Homepage redirect
-
I'd like to get some thoughts about redirecting your homepage URL (www.site.com) to a keyword rich URL (www.site.com/super-awesome-best-thing-ever).
Thank you, in advance.
-
I pick up what you are putting down... thanks for the clarification Frank.
Here is how I think things would play out...
If you are creating /super-awesome-best-thing-ever as a new page that does not exist yet on your site, it will have very little rank. It if you redirect site.com to site.com/super-awesome-best-thing-ever you will have a partial drop in page rank due to the 301 redirect. Just because you are redirecting your homepage to the /super-awesome-bet-thing-ever does not mean it will get the full power of your old homepage, site.com. You would also need to change all of your internal links to point to site.com/super-awesome-best-thing-ever instead of site.com, because you'd lose some of your link juice flow if you also used the redirect internally.
And if you use a 301 redirect, you are telling Google that this change is permanent - inferring that you are no longer going to use your domain of site.com. Does that mean Google would remove the URL site.com from the index... I don't know.
I do know that SEOmoz places keyword usage in the URL under the "moderately important" section of its on page analysis - that said, I wouldn't go to trouble of this. I think you are better off optimizing your homepage for the keyword or creating a /super-awesome-best-thing-ever landing page.
Hope this helps.
Mike
-
Mike,
Its not that I'm looking for a way around optimizing the on-page content, but more looking to add the URL as a keyword rich element.
Your homepage is typically your highest ranking page, so my question, which I should have been more specific about, is in regards to the possible drop in pagerank, due to the redirect. Do you think that the benefits of the keyword rich URL would offset the drop in pagerank?
Thanks
Frank
-
Hi,
It works very well short term. If you have the target page in a "home page" type of look and feel you won't have any issues with UX either.
I've seen this done but there are a few things that needs to "happen" in order to get the best out of it:
-
have high authority on the www.site.com
-
the target page is a new page that needs an initial boost
-
the target page has the home page look and feel type of approach (navigation, options etc)
-
you need to have the ability to roll back when needed
Also like Mike mentioned there are a few other very viabile options:
-
optimize the home page for the keyword (my favorite - unless everything is straight forward and there is no risk for filters and penalties - especially the ones that are related with another text / links)
-
feature the new page on the home page very well - for both sending out PR and CTR (so once someone will land on the home page, your CTR will be high for this page)
Hope it helps.
-
-
I personally think this may confuse users. For instance, if they click on your company logo from another page and are directed to www.site.com/super-awesome-best-thing-ever stead of www.site.com... that might appear kind of strange to them.
Why don't you either:
-
optimize your homepage for super-awesome-best-thing-ever
-
create a landing page for super-awesome-best-thing-ever
If you are trying really hard to rank for super-awesome-best-thing-ever, I would try the above 2 options first. If you still aren't getting the results you want, then maybe try the homepage redirect; however, I think that is somewhat odd functionality for the user.
In most cases, the super-awesome-best-thing-ever is going to be more specific. For instance, if bestbuy.com redirected to bestbuy.com/electronics-retailer that would confuse me... A LOT.
Have you tried other options first?
Mike
-
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
-
Spam Score & Redirecting Inbound Links
Hi, I recently downloaded a spreadsheet of inbound links to my client sites and am trying to 301 redirect the ones that are formatted incorrectly or just bad links in general (they all link to the site domain, but they used to have differently formatted urls on their old site, or the link URL in general has strange stuff on it). My question is, should I even bother redirecting these links if their spam score is a little high (i.e. 20-40%)? it already links to the existing domain, just with a differently formatted URL. I just want to make sure it goes to a valid URL on the site, but I don't want to redirect to a valid URL if it's going to harm the client's SEO. Also not sure what to do about the links with the --% spam score. I really appreciate any input as I don't have a lot of experience with how to deal with spammy links.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AliMac260 -
Moving content form Non-performing site to performing site - wihtout 301 Redirection
I have 2 different websites: one have good amount of traffic and another have No Traffic at all. I have a website that has lots of valuable content But no traffic. And I want to move the content of non-performing site to performing site. (Don't want to redirect) My only concern is duplicate content. I was thinking of setting the pages to "noindex" on the original website and wait until they don't appear in Google's index. Then I'd move them over to the performing domain to be indexed again. So, I was wondering If it will create any copied content issue or not? What should i have to take care of when I am going to move content from one site to another?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Do I need to undo a 301 redirect to dissavow links from the source domain?
A client came to me after being hit by Penguin and had already performed a 301 redirect from site A to Site B. Site B was subsequently hit by the penalty a number of weeks later and we are planing on performing link removal for Site A. Only the webmaster tools account for Site B exists, none is still available for site A. I assume that I cannot dissavow links to site A from Site B's webmaster tool account (even though website A's links show up in the GWT account). So do I need to undo the 301 and then create a new GWT account for site A in order to disavow the links pointing to site A, or can I submit from Site B's GWT account since they are 301'd to site B? Thanks! Chris [edited for formatting]
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOdub0 -
How does the Google Treat 301 Redirects?
Hi, My website was one of many that dropped in rankings this last Friday, The company that i outsourced my SEO 4 months ago did a bad job. Now i'm doing everything my self to recover, so i was thinking getting a new hosting, duplicate the website with a same content (i have original quality content) and 301 my old domain to new one? How long can it last with Google? Can penalties be passed via 301 redirects ? Looking forward to your help.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mezozcorp0 -
Homepage bombed from rankings 2
I've had some varying advice on here regarding the best way to proceed with [i'll PM the URL] which was hit by Penguin 2.0. There were previous issues with the homepage and before the 22nd had started creating new decent links. Some have suggested to ditch the domain and start again. There are several reasons not to and branding is the deciding factor at this stage. I'm going down the route of initially trying to manually remove links and then follow on with disavow. I would really appreciate another pair of eyes taking a quick look to see if i'm missing anything other than a dodgy link profile.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
301 Redirect ASP code
Hi I have a script detailed below, that 301 redirects based upon different queries --- """"<%if (Request("offset") = "") Then%> <% if Request("keywords") = "" AND Request("s") <> "" AND Request("j") <> "" then'Sector and Location NOT NULL%> <% if (Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_X_REQUEST_URI")) <> "/" & LCase(SEOFriend(replaces.Fields.Item("JBCategoryLabel"))) & "-jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation"))) Then Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location", "/" & LCase(SEOFriend(replaces.Fields.Item("JBCategoryLabel"))) & "-jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation"))) Response.End End If %> <%End if%> <% if Request("keywords") = "" AND Request("s") <> "" AND Request("j") = "" then'Sector NOT NULL and Location NULL %> <% if (Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_X_REQUEST_URI")) <> "/" & LCase(SEOFriend(replaces.Fields.Item("JBCategoryLabel"))) & "-jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(SiteDetails.Fields.Item("JBSRegion"))) Then Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location", "/" & LCase(SEOFriend(replaces.Fields.Item("JBCategoryLabel"))) & "-jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(SiteDetails.Fields.Item("JBSRegion"))) Response.End End If %> <%End if%> <% if Request("keywords") = "" AND Request("s") = "" AND Request("j") <> "" then'Sector NULL and Location NOT NULL %> <% if (Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_X_REQUEST_URI")) <> "/jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation"))) Then Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location", "/jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation"))) Response.End End If %> <%End if%> <%End if%>"""" But this still allows for both the www and non www versions of these pages to render in the browser, which is resulting in duplicate content. On my home page I use -- <% If InStr(Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME"),"www") = 0 Then Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location","http://www." & Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_HOST") & "/" Response.End End if %> `Is there a good way to combine these, so that I still get all of the rules of the first script whilst also redirecting any non www versions to the www version? in other words
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TwoPints
domain.com/jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation")))
Eould redirect to
www.domain.com/jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation"))) Thanks in advance`0 -
IP-Based Content on Homepage?
We're looking to redesign one of our niche business directory websites and we'd like to place local content on the homepage catered to the user based on IP. For instance, someone from Los Angeles would see local business recommendations in their area. Pretty much a majority of the page would be this kind of content. Is this considered cloaking or in any way a bad idea for SEO? Here are some examples of what we're thinking: http://www.yellowbook.com http://www.yellowpages.com/ I've seen some sites redirect to a local version of the page, but I'm a little worried Google will index us with localized content and the homepage would not rank for any worthwhile keywords. What's the best way to handle this? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | newriver0 -
Redirects/What to do with multi domains for the same company?
What is the correct way to "redirect" a domain if you have multi domain names for the same site? For example if a company has www.mysite.com www.mysite.info www.mysite.tv www.mysite+location.com Say my website lived at this location www.mysite.com would I then just forward the other domains to the same place? Do search engines penilize for this? Do search engines view this as duplicated content? Is it even worth having these domains and making the active? Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | christinarule0