still navigate to the link, in question? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | PeterRota0 -
Redirects 301
Hello, I need to reedirect a URL of a page that I have in my site (http://digitaldiscovery.com.pt/servicos-de-marketing-digital/publicidade-online/) to a new URL with SEO porpuses. Whats the best way to this? I use Wordpress btw. Tks in advance! PP
Technical SEO | | PedroM0 -
Multiple redirects a problem?
When product is sold out I will 301 redirect to a category page if a similar product is not available, but now our web developer has changed all the url's of the category pages so I need to redirect them all to the new category pages but that means there are some products that are first being redirected to the no longer existent category and then being redirected again to the new category page. This seems like it might me be a problem having two 301 redirects so I wanted to find out for sure if it is. Unfortunately our system for redirecting pages is archaic so it will be difficult and time consuming to go back and redo all the redirects that are going to pages that no longer exist so I wanted to get some additional opinions before I do that.
Technical SEO | | KentH0 -
Product ratings causing 302 redirect problem
I am working on an ecommerce site and my crawl report came back with 7000+ 302 redirects and maxed out at 10,000 pages because of all the redirects. The site really only has maybe 1500 pages (dynamic content aside). After looking into it a little more I see it is because of the product rating system. They have a star rating system that kinda looks like amazons. The only problem is that each star is a link to a dynamic address that records the vote and then 302's back to the original page the vote was cast from. So virtually every page on this site links out anywhere from 15 to 45 times and 302's back to itself, losing virtually all of its PR. Am I correct in that assumption or am I missing something? I don't see the links being blocked by robots.txt or noindex, nofollowed. Also it is an anonymous rating system where a rating can be cast from any category page displaying a product or any product page. To make matters worse every page links to a printable version which duplicates the issue by repeating the whole thing over again. So assuming I am correct that is site has a major PR leak on virtually every page, what is the best recommendation to fix this. 1. Block all of those links in robots.txt, 2. no index, nofollow these links or 3. put the rating system behind a submit button or disallow anon ratings 4. something else??? Looking at their product ratings on the site virtually everything is between 2-3 starts out of 5 and has about the same number of votes except less votes on deeper pages. I dont believe this is real at all since this site gets almost no traffic and maybe 1 sale a week, there is no way that any product has been rated 50 times. I think the crawler is voting as it crawls and doing it 5 times for every product which is why everything is rated 2.5 out of 5. This is an x-cart site in case anyone cares. Any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | BlinkWeb0