New to SEO. How do I set up a 301 Redirect? What Else should I do?
-
Hello,
I am new to web design. I designed my own site using dreamweaver and did all my seo on my own, I read a few books. Long story short I rank on the bottom of page 1 just after 3 months and the keywords are highly competitive. Now, I am up against some heavy hitters from national brands versus my local real estate site.
I don't have a 301 redirect, and am not sure what else I should be doing to get my site ranked higher. I have back links from various sites, ( non-paid ) so it's what others call white hat.
When I grade my site on website grader I get a great score versus the sites that are higher than me. I'm guessing my sites age is an issue.
I guess I'm looking for some guidance.
Thank you all,
Here is my site to view.
-
I use Dreamhost, Amazon Cloud (AWS) and Rackspace. Nearly all the stuff you'll need can be done on Dreamhost. Dreamhost is a good web hosting company.
-
WHich hosting company do you prefer?
-
You will be limited to whatever Yahoo allows you to do. They aren't that flexible. Think about it this way. Have you ever heard of a large company use Yahoo? If you keep hanging around in these forums, you will outgrow Yahoo really quick.
-
Ok, I have yahoo as my host. I can't seem to find the htaccess. Any ideas?
-
Here, read this: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
Print it and go to Starbucks.
Oh, one other thing. To make things faster in web development, I have a design made in PSD and then have it coded into WordPress. That way I don't have to mess with Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is fine, but not when I'm working on sites that I expect to grow. With WordPress (and many CMS'), it automatically 301s old pages. If not, then there's a plugin.
-
Thanks, I'll research it. I use Yahoo as my host company, so I'm sure they have htaccess.
-
Without knowing your setup its hard to say whats best to do since there is many ways to do a 301. However an easy way is to use htaccess ( if your server support this ) but most of them does.
More info how to do a 301 with htaccess can be found here
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
-
Using a Reverse Proxy and 301 redirect to appear Sub Domain as Sub Directory - what are the SEO Risks?
We’re in process to move WordPress blog URLs from subdomains to sub-directory. We aren’t moving blog physically, but using reverse proxy and 301 redirection to do this. Blog subdomain URL is https://blog.example.com/ and destination sub-directory URL is https://www.example.com/blog/ Our main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL site. This is on Windows server. Due to technical reasons, we can’t physically move our WordPress blog to the main website. Following is our Technical Setup Setup a reverse proxy at https://www.example.com/blog/ pointing to https://blog.example.com/ Use a 301 redirection from https://blog.example.com/ to https://www.example.com/blog/ with an exception if a traffic is coming from main WWW domain then it won’t redirect. Thus, we can eliminate infinite loop. Change all absolute URLs to relative URLs on blog Change the sitemap URL from https://blog.example.com/sitemap.xml to https://www.example.com/blog/sitemap.xml and update all URLs mentioned within the sitemap. SEO Risk Evaluation We have individual GA Tracking ID and individual Google Search Console Properties for main website and blog. We will not merge them. Keep them separate as they are. Keeping this in mind, I am evaluating SEO Risks factors Right now when we receive traffic from main website to blog (or vice versa) then it is considered as referral traffic and new cookies are set for Google Analytics. What’s going to happen when its on the same domain? Which type of settings change should I do in Blog’s Google Search Console? (A). Do I need to request “Change of Address” in the Blog’s search console property? (B). Should I re-submit the sitemap? Do I need to re-submit the blog sitemap from the https://www.example.com/ Google Search Console Property? Main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL website, and blog is all about content. So does that impact SEO? Will this dilute SEO link juice or impact on the main website ranking because following are the key SEO Metrices. (A). Main website’s Avg Session Duration is about 10 minutes and bounce rate is around 30% (B). Blog’s Avg Session Duration is 33 seconds and bounce rate is over 92%
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joshibhargav_200 -
Default Wordpress 301 Redirects of JS and CSS files. Bad for SEO & How to Fix?
Hi there: We are developers with some digital marketing expertise, but a current issue has us perplexed. An outside SEO firm has asked us to clean up a large number of 301 redirects. Most of these are 'default' Wordpress behavior that relate to calling the latest version of a JS or CSS file. For instance, a JS file is called with this: https://websitexyz.com/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js?ver=4.9.1 but ultimately redirects to this: https://websitexyz.com/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js. We are being asked to prevent the redirect from happening by, presumably, calling the ultimate file to begin with. The issue is that, as far as we know, there's no easy way to alter WP behavior to call the ultimate file to begin with. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
301 Redirect Showing Up as Thousands Of Backlinks?
Hi Everyone, I'm currently doing quite a large back link audit on my company's website and there's one thing that's bugging me. Our website used to be split into two domains for separate areas of the business but since we have merged them together into one domain and have 301 redirected the old domain the the main one. But now, both GWT and Majestic are telling me that I've got 12,000 backlinks from that domain? This domain didn't even have 12,000 pages when it was live and I only did specific 301 redirects (ie. for specific URL's and not an overall domain level 301 redirect) for about 50 of the URL's with all the rest being redirected to the homepage. Therefore I'm quite confused about why its showing up as so many backlinks - Old redirects I've done don't usually show as a backlink at all. UPDATE: I've got some more info on the specific back links. But now my question is - is having this many backlinks/redirects from a single domain going to be viewed negatively in Google's eyes? I'm currently doing a reconsideration request and would look to try and fix this issue if having so many backlinks from a single domain would be against Google's guidelines. Does anybody have any ideas? Probably somthing very obvious. Thanks! Sam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sandicliffe0 -
Redirecting to a new domain... a second time
Hi all, I help run a website for a history-themed podcast and we just moved it to its second domain in 7 years. We've had very good SEO up until last week, and I'm wondering if I screwed up the way I redirected the domains. It's like this: Originally the site was hosted at "first.com", and it acquired inbound links. However, we then started to host the site on blogger, so we... Redirected the site to "second.blogspot.com". (Thus, 1 --> 2) It stayed here for about 7 years and got lots of traffic. Two weeks ago we moved it off of blogger and into Wordpress, so we 301 redirected everything to... third.com. (Thus, 1 --> 2 --> 3) The redirects worked, and when we Google individual posts, we are now seeing them in Google's index at the new URL. My question: What about the 1--> 2 redirect? There are still lots of links pointing to "first.com". Last week I went into my GoDaddy settings and changed the first redirect, so that first.com now points to third.com. (Thus 1 --> 3, and 2-->3) I was correct in doing that, right? The drop in Google traffic I've seen this past week makes me think that maybe I screwed something up. Should we have kept 1 --> 2 --> 3? (Again, now we have 1-->3 and 2-->3) Thanks for any insights on this! Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomNYC1 -
New site started ranking, lost ground after 301...?
Hi everyone. So we decided to re-brand a website starting with a fresh domain and fresh website (new everything). The first 4 weeks the site was performing really well and started bringing organic traffic for several targeted keywords (small amounts, but something). Around 5 weeks later, we decided to perform a 301 Redirect from an older site we had that really hadn't changed since 2007. As soon as we performed the 301, we started loosing ground on the keywords that were starting to perform. I may help to mention that we were targeting different keywords on the new site, versus the keywords/industry that were targeted on the older site... because we were focusing on another but similar industry. Now, 10 weeks later we are still not showing up for the keywords that we were starting to make headway on in the first four weeks of starting.... any ideas why? suggestions? The 301's were performed properly. We verified them, and we check Google WMT for any additional ones that may still be out there, but try to fix them as soon as possible. We have grown the site from just a few pages to over 60+ pages in the last 2 months with unique and fresh content targetting those keywords... Thank you in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | co.mc0 -
301 vs 410 redirect: What to use when removing a URL from the website
We are in the process of detemining how to handle URLs that are completely removed from our website? Think of these as listings that have an expiration date (i.e. http://www.noodle.org/test-prep/tphU3/sat-group-course). What is the best practice for removing these listings (assuming not many people are linking to them externally). 301 to a general page (i.e. http://www.noodle.org/search/test-prep) Do nothing and leave them up but remove from the site map (as they are no longer useful from a user perspective) return a 404 or 410?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abargmann0 -
301 redirects
Hello, I want to ditch about 1000 pages of a 2000+ page site. I believe the 301 redirect thing is the way to go but my expertise is limited. Is there a way to do a blanket redirect ie if a user or search engine looks for a page thats not there it all gets redirected to the index page or do I have to do each one manually? Thanks Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jwdl0 -
SEO vs 301
I have a website about "Download of games" and im planning open one about "games online" i know that "games online" its super hard to get good ranks, soo im thinking and do a 301 from my website of "download games" to my new website, do you think that is a good strategy ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nafera21