301-redirect
-
Hi
My website is fairly new and i wasnt aware of the difference btw 'website.com' and 'www.website.com' when i started up. It doesnt matter which one i use as long as i am consistent right ?
Most of my ingoing links are to mainpage on 'website.com'. I have som ingoing links to 'www.website.com' but also some to 'www.website.com/brandname'. is it enough to 301-redir 'www.website.com' to 'website.com' or does it need to be done on several levels ?
I need to have someone do the redirect for me - how can i check its working when its done ?
Dan Lærum
-
Use relative paths, and you lose all link juice when someone scrapes your content and reposts it.
-
On Google WMT, there's an option for preferred domain setting. You can use this. But I do agree with Ryan that it'll solve the issue only for Google not for other search engines.
-
There are other SE's out there then google and you don't want to loose that traffic, so as Ryan stated you can't fix it in GWT.
-
To be clear, you would use Google IN ADDITION TO the other changes, not instead of.
Google WMT will alter how your URL appears on their search pages. If you don't address the issue on your site you will still have the same negative effects.
-
2 things you should keep in mind about with and without www:
- how many pages does google have indexed with and without
- how many links do you have that points towards www vs non-www.. this one is important since not all of your PR will get passed on after a 301. Most but bot all of it
hope it helped
-
Didnt know i could do through google webmaster, thanks.
-
Does it really matter which direction i redirect ? Is it most common to redir to -->www. ?
-
Yes...it should be redirected to www. through .hactess or it can be done through Google webmaster tools.
-
Right back at you Ryan, good point
-
excellent point Rene
This works well for links you create but not for any UGC
-
Ryan is clearly less lazy then me
just a short remark to the internal linking:
use relative paths and you will never have to worry about it.
meaning use: /images/someImg.jpg instead of www.yourdomain.com/images/someImg.jpg
-
Your host can create one entry to redirect all non-www traffic to it's www equivalent.
It's easy to confirm the change was made properly. Simply go to any page on your site and you should see it in the "www" form. Then, go to your address bar and remove the "www." portion of the URL, hit enter, then the "www." portion should be re-added and you should be on the same page.
Also, use your SEOmoz toolbar Analyze Page > Page Attributes and check the Status Code section at the bottom. When you try to access a "www." page the status code should show as 200. When you try to access a non-www page the status code should show a 301 redirect to the www page.
Lastly, check every internal link of your site to ensure you are using the www version, along with any signatures and company pages you may have on facebook or other locations.
-
short answer: yes
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
-
1000 Pages on old website. What to do with the 301 redirects for this domain?
Hi Moz Community, I have a 301 redirect question... I just acquired an old domain: Totally in my niche Domain is 14 years old Website exists of 1000 pages Great amount of backlinks Website is offline since about 2 weeks Will place a new website online asap with new url structure For the 50 best scoring pages I wrote a new, but fully comparable/related article. I will put a 301 redirect from those old to the new pages. My question: What to do with the 950 other url's? Should I put a 301 redirect to the homepage? Should I forward those pages to the 404 page? Should I divide the 950 url's with a 301 redirect to the 50 new ones? Another solution maybe? Any idea what would be the best solution so we can save as much Google juice as possible? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | snorkel0 -
301 redirection for e-commerce website
Hi moz community, I am the web agency for a e-commerce website. Its current domain is https://www.liquorland.co.nz but now all the e-commerce part will be moved to a sub-domain https://shop.liquorland.co.nz. There are thousands of e-commerce current being indexed in Google (i.e., 15,500) plus they also have a mobile version of the page like /mobile/default.aspx. Is it necessary to 301 redirect all the pages? We are afraid it may slow down the website because the request will go through thousands of filters. Is it OK to just redirect the main categories? Many thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | russellbrown0 -
HTacess 301 redirect with special characters
Hello moz community ! I would to make a special 301 redirection through my htaccess file. I am a total noob concerning regexp and 301 redirection. I would like to redirect(301) this url : http://www.legipermis.com/stages-points/">http://www.legipermis.com/stages-points/</a></p>; yes yes it's in the index of google, this strange url includes the last ; to http://www.legipermis.com/stages-points/ I have already include a canonical tag by security, i would like to remove url with a 301 redirection and by remove this url through GWT (but the removal tool can't "eat' this kind of URL) Please consider the fact that i am not an expert about 301 redirections and regexps. No 301 redirect generator works properly for such a strange URL (which triggers content duplication corrected anyway with canonical tag). Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | LegiPermis0 -
301 redirect chains
Hi everyone, I've had my site for a while now and have changed the structure a number of times. I'm confident my 301's work well and am not concerned about dead ends on my site. My question is, is there a way to find 301 redirect chains? i.e. can I export my link data from webmaster tools and run it through some software that tells me how many steps my 301's are taking to get to the final page? I don't know for sure that there are long 301 chains in my link structure, but I have a suspicion and it's very hard to check by going through them manually. Thanks in advance Will
Technical SEO | | madegood0 -
How does this rank? - a page that is 301 redirected
How does a 301ed page rank in google? In google I searched for" ikea.ca" which is set up as a 301 redirect to www.ikea.com/ca/en and was surprised to see the url --> www.ikea.ca actually ranking. IKEA Canada <cite>ikea.ca/</cite>IKEA Featuring Scandinavian modern style furniture and accessories. Include storage options, lighting, decor products, kitchen appliances and beds. Bedroom - Kitchen - Living Room - IKEA North York
Technical SEO | | Morris770 -
301 Redirect for 3 Domains into 1 New Domain
So I wanted a quick sanity check on the htaccess syntax for migrating 3 domains into 1 new domain. For example, we're migrating 3 sites abc.com, def.com and ghi.com, all into 1 new site on ghi.com. Here's the htaccess we're placing on the root of ghi.com: redirect 301 http://www.abc.com/wines.html http://www.ghi.com/wines redirect 301 http://www.def.com/trade.html http://www.ghi.com/trade
Technical SEO | | cmaseattle
redirect 301 http://www.ghi.com/winery-tours.html http://www.ghi.com/visit/taste On the DNS side of things, we're parking abc.com and def.com on the ghi.com server. I'm not seeing examples of htaccess files for this scenario, and none that use any domain info on the "from" side of the redirect 301 syntax. Any suggestions before we pull the trigger? Thanks!0 -
Should I change a 301 redirect?
I recently moved all the content from an old site to a new site on a new domain. I lost a significant amount of traffic as a result. There are 301 redirects for every page on the old site. Generally, these point to the same content as was on the relevant page of the old site. However, the 301 redirect for the homepage on the old site points to the homepage on the new site, not to the content from the old site homepage. I'm wondering whether to change the 301 to point at the content from the old site homepage. Any advice would be much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | seqal0 -
301 Redirect Issue
I'm having an issue with 301 redirects: Let's see if I can verbalize my thoughts on this one... So we just recently moved our site to Wordpress. One of our new 301 commands is redirecting oursite.com/news to oursite.com/blog . However there are other links from our previous site that look like oursite.com/news/XYZ and the issue is that, because wordpress structures its links differently, that URL is not equivalent to oursite.com/blog/XYZ. Instead, it might look something more like oursite.com/blog/yaddayadda/XYZ or something. Does that make sense? The issue is that when I find an old link of ours on google that looks something like "oursite.com/news/XYZ" or "oursite.com/news/ABC" it is automatically replacing "news" with "blog". When I try to go in manually and redirect anything that says "/news/XYZ" to "/blog/yaddayadda/XYZ" it still doesn't work. It still just replaces "news" with "blog." Wow I realize that might not make sense to anyone but if it does - please advise!! Thanks!!!!
Technical SEO | | EntrustSEO0