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
-
Redirect 410
I used http status code as 410 for some low quality pages in my site to Redirect to homepage. is this useful to improve my homepage authority?
Technical SEO | | ghorbanimahan
my website is: Nitamoshaver.com0 -
Links from a nonexistent domain, what do we do?
Our website is receiving 15 links that I believe are negatively impacting us. The problem is, this website linking to us no longer exists. The domain is not even hosted. The website linking to us is: thepurpleelephantboutique . com/ How do we fix/resolve this issue?
Technical SEO | | spadedesign0 -
Missing 301 redirects
I just had a developer friend call me in a panic, because they had gone live with a new site and found out (the hard way) that they had missed some pages on their 301 redirects. So the pages are appearing in Google but serving 404s. Ouch! So their question was: other than running a report for 404 errors in something like Screaming Frog, is there a way to hunt down ONLY pages serving 404s, then export to CSV so they can be redirected? Anyone got any tricks up their sleeve?
Technical SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
URL redirect question
Hi all, Just wondering whether anybody has experience of CMSs that do a double redirect and what affect that has on rankings. here's the example /page.htm is 301 redirected to /page.html which is 301 redirected to /page As Google has stated that 301 redirects pass on benefits to the new page, would a double redirect do the same? Looking forward to hearing your views.
Technical SEO | | A_Q0 -
Redirecting Root domain to subdirectory by IP addresses (country specific)
We are using Wordpress Multisite. so www.mysite.com is our English website and www.mysite.com/sub is our Chinese website Can I redirect Chinese visitors who type "www.mysite.com" to "www.mysite.com/sub" ? so we want to force redirection to www.mysite.com/sub if our website is visited by Chinese IP Address. I've realized that this is called GeoIP Redirection. and our hosting company already has those database, I guess my job is just to simply insert some code in .htacess My question is, would it affect our SEO later on? and what .htacess code is the best practice here?
Technical SEO | | joony20080 -
301 Redirect
Hi there, We are re-branding & re-structuring our website, there will be quite a number of 301 re-directs, possibly hundreds. The question is: Should i wait until the re-branding has been completed and do al the 301's in one go?, or should I try and do 301's as i go along? Kind Regards
Technical SEO | | Paul780 -
Redirects
Hello, My question is: how important is it to wait for the a redirect to get seen and cached before you take down the old page? More in depth: my old platform has seriously limited my ability to add sitemaps and make edits to htacces. I just want to change nameservers (which will delete everything on there) and upload the htaccess is that alright? Another way of saying it: when redirecting a page, is it necessary for google to see the old page before it is deleted? Thanks Tyler
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
301 Redirect vs Domain Alias
We have hundreds of domains which are either alternate spelling of our primary domain or close keyword names we didn't want our competitor to get before us. The primary domain is running on a dedicated Windows server running IIS6 and set to a static IP. Since it is a static IP and not using host headers any domain pointed to the static IP will immediately show the contents of the site, however the domain will be whatever was typed. Which could be the primary domain or an alias. Two concerns. First, is it possible that Google would penalize us for the alias domains or dilute our primary domain "juice"? Second, we need to properly track traffic from the alias domains. We could make unique content for those performing well and sell or let expire those that are sending no traffic. It's not my goal to use the alias domains to artificially pump up our primary domain. We have them for spelling errors and direct traffic. What is the best practice for handling one or both of these issues?
Technical SEO | | briankb0