Correctly Dealing With Redirects
-
Hi,
Hope someone might be able to help me with this.
One of our sites was built badly and the orginal url structure was to have mydomain.com/index.php but these have been changed to mydomain.com by a developer who has put the redirects in place.
The problem is that in webmaster tools my link count has dropped to 18 from nearly 2300.
I am assuming that Google is not seeing the redirect, any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
-
Just adding to what the others have said, but there could be a number of reasons:
- WMT is slow
- You actually lost the links
- The links aren't being redirected properly, i.e. multiple hops, no redirect at all
- 302's and other redirection CAN actually show up in WMT, you'll see it listed as "via this intermediary link....
The advice the others gave is solid, you'll need to double check with some kind of HTTP response code tool to check. Please supply a URL.
Cheers,
Dave
-
I would install Fiddler and check the header response of your URLs. Otherwise screamingfrog is the way to go. Oleg might be right in that the developer might have set 302 redirects. If you post the URL we could confirm for you.
In .htaccess if the redirect doesn't explicitly end with the R=301 directive, typically [R=301,L] then the default is a 302 temporary redirect which doesn't pass on link value.
Also for an accurate assessment of links I would use Open Site Explorer.
-
Make sure it is a 301 redirect, not a 302 redirect.
It also takes a couple weeks for google to reindex the new urls and adjust its rankings/stats.
-
Is it possible that some of the pages have inadvertently had a noindex meta tag added to them or that certain pages are blocked in error by your robots.txt? Without your site URL it is very difficult for any of us to ascertain the issue.
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
-
301 redirect backlink
Hello, My website is brand new! I am planning to do have some 301 redirect backlinks. Is it safe in terms of SEO ? Do i have any SEO benefits? let me know. Thanks
Link Building | | EchoMartinez1 -
Redirecting dofollow, high-domain-authority links from one site to another: good idea?
I have two sites that offer help for freelance writers. The first gets almost no search traffic and is very low priority for me. The second is my main priority and gets substantial search traffic. The low-priority site has a significant number of dofollow backlinks from high-domain-authority sites. Is it a good idea to 301 redirect these links to similar/related posts on my high-priority site? Would this potentially boost the SEO of my high-priority site? Thanks for any help!
Link Building | | John88990 -
Backlink Help - Contact Site Owners or 301 Redirect?
Hi, I am performing some backlink updates for a client and would like to know if I can speed the process up. Currently I am contact site owners and asking them to update the links that appear on their website of my clients. As this is tedious work, can I just setup 301 redirects for these products instead of contacting site owners and asking them to change the URL? Is there any benefit to having the proper URL on other websites? Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | KarenNelson0 -
Cyber Monday Deal Submission Sites?
Hi, Does anyone know of any good sites where I can submit a Cyber Monday deal/sale? Thanks!
Link Building | | S.S.N0 -
Automatic Redirect
Good morning to all! Is it normal that I change link and it automatically redirect to the new one? Our links are too long and all have Diani Beach in it what we have done a long time ago as we though it is a good move 🙂 Now I know it is bed so I just opened post and change the permalink and then I open it in new window and instead of Not Found it opens the new link. Can I be doing this?
Link Building | | VillasDiani0 -
Better to redirect domain or to link from home page?
Hi, I have a niche directory and sometimes clients remove themselves because they have discontinued their business practice. If they sometimes provide me with their own website (as they will no longer use it either), is it wiser for me to: a) directly point their URL 301 to my own directory b) keep their website as is, and add a url link to my directory in their homepage c) keep their website as is, and add an anchored link with the industry keyword to my directory Thanks! D
Link Building | | Demosthenes0 -
Redirect
A few pages get a lot of external links and rank well (when site:domain.com) but i do not want that those pages rank well (these are blog pages and we are in E-commerce) Can i redirect these pages to other pages which are more important to me and customers because google see only the link or is google so smart that they see a realtion between the page from which i get the links and to the page in my webste In that case i rename the old pages.
Link Building | | turnon0