Worth Changing Redirect From 302 to 301?
-
Hi,
I'm doing an audit on a site that had a redesign in Dec 2009. For some reason I looked to see what kind of redirects were used from the old pages to the current ones, and it looks like they used 302s, which obviously isn't ideal. Given that it's been so long and those pages have looong since been de-indexed, is it worth me suggesting that they change those old redirects to 301s? My thinking is that if those old pages were linked to externally then I should recommend it, but I can't find any link info on Linkscape/OSE, Majestic SEO or YSE.
Any comments appreciated.
-
I'm ashamed to say that accidentally I had a large number of 302 redirects on pages on one of my sites for a while and inadvertently missed them. Once I spotted them I changed them to 301's and the impact was significant for rankings. From experience, I would definitely recommend them. It's best practice and if there is any link equity to be had, it's easy pickings for your client.
-
Thanks for your answers, I'll recommend to the client that we switch those old redirects to 301s.
-
Change them for sure, it is worth the effort.
302 is a temp redirect and will pass no juice.
301 is perm and it will be far more beneficial.
-
With 302 redirects, Google first sees the old URL and then moves one to the new one. The bot will always first go the the old page, since 302 means temporary redirect. If you, by any chance, decide to go back to the old URL, Google needs to be kept in the loop and that is why it always checks the old page for the redirect.
In fact, in the results you should see your old URL with the new content indexed. Is that the case? I'm also not quite sure if 302 will pass PageRank. I would say - switch to 301.
-
I would definitely recommend doing it. The value held by the old pages will help to make the new pages more powerful and improve rankings, making it a win-win situation.
302 redirects are designed for temporary situations, and they should not be used as a solution for permanent redirects.
-
I would do it.
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
-
How to remove 302 redirects in Magento?
We're seeing a couple of temporary redirects. One for the http pointing to https. Another for /checkout pointing to/checkout/cart. We don't have an internal dev so not sure how to remove these. Would anyone know? I've set up the 301s but they're not overriding and I'm still seeing the issues in the crawl. Thanks in advance for your help!
Technical SEO | | LASClients0 -
301 Redirects a Year Later
I inherited the digital maintenance of a website that was relaunched a year ago. In looking at Google Analytics, organic search a year later is still down 33%. I fear they did not install 301 Redirects but can't really get a specific answer from them. Is it possible to install them a year later to help with Google indexing and get back some of the organic traffic?
Technical SEO | | stansamples0 -
Added 301 redirects, pages still earning duplicate content warning
We recently added a number of 301 redirects for duplicate content pages, but even with this addition they are still showing up as duplicate content. Am I missing something here? Or is this a duplicate content warning I should ignore?
Technical SEO | | cglife0 -
301 redirect .htaccess
Hi guys I am working on some 301 redirects on an apache webserver and I'd like a bit of assistance in trying to get a specific type result: I want all addresses from domaina.com to be redirected to domainb.com in the same structure so domaina.com/folder/file will go to domainb.com/folder/file expect for 2 folders.
Technical SEO | | seobackbone
ie: DomainA.com --> DomainB.com
except domainA.com/folder1
and domainB.com/folder2 Can someone let me know how I can pull this off?0 -
Do I need both canonical meta tags AND 301 redirects?
I implemented a 301 redirect set to the "www" version in the .htaccess (apache server) file and my logs are DOWN 30-40%! I have to be doing something wrong! AddType application/x-httpd-php .html .htm RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^luckygemstones.com
Technical SEO | | spkcp111
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.luckygemstones.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.htm
RewriteRule ^(.)index.htm$ http://www.luckygemstones.com/$1 [R=301,L] IndexIgnore *
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.luckygemstones.com/page-not-found.htm
ErrorDocument 500 http://www.luckygemstones.com/internal-serv-error.htm
ErrorDocument 403 http://www.luckygemstones.com/forbidden-request.htm
ErrorDocument 401 http://www.luckygemstones.com/not-authorized.htm I've also started adding canoncial META's to EACH page: I'm using HMTL 4.0 loose still--1000's of pages--painful to convert to HTML5 so I left the / off the tag so it would validate. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks, Kathleen0 -
Where to put 301 redirects in Magento?
I will be changing the URL structure in a magento store from "base/category/subcategory/product" to "base/product" which means i have to make over 1000 URL 301 redirects so our old links still work. Should i put the redirects in a .htaccess file so they stay intact no matter what or should i just put them in with all the other rewrites (in Magento 's URL rewrite manager)? Thanks
Technical SEO | | tilenkrivec0 -
301 redirects tanked our site on google - what now?
We had several hundred old pages on the site with duplicate content and new pages with fresh info on the same topics. So I redirected the old pages to the new pages. Next day, plop, we're dumped off google for almost every keyword. Dang I thought they didn't want duplicate content and old funky pages. What did I do wrong and what can I do to fix it? Thanks so much for anyone who can share their expertise. Jean
Technical SEO | | JeanYates0 -
I think I'm stuck in a 301 redirect loop
Hi all, I'm trying to correct some of my duplicate content errors. The site is built on Miva Merchant and the storefront page, /SFNT.html, needs to be permanently redirected to www.mydomain.com This is what my .htaccess file looks like: #RedirectPermanent /index.html http://dev.mydomain.com/mm5/merchant.mvc? RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^dev.mydomain.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*) http://dev.emydomain.com/$1 [L,R=301] DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php /mm5/merchant.mvc redirect 301 /SFNT.html http://dev.mydomain.com/ RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} Screen=SFNT&Store_Code=MYSTORECODE [NC] When I use this code and navigate to http://dev.mydomain.com/SFNT.html the URL gets rewritten as http://dev.mydomain.com/?Screen=SFNT So I believe this is what's called a "redirect loop".... Can anyone provide any insight? I'm not a developer, but have been tasked with cleaning up the problems on the website and can use any input anyone is willing to offer. Thanks, jr
Technical SEO | | Technical_Contact0