undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    What is your Brand Authority?
    Moz

    What is your Brand Authority?

    Check yours now
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • SEO Q&A

      Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. 301 redirect: canonical or non canonical?

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

301 redirect: canonical or non canonical?

Technical SEO
3
5
1.1k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • ztalk112
    ztalk112 last edited by Oct 21, 2014, 2:33 AM

    Hi,

    Newbie alert!

    I need to set up 301 redirects for changed URLs on a database driven site that is to be redeveloped shortly.

    The current site uses canonical header tags. The new site will also use canonical tags.

    Should the 301 redirects map the canonical URL on the old site to the corresponding canonical for the new design . . . or should they map the non canonical database URLs old and new?

    Given that the purpose of canonicals is to indicate our preferred URL, then my guess is that's what I should use. However, how can I be sure that Google (for example) has indexed the canonical in every case?

    Thx in anticipation.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • David-Kley
      David-Kley last edited by Nov 10, 2014, 8:08 PM Nov 10, 2014, 8:08 PM

      The most accurate way is to do it manually. Doing a site:YOURDOMAIN.com in Google will alert you to most of the ugly URLs you want to get rid of.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • topic:timeago_earlier,11 days
      • ztalk112
        ztalk112 @David-Kley last edited by Oct 30, 2014, 8:54 PM Oct 30, 2014, 8:54 PM

        Thanks for that David . . . makes sense.

        Can you recommend any tools to help with this job or is it still mostly a manual process?

        Cheers.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • topic:timeago_earlier,9 days
        • David-Kley
          David-Kley last edited by Nov 10, 2014, 6:30 PM Oct 21, 2014, 12:38 PM

          "Should the 301 redirects map the canonical URL on the old site to the corresponding canonical for the new design . . . or should they map the non canonical database URLs old and new?"

          Any URL's that are indexed should be redirected to the correct version. For example if you have both a database URL and a canonical URL both indexed in search results, then they both should be sent to the correct version.

          Also, having only canonical URLs in your submitted sitemaps will help to remove a lot of these, even without redirects.

          ztalk112 1 Reply Last reply Oct 30, 2014, 8:54 PM Reply Quote 1
          • MoosaHemani
            MoosaHemani Banned last edited by Oct 21, 2014, 4:51 AM Oct 21, 2014, 4:51 AM

            Ok, here is my understanding regarding canonicals and how it works with redirect. 301 redirect means the old URL is shifting its all value and user to the new domain (unlike 302 that only derives traffic but contain the URL value to itself only).

            Whereas Canonicals indicates Google the preferred version of the domain so theoretically if you use the canonicals on every page Google should pick the redirected page as 301 will take Google to the final destination anyways…

            What will I do?

            If Possible, I will map all the redirected URLs and remove canonicals from there just to be on the safe side but I don’t think having there will be much of a difference as Google as at least that smart.

            Hope this helps!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            1 out of 5
            • First post
              1/5
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • snorkel

              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 | Feb 14, 2017, 9:21 AM | snorkel
              0
            • ptapley

              Meta descriptions and h1 tags during a 301 redirect

              My employer is shifting to a new domain and i am in the midst of doing URL mapping. I realize that many of the meta descriptions and H1 tags are different on the new pages - is this a problem ? Thank you.

              Technical SEO | May 28, 2015, 3:56 AM | ptapley
              0
            • 2MSens

              Best & easiest way to 301 redirect on IIS

              Hi all, What is the best and easiest way to 301 redirect URLs on IIS server? I got access to the FTP and WordPress back office, but no access to the server admin. Is there an easy way to create 301 redirect without having to always annoy the tech in charge of the server? Thanks!

              Technical SEO | Mar 14, 2014, 6:52 AM | 2MSens
              0
            • TitanDigital

              Can you do a 301 redirect without a hosting account?

              Trying to retire domain1 and 301 it to domain2 - just don't want to get stuck having to pay the old hosting provider simply to serve a .htaccess file with the redirect rule.

              Technical SEO | Oct 5, 2012, 5:05 AM | TitanDigital
              0
            • w0lfiesmithUK

              Switching from a .org to .io (301 domain redirect)

              I'm considering switching my main site from a .org to .io address; the .org is an exact match domain which helped to kickstart it a few years ago and now has about 50% repeat visitors, but was thrown off the Apple affiliation program for trademark infringement. I've found and purchased a nice (non-infringing) .io domain, and I've read the advice here on how to properly 301 the old domain; but my question is - does it matter that it's .io? Is this going to significantly hurt my rankings, even when everything has been 301'd properly? Another thought I had is that I may actually come out better off in the long run, what with Google penalties being applied to exact match domains. Is this a ranking suicide? If so, I'm tempted to leave it as is; even without the affiliation, it's making a good amount every month in ad fees that I don't want to disrupt. Thanks all!

              Technical SEO | Oct 2, 2012, 12:49 PM | w0lfiesmithUK
              0
            • twilightofidols

              Rel=Canonical, WWW vs non WWW and SEO

              Okay so I'm a bit of a loss here.  For what ever reason just about every single Wordpress site I has will turn www.mysite.com into mysite.com in the browser bar.  I assume this is the rel=canonical tag at work, there are no 301s on my site. When I use the Open Site Explorer and type in www.mysite.com it shows a domain authority of around 40 and a few hundred backlinks... and then I get the message. Oh Hey! It looks like that URL redirects to XXXXXX. Would you like to see data for <a class="clickable redirects">that URL instead</a>? So if I click to see this data instead I have less than half of that domain authority and about 2 backlinks. *** Does this make a difference SEO wise?  Should my non WWW be redirecting to my WWW instead because that's where the domain authority and backlinks are? Why am I getting two different domain authority and backlink counts if they are essentially the same?  Or am I wrong and all that link juice and authority passes just the same?

              Technical SEO | Jun 22, 2012, 8:46 AM | twilightofidols
              0
            • dballari

              Where does Wordpress store the 301 redirects?

              Hi, I've just created a campaign for my new wordpress blog and found 11 301 redirects which I was not aware of. It looks like wordpress has created them automatically. Does any one know how wordpress handles this issues or where are they stored so I can delete them? They are of no use for me. 9 of these redirects point to the same url with an added '/' and are in pages 1 is on a post. I've been changing the permalink and some urls several times and maybe one of these times the Wordpress has automatically created the 301 redirect. But why? I do not want to keep the old url. the last redirect is very strange it goes from http://www.mydomain.com/folder to http://www.mydomain.com where folder is the folder where I installed wordpress. But again, I want no one to type the url with the folder name or even know this folder exists. Any comment on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot, David

              Technical SEO | Apr 11, 2012, 8:30 AM | dballari
              0
            • LarsEriksson

              Hreflang on non-canonical pages

              Hi! I've been trying to figure out what is the best way to solve this dilemma with duplicate content and multiple languages across domains. 1 product info page 2 same product but GREEN
              3 same product but RED
              4 same product but YELLOW **Question: ** Since pages 2,3,4 just varies slightly I use the canonical tag to indicate they are duplicates of page 1. Now I also want to indicate there are other language versions with the_ rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _element. Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on the canonical page only pointing to the canonical page with "x" language. Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on all pages pointing to the canonical page with the "x" language? Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x"  _on all pages and then point it to the translated page (even if it is not a canonical page) ? /Lars

              Technical SEO | Apr 5, 2012, 5:01 PM | LarsEriksson
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.