Redirecting a domain
-
I was setting up a new campaign and received the following error from Roger Robot.
"We have detected that the domain www.sitename.com and the domain sitename.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here."
I know about redirecting a PAGE using 301 Redirects and how to specify the www. canonical in Google webmaster tools, but is there a "DOMAIN" redirect that I'm missing.
What would you suggest doing given the error message above.
Thanks,
Bill
-
I thought it would be super cool if someone would post the exact syntax to use in .htaccess to make this happen. For all the hordes of info out there on redirects and htaccess, it's amazingly hard to find the code for this one. Here is what worked for me:
<code>RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]</code>
-
I looked at the server headers for the URL mentioned in the screenshot, and the site is running IIS6. I don't have the instructions for doing the domain redirect for that handy, and it's been ages since I've done it, but at least now we know we can't just say use .htaccess.
-
Thanks for the info.
I'll dig in and see what I can find.
-
I'm getting access to the FTP and Host Server.
If they have a cPanel I'll look for that. May need your help later, once I know more what I'm dealing with.
Thanks so far
-
If you're using Firefox, go get the Domain Details addon
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/domain-details/
Then go surf to your site and it should tell you (based on the headers) what kind of server you're running (for instance, seomoz is running Apache 2.2.14)
The most common solution is using htaccess, which can determine at the server level which version to show and 301 all traffic there. Not all web servers support this, though (which is why Kyle asked the question). IIS7+ can support it, as can the most popular open source ones (nginx, lighthttpd, Apache).
Here's an article on how it works
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/rewriterule-split-personality-explained
-
You would probably need more information than just looking at the client side. The only way that could work out is if the file extensions were .aspx or .php or something like that.
Essentially what i was getting to, is you would set the redirect differently depending on what type of hosting you are using. If it was microsoft base you would set it in IIS, while if it was linux based you would added it to your root .htacess file.
Hope that helped!
-
not sure... this site belongs to a friend. Can I tell from just looking at the html or do I need to access the server/host?
-
What type of hosting/server do you have linux based or microsoft?
-
Hi Bill.
Your issue is a common one and yes, there is a solution.
First step is to determine which version of a URL you wish to represent your site, with or without the www. For purposes of this discussion I'll assume you wish to keep the www prefix. In that case, you need to set up a redirect to send all non-www traffic to it's www equivalent.
If you have cPanel access to your web server, you should find a Redirect tool there. Otherwise, you need to modify your htaccess file. If that less sentence is not something you are familiar with, then contact your web host and let them know your wishes. They can easily set this up for you.
For a demo of how it works, type in "google.com" in your web browser. Notice how the address is always changed to http://www.google.com/. That action is because of a properly configured redirect.
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
-
Is repurposing an old sub domain better than creating a new sub domain?
We have a good sub domain like** art.ourwebsite.com** which currently sells custom canvas art. We have owned the domain since 2013 but it has only been live for the past few weeks. We want to redesign & repurpose the page to continue to sell custom canvas art but will eventually include other merchandise like mugs, tshirts, etc which wouldn't be custom. Would it be best to keep art.ourwebsite.com since is a shorter/more memorible & older sub domain or would it be best to update the name to something that encompasses our new products? Our marketing team has suggested yourart.ourwebsite.com
Technical SEO | | sb10301 -
Penalized domain redirected to the non-penalized one...
I've a technical question , For example site A was penalized by google updates, panda and penguin both and site b is in the same niche and it's running good and never been penalized by updates. If I redirect site A to Site B with 301 status code(permanent redirect), will Google penalize the site B too? because penalties travel from old domain to new one as per google's algorithms. And If yes then how can I stop my competitor from removing redirection of penalized domain to mine?
Technical SEO | | hammadrafique0 -
302 to 301 redirect
Our site has quite a few 302 redirects that really ought to be 301's. Our IT department is really busy so the question is, given that the 302's have probably been in place for years, is it worth changing them to 301's now? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Houses0 -
Switching from a .org to .io (301 domain redirect)
I'm considering switching my main site from a .org to .io address; the .org is an exact match domain which helped to kickstart it a few years ago and now has about 50% repeat visitors, but was thrown off the Apple affiliation program for trademark infringement. I've found and purchased a nice (non-infringing) .io domain, and I've read the advice here on how to properly 301 the old domain; but my question is - does it matter that it's .io? Is this going to significantly hurt my rankings, even when everything has been 301'd properly? Another thought I had is that I may actually come out better off in the long run, what with Google penalties being applied to exact match domains. Is this a ranking suicide? If so, I'm tempted to leave it as is; even without the affiliation, it's making a good amount every month in ad fees that I don't want to disrupt. Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | w0lfiesmithUK0 -
Umlaut in domain
Hi, My client wants to expand it's business to Germany and logically we need a domain name to match. We've found a great one and regsiterd several variants to it. However I just found out that in Germany it is possible (while here it's not) to register a domain with an umlaut. My question is: will google assign more value to: schädlinge.de than schadlinge.de when users search for schädlinge? If yes, how large will the difference be? (I will use an umlaut in the title etc) Kind regards,
Technical SEO | | media-surfer
Jason.0 -
302 redirects help
Hello, I have a Magento ecommerce store and my latest seomoz crawl report shows over 10,000 302 redirects. An example is this below https://jsshirts.com.au/wishlist/index/add/product/160/ which is being redirected to http://jsshirts.com.au/enable-cookies Can anyone please help me with a solution to help with this problem. Many thanks
Technical SEO | | mullsey0 -
301 redirect Issues
my clients site is www.greenbayharvest.co.uk When you enter that URL it redirects to www.greenbayharvest.co.uk/shop, dont ask why, thats the way they set it up and thats what im stuck with. So, how do i resolve the 301 issue here. we want all things to point to www.greenbayharvest.co.uk, in terms of SEO but does the fact that there is a redirect going to /shop make this an issue? we appear to have: www.greenbayharvest.co.uk/shop www.greenbayharvest.co.uk greenbayharvest.co.uk greenbayharvest.co.uk/shop all these URL's go to the same same page so what is the best way to correct this? thanks for any help on this Lee
Technical SEO | | IPIM0 -
Should I be redirecting a .gov.au domain to a .com/.com.au Marketing URL?
Hi everyone, First time post - what a great community! On a trial at the moment but will definitely be signing up to PRO. The situation I'm helping to promote an event in Australia (lets call it "myevent"). The event also goes by a nickname "myev" (which isn't searched as much as "myevent"). The event for the most part is promoted offline as www.myevent.com. As it currently stands (and appears to have been the case for a number of years), www.myevent.com and www.myevent.com.au 302 redirect to www.mylocation.gov.au/myev The event is pretty much number 1 for keywords around "my event" and "myev", despite little attention being paid to on page optimisation and issues around duplicate content which I intend to fix. The domain being indexed by Google is www.mylocation.gov.au/myev . Open site explorer stats Open Site explorer shows www.mylocation.gov.au/myev as having a strong domain authority, and hundreds of backlinks. www.myevent.com and www.myevent.com.au have domain authorities in the 20s and about 30-40 backlinks each. The conundrum I've had a chat with the IT guys running the site(s) and they mentioned they'll be switching the way the redirects work, so everything goes to www.myevent.com NOT the .gov.au URL. I've done a bit of reading on the forums and understand that 301s should be used in order to pass the juice/authority from the existing domain (in this case www.location.gov.au/mye). I understand not all of this will be passed. What I'm not sure about is which URL should be the final preferred destination. I may not have a choice - www.myevent.com has been the preferred URL for a long time - but want to know if this will affect the performance in search results if the .com.au isn't used as the final destination (even though we would be redirecting from it)? Any suggestions / ideas / help would be most appreciated. I hope this all makes sense - I'm relatively new to the whole SEO world! Best wishes and many thanks.
Technical SEO | | hergs0