Www v.s non www
-
The canonical URLs (and all our link building efforts) is on the www version of the site.
However, the site is having a massive technical problem and need to redirect some links (some of which are very important) from the www to the non www version of the site (for these pages the canonical link is still the www version).
How big of a SEO problem is this?
Can you please explain the exact SEO dangers?
Thanks!
-
Thanks for all your responses - I will use this as the basis of my answer to the technical team.
-
I'm endorsing Stephen's idea, because if you really have no choice, I think it's a good potential alternative. THB's comments (which I thumbed up) are very important, though.
If you really have no choice, I do think the 302 is safer here - the canonical tag should override it. There is some risk, though, and it's definitely not ideal.
I'm not clear on the problem, but could you return a 503? It basically says "We've got a temporary problem - come back later" and, if it really is temporary, Google won't de-index the pages. If you're talking a couple of days, this may be a better solution. If you're talking a few weeks, you may have to take Stephen's advice. You might want to pull in expert help, though, because my gut reaction is that there's a better way to fix what's broken here.
-
Hehe.
Generally speaking, and I've actually come across this quite a bit lately, it's better to just put your efforts towards fixing the technical issues than to try and manipulate the site using redirects and canonical tags. But it's easy to say when it's not my technical problem, nor my money/time on the line to fix it! However, that is always the best-case scenario in my opinion.
-
Agreed. It's a problem waiting to bite you in the proverbials....
-
I worry about setting up a canonical tag that points to a URL Google can't access (as it's just being redirected via 302 back to the non-www version anytime it will try and read the canonical URL). And since a canonical tag is kinda sorta like a 301, you'd ultimately be 301'ing (kinda sorta) back to the www version, only to have a 302 header sent, 302'ing Google back to the non-www. And endless loop, so-to-speak. I'm not sure how Google would handle this.
How about just working 24/7 to resolve the "technical problem" that is causing this? I know, easy for me to say
-
I'm no expert on this but I think you'll be fine IF you:
1 - 302 redirect (temporary redirect) to the non-www page
2 - Add a rel canonical on the non-www page giving the WWW version link credit.
When you've fixed your tech issues remove the 302 redirect.
I THINK google will play nice on this.
Hope that helps
Steve
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
-
Non-standard HTML tags in content
I had coded my website's article content with a non-standard tag <cnt>that surrounded other standard tags that contained the article content, I.e.</cnt> , . The whole text was enclosed in a div that used Schema.org markup to identify the contents of the div as the articleBody. When looking at scraped data for stories in Webmaster Tools, the content of the story was there and identified as the articleBody correctly. It's recently been suggested by someone else that the presence of the non-standard <cnt>tags were actually making the content of the article uncrawlable by the Googlebot, this effectively rendering the content invisible. I did not believe this to be true, since the content appeared to be correctly indexed in Webmaster Tools, but for the sake of a test I agreed to removing them. In the last 6 weeks since they were removed, there have been no changes in impressions or traffic from organic search, which leads me to believe that the removal of the <cnt>tags actually had no effect, since the content was already being indexed successfully and nothing else has changed.</cnt></cnt> My question is whether or not an encapsulating non-standard tag as I've described would actually make the content invisible to Googlebot, or if it should not have made any difference so long as the correct Schema.org markup was in place? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | dlindsey0 -
Non-Existent Parent Pages SEO Impact
Hello, I'm working with a client that is creating a new site. They currently are using the following URL structure: http://clientname.com/products/furry-cat-muffins/ But the landing page for the directory /products/ does not actually have any content. They have a similar issue for the /about/ directory where the menu actually sends you to /about/our-story/ instead of /about/. Does it hurt SEO to have the URL structure set up in this way and also does it make sense to create 301 redirects from /about/ to /about/our-story/?
Technical SEO | | Alder0 -
Will multiple internal links with the same anchor text hurt a site's ranking?
Hello, I just watched this video from the Google Webmasters channel at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ybpXU0ckKQ My question: If a site is built up on subdomains, will linking the different subdomains with exact anchor text hurt the site's ranking? Thanks
Technical SEO | | arnoldwender0 -
On March 10 a client's newsroom disappeared out of the SERPS. Any idea why?
For years the newsroom, which is on the subdomain news.davidlerner.com - has ranked #2 for their brand name search. On march 10 it fell out of the SERPs - it is completely gone. What happened? How can I fix this?
Technical SEO | | MeritusMedia0 -
New Site maintaining rank on old URL's
Hi I have a new website going live which has a different page names etc i.e. the old site had pages that are ranking called aboutus.html and the new site is called about.php What is the best approach to maintain the rank and also on orphaned pages Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Should I change by URL's
I started with a static website and then moved to Wordpress. At the time I had a few hundred pages and wanted to keep the same URL structure so I use a plugin that adds .html to every page. Should I change the structure to a more common URL structure and do 301 directs from the .html page to the regular page?
Technical SEO | | JillB20130 -
Expired Domain - http:// or www
I have an old domain - When i use the link explorer i get way more juice out of the www version of my domain. I will be using wordpress to set up a new domain with the same name . My question is - How do I make it proper for seo? Do i just change the http:// to www in wordpress and be done with it? Does it even matter (thinking it does)
Technical SEO | | imagatto20 -
Www. version of my site shows nothing in Open Site Explorer
When I first setup my site the domain was learnbonds.com. I moved hosts a couple of months ago and as part of the process I asked them to make the site show as www.learnbonds.com which they did. Now however when I goto www.learnbonds.com in open site explorer it says there is no data. When I enter learnbonds.com into open site explorer it gives me data but says that the site has been redirected to the www. version which shows no data. Also in google webmaster when I try to set the preferred domain as the www. version it gives me the following message: Part of the process of setting a preferred domain is to verify that you own http://www.learnbonds.com/. Please verify http://www.learnbonds.com/. I am concerned that this is hurting my SEO and would appreciate any advice you can give. Thanks Dave
Technical SEO | | fxtrader19790
