Can some brilliant mozzer out there teach a moron/newbie like me how to 301 redirect several URL's I have?
-
Okay -
I am a supermodel. I look pretty. My legs are amazing. My cheekbones are high. But when it comes to 301 redirects I am the ugliest supermodel on the block.
Crap, here is the truth: I am not even a supermodel. I am just a middle-aged, goofy looking dude who is a newbie to fixing websites.
I have inherited several sites from a friend and I have been helping by creating solid contextual links internally and externally for a while. But, when Roger the wondrous SEOMoz robot talks to me, he says, "oops, it looks like your foolish freak self has a site that has both a www. and a non-www, which can create competition for yourself."
What do I do when he says that?
I just whisper a "thank-you" but gently press the skip this step button and go on with my life because I do not know how to make my non-www.'s redirect into the www. sites...
Now, I have sort of asked this question on the site before, but I was answered by someone who does not understand my level of ignorance.
any use of the word canonical or just put this lfwjkshj.htp/php inside the left ear of your mom, does not tell me anything
so, is there any willing and kind soul who can walk me through redirecting several of my sites to their proper home - kind of like Carl Chubbs Weathers did for Happy Gilmore in that Academy Award winning classic?
Thanks for the help in advance
best,
dumbhead
-
THe logic i like to follow, is make sure all domain names point to the correct version. to make that plain rather than, if B then redirect to A, you should say if Not A then redirect to A
For linux servers put this in your htaccess
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.mydomain.com$
RewriteRule (.*) "http://www.mydomain.com/$1" [R=301,L]for a windows server I have a tutorial here
http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials/how-to-fix-canonical-domain-name-issues
-
I'm downloading the manuals for CMS made Easy right now, but they're taking a bit of time to download. If you use the FTP login information you have to make an FTP connection to your site, you should be able to see (you may have to enable viewing of hidden files) a file called .htaccess (yes, there's a period in front of the file). You can download that to your computer, open it in a text editor (like notepad), make the edits that eyepaq mentions, then upload it again. I'd first make a copy of the file in case you screw something up.
When the manuals download, I'll look through them to see if there's a setting within their program that makes this easier for you.
-
To be honest I would't spend to much time on this. I don't see it as a huge priority. It's nice to solve it but if it requaiers hiring someone or getting the extra mile ... is just not worth it.
The process is easy for someone with some technical background.
Google is kind of smart in understanding that your non www version is not really duplicate content with your www version so I would let it slide if it's to hard to get it done.
If you do want to change it, CMS made easy dosen't support the htaccess management via the web interface so it needs to be done the "hard way" and that means you need to have FTP data to your domain ( domains), an FTP client so you can login, download the htaccess file, edit it and upload it again. If all that is over the tech abilities that's fine - it dosen't mean you should get another job. It's all technical.
Some easy ways to get this done: find someone you trust with some tech skills to do that - it take sless the 10 min or get a freelancer via elance or whatever to do that (but make sure they have some really good feedbacks from past clients are you are about to send them full access to your site)
Dose it make sense ?
-
Thanks a lot for requesting clarification - These sites are built on CMS made easy.
One example is:
http://www.affordablestoragelubbock.com and http://affordablestoragelubbock.com
another is
http://www.aplussuperstorage.com and http://aplussuperstorage.com
I can give you like five others, but it is pretty much the same issue
many many thanks for what you can offer
and I am not sure whether or not I have access to the htaccess file - why?
because I am a dumbbell who cannot be trusted with much more than an x-box controller
-
Howdy!
I understand that some of this stuff can sound like gibberish if you don't understand what's going on. If you can tell us your site's URL that would help us out. If not, can you let us know if you're using something like Wordpress or Joomla? We can tailor our advice to you a bit better if we know more about your site. Just like it's easier to give instructions about changing your oil if we know what kind of car you have and we can tell you exactly what to look for, rather than giving more general information.
Keri
-
I'm no brilliant mozzer but hopfully can still help.
If you want to redirect all non-www requests to your site to the www version, all you need to do is add the following code to your .htaccess file:
`RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]`
This will redirect any requests to http://my-domain.com to http://www.my-domain.com.
That's of course if you have htaccess. if you are using a windows based platform the approach is a little different.
What is htaccess ?
http://www.htaccess-guide.com/
In short - a file on your root domain that you can dl edit with text pad if needed and upload back in the same place.
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
-
Pages that did NOT 301 redirect to the new site
Hi, Is there a tool out there that can tell me what pages did NOT 301 redirect to the new sites? I need something rather than going into google.com and typing in site:oldsite.com to see if it's still indexed and if it's not 301 redirecting.. I'm not sure if screaming frog can do that. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
301 v/s 302 Redirection on Homepage (Multilingual)
Hello, Our website: http://www.luxresorts.com currently has a default 302 redirection to http://www.luxresorts.com/en. We would like to do a 301 redirection instead of a 302 to http://www.luxresorts.com. Our concern is that the site is multilingual and we wonder what effect would the 301 redirection have on search engine crawlers and how would this appear on SERP. When a search is done on Google.com, the English version of our website appears and when on Google.FR, the French version appears. Would the 301 redirection change the way our website appear on Google? Grateful if you could help us out in understanding the pros and cons/best practices for our concern. Thanks in advance. Tej Luchmun.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | luxresorts0 -
New Website Look/Structure - Should I Redirect or Update Pages w/ Quality Inbound Links
This questing is regarding an ecommerce website that I hand wrote(html) in 1997. One of the first click and buy websites, with cart/admin system that I also developed. After all this time, the Old plain HTML look just doesnt cut it. I just updated to XHTML w/ a very modern look, and believe the structured data will index better. All products and current category pages will have the identical vrls taken from the old version. I decided to go with the switch after manual penalty, which has since been removed... I figured now is the time to update. My big question is that over the years, a lot of my backlinks came from products/news that are either no longer relevant or just not available. The pages do exist, but can only be found from the Outbound Link Source. For SEO purposes, I have thought a few things I can do but can't decide which one is the best choice. Any Insight or suggestions would be Awesome! 1. Redirect the old link to the most relevant page in my current catalog. 2. Add my new header/footer to old page(this will add a navigation bar w/ brands/cats/etc) 3. Simply add a nice new image to the top of these pages linking home & update any broken/irrelevant links. I was also considering adding just the very top 2 inches of my header(logo,search box, phone, address) *note, some of these pages do receive some traffic. Nothing huge, but consider the 50+ pages, it ads up.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Urgent Site Migration Help: 301 redirect from legacy to new if legacy pages are NOT indexed but have links and domain/page authority of 50+?
Sorry for the long title, but that's the whole question. Notes: New site is on same domain but URLs will change because URL structure was horrible Old site has awful SEO. Like real bad. Canonical tags point to dev. subdomain (which is still accessible and has robots.txt, so the end result is old site IS NOT INDEXED by Google) Old site has links and domain/page authority north of 50. I suspect some shady links but there have to be good links as well My guess is that since that are likely incoming links that are legitimate, I should still attempt to use 301s to the versions of the pages on the new site (note: the content on the new site will be different, but in general it'll be about the same thing as the old page, just much improved and more relevant). So yeah, I guess that's it. Even thought the old site's pages are not indexed, if the new site is set up properly, the 301s won't pass along the 'non-indexed' status, correct? Thanks in advance for any quick answers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDMcNamara0 -
301 Redirect To Another 301 Redirect
Hi, We have a client with an old domain that they want to redirect to their primary domain. They also have a few older domains pointing to the old domain. Do you recommend leaving them as redirects that point to the old domain? This will create a redirect to a redirect situation. Or, is it better to go ahead and redirect those older domains to the primary one's, removing one layer of redirect? Thank you! Jessie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JessieT0 -
Can't seem to get traffic back post Panda / Penguin. WHY?
I have done and am doing everything I can think of to bring back lost traffic after the late 2012 updates from google hit us. I just is not working. We had some issues with our out of house web developers which screwed up our site in 2012 and after taking it in house we have Eden doing damage control form months now. We think we have fixed pretty much everything. URL structure filling up with good unique content(under way. Lots still to do) making better category descriptions redesigned homepage. Updated product pages (CMS is holding things back on that part otherwise they would be better. New CMS under construction) started more link building(its a real weak spot on our SEO as far as I can see) audited bad links from dodgy irelavent sites. hired writers to create content and link bait articles. Begun making high quality video's for both YouTube (brand awareness and viral) and on site hosting (link building and conversions) (in the pipeline not online yet). Flattened out site architecture. optimise internal link flow (got this wrong by using nofollows. In the process of thinking of a better way by reducing nun wanted Nav links on page.) i realise its not all done but I have been working ever since the drop in traffic and I'm just seeing no increase at all. I have been asking a few questions on here for the past few days but still can't put my finger on the issue. Am I just impatient and need to wait on the traffic as I am doing all the correct things? Or have I missed something and need to fix it. you anyone would like to have a quick look at my site and see if there is an obvious issue I have missed It would be great as I have been tearing my hair out trying to find the issues with my site. It's www.centralsaddlery.co.uk Criticism would me much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mark_baird0 -
301 Redirect and Webmaster Central
I've been working on removing canonical issues. My host is Apache. Is this the correct code for my htaccess? RewriteEngine On
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spkcp111
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^luckygemstones.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.luckygemstones.com/$1 [R=301,L] SECOND!!! I have two websites under Google's Webmaster Central; http://luckygemstones.com which gets NO 404 soft errors... AND http://www.luckygemstones.com which has 247 soft 404 errors... I think I should DELETE the http://luckygemstones.com site from Webmaster Central--the 301 redirect handles the"www" thing. Is this correct? I hate to hose things (even worse?) Help! Kathleen0 -
Inspiration from today's WBF!
Hello and Welcome MozFriends! so I watched the WBF this morning, and I got the idea of making Keyword Tiers for a site like so. Site Products- wheelchair, Powerchairs, Hospital Beds, Lifts, Lift Chairs Specific Items- 16" wheelchairs, 4 wheel power chair, Patient lifts and such. The Keywords for the Front page would be very general not referencing the sites specific items at all. Like Medical Equipment, supplies things like that. Keywords for products would be the Manufacturers names, and the category name. Specific Items would have specific keywords to draw an audience that has a goal and is searching for that specific product. So my theory/experiment is this. Instead of making the whole site generate traffic for one type of audience, I am making certain tiers for certain audiences. The higher up in the Site Hierarchy the more global the keywords are designed for. It may just be complete and utter non sense but I would like to hear any thoughts on it if it works. Thank You Friends! Justin Smith
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FrontlineMobility0