Not sure which URL to use for 301 redirect
-
A client has new website design completed by another developer, was launched in April of this year. No 301 redirect was set up so duplicate content is an issue.
Client has had a website with same domain name for about 10 years, but has not had any SEO work completed before or since his new site design.
For non-www there are 6 referring links - 1 considered to have authority, for www there are also 6 but 3 considered to have authority.
More links seem to coming from www than non-www.
But for one of the clients keywords they are ranked #1 for their area and that links to their non-www address.
And even though no redirects set up by developer, non-www has had far more visits according to Google Analytics.
So many basics that still need to be done for site: no meta-descriptions on any page, H1 and page titles could use keywords, call to action moved above fold, etc.
Considering this is a new site, and new SEO work and many more inbound links needed, does it matter which address I redirect to?
_Cindy Barnard
-
Not this time, but will keep it in mind.
Thanks again.
_Cindy
-
If you have a windows server i have a tutorial on how to do this.
http://perthseocompany.com.au/seo/tutorials/how-to-fix-canonical-domain-name-issues
-
Thank you!
_Cindy
-
Yes it would not be a concern. i would personaly like to ban www to save the internet billions of 301's
Sincerly yours
www.alan -
So at this point, without a lot of established inbound links, either URL would be OK?
I have heard arguments for using www and non-www. But no matter which one, having the redirect will change their rankings a bit?
_Cindy
-
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
-
URL structuring / redirect question
Hi there, I have a URL structuring / redirect question. I have many pages on my site but I set each page up to fall under one of two folders as I serve two unique markets and want each side to be indexed properly. I have SIDE A: www.domain/FOLDER-A.com and SIDE B: www.domain/FOLDER-B. The problem is that I have a page for www.domain.com and www.domain/FOLDER-A/page1.com but I do NOT have a page for www.domain/FOLDER-A. The reason for this is that I've opted to make what would be www.domain/FOLDER-A be www.domain.com and act the primary landing page the site. As a result, there is no page located at www.domain/FOLDER-A. My WordPress template (Divi by Elegant Themes) forced me to create a blank page to be able to build off the FOLDER-A framework. My question is that given I am forced to have this blank page, do I leave it be or create a 302 or 307 redirect to www.domain.com? I fear using a 301 redirect given I may want to utilize this page for content at some point in the future. This isn't the easiest post to follow so please let me know if I need to restate the question. Many thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | KurtWSEO0 -
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 | | ptapley0 -
Using 302s to redirect pages returning in 6 months
We are doing a 2-phase site redesign (in order to meet a deadline). An entire section of the site will not be available in the first phase, but will come back in 6 months. The question is, do we use 301s or 302s for those pages that will be coming back in 6 months? Is there a time limit on what is considered "temporary"? thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | Max_B0 -
Increase 404 errors or 301 redirects?
Hi all, I'm working on an e-commerce site that sells products that may only be available for a certain period of time. Eg. A product may only be selling for 1 year and then be permanently out of stock. When a product goes out of stock, the page is removed from the site regardless of any links it may have gotten over time. I am trying to figure out the best way to handle these permanently out of stock pages. At the moment, the site is set up to return a 404 page for each of these products. There are currently 600 (and increasing) instances of this appearing on Google Webmasters. I have read that too many 404 errors may have a negative impact on your site, and so thought I might 301 redirect these URLs to a more appropriate page. However I've also read that too many 301 redirects may have a negative impact on your site. I foresee this to be an issue several years down the road when the site has thousands of expired products which will result in thousands of 404 errors or 301 redirects depending on which route I take. Which would be the better route? Is there a better solution?
Technical SEO | | Oxfordcomma0 -
Automatically write Mass 301 redirects for csv
Hi Guys Does anyone know if there is away to write say 30 x 301 redirects in one go? I have a list from a client with old links and new links and I want to do it all at once. Any suggestions would be appreciate?
Technical SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Simple 301 redirect a subfolder to another subfolder
Hi, I have a number of sub-folders that I have to move, each of which contains a number of files. subfolder A has files a, b & c subfolder B has files d, e & f
Technical SEO | | aactive
subfolder C has files g, h & i A, B & C folders need to be X, Y & Z Will the following work? RewriteRule ^subfolder-A/* http://www.domain.com/subfolder-X/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^subfolder-B/* http://www.domain.com/subfolder-Y/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^subfolder-C/* http://www.domain.com/subfolder-Z/ [R=301,L] will this result in visitors to http://www.domain.com/subfolder-B/f.html being redirected to http://www.domain.com/subfolder-Y/f.html? All on the same domain. in reality we are talking hundreds of sub folders and thousands of files so we don't want to have to reference every file individually in the htaccess. Thanks0 -
Site blocked by robots.txt and 301 redirected still in SERPs
I have a vanity URL domain that 301 redirects to my main site. That domain does have a robots.txt to disallow the entire site as well. However, for a branded enough search that vanity domain still shows up in SERPs and has the new Google message of: A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt I get why the message is there - that's not my , my question is shouldn't a 301 redirect trump this domain showing in SERPs, ever? Client isn't happy about it showing at all. How can I get the vanity domain out of the SERPs? THANKS in advance!
Technical SEO | | VMLYRDiscoverability0 -
301 Redirects
Last year we merged 3 websites into 1 website and launched the new site in February. When developing the new site I created 301 redirects for all the pages from the old sites to the new site. Unfortunately when the new website was created the URLs were not optimised for search engines. I now need to optimised the page URLs. In theory I need to create new 301 redirects from this existing pages to the new optimised URLS. I am concerned that in a few years I might end up with a string of 301 redirects and if I break some links I might loose some ranking. How many redirects will link juice work for? I hope I'm clear here, if not I've attached a image showing what I'm doing. Thank you. unledfh.jpg
Technical SEO | | Seaward-Group0