Do I need a 301 redirect on htaccess if Apache is already configured to serve?
-
Apache is set up to serve both www and non-www versions the same content. Do I still need to put a 301 redirect in the htaccess file?
-
Yes, in that case, use the code that adds www. Then anyone who links to or attempts to visit the non-www, will be 301 redirected to the www version.
-
It's using www. in the SERPs. Does that mean I need to use the "## adds www"?
Thanks!
-
If you're launching the site fresh, just pick one and stick with it. If you've got an existing site, see which version Google returns in the SERPs, and use that.
-
But if it's Apache and set up to display the same content no matter which - how do I know which of the codes to add?
-
It's best practice to only serve a particular site one way or the other, either www or non-www, and only have one URL available for the homepage. This prevents any related duplicate content issues, and ensures you always get backlinks back to the right domain. I'd definitely recommend you add a rewrite rule to your .htaccess, using one of the following examples.
removes www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
adds www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
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
-
Website url structure after redesign and 301 redirect chains - Looking for advice
OK, been trying to piece together what is best practice for someone I'm working with, so here goes; Website was redesigned, changed urls from url a to url b. 301's put in place. However, the new url structure is not optimal. It's an e-commerce store, and all products are put in the root folder now: www.website.com/product-name A better, more organized url structure would be: www.website.com/category/product-name I think we can all agree on that. However, I'm torn on whether it's worth changing everything again, and how to handle things in terms of redirects. The way I see things, it would result in a redirect chain, which is not great and would reduce link equity. Keeping the products in the root moving forward with a poor structure doesn't feel great either. What to do? Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Tomasvdw0 -
Forced Redirects/HTTP<>HTTPS 301 Question
Hi All, Sorry for what's about to be a long-ish question, but tl;dr: Has anyone else had experience with a 301 redirect at the server level between HTTP and HTTPS versions of a site in order to maintain accurate social media share counts? This is new to me and I'm wondering how common it is. I'm having issues with this forced redirect between HTTP/HTTPS as outlined below and am struggling to find any information that will help me to troubleshoot this or better understand the situation. If anyone has any recommendations for things to try or sources to read up on, I'd appreciate it. I'm especially concerned about any issues that this may be causing at the SEO level and the known-unknowns. A magazine I work for recently relaunched after switching platforms from Atavist to Newspack (which is run via WordPress). Since then, we've been having some issues with 301s, but they relate to new stories that are native to our new platform/CMS and have had zero URL changes. We've always used HTTPS. Basically, the preview for any post we make linking to the new site, including these new (non-migrated pages) on Facebook previews as a 301 in the title and with no image. This also overrides the social media metadata we set through Yoast Premium. I ran some of the links through the Facebook debugger and it appears that Facebook is reading these links to our site (using https) as redirects to http that then redirect to https. I was told by our tech support person on Newspack's team that this is intentional, so that Facebook will maintain accurate share counts versus separate share counts for http/https, however this forced redirect seems to be failing if we can't post our links with any metadata. (The only way to reliably fix is by adding a query parameter to each URL which, obviously, still gives us inaccurate share counts.) This is the first time I've encountered this intentional redirect thing and I've asked a few times for more information about how it's set up just for my own edification, but all I can get is that it’s something managed at the server level and is designed to prevent separate share counts for HTTP and HTTPS. Has anyone encountered this method before, and can anyone either explain it to me or point me in the direction of a resource where I can learn more about how it's configured as well as the pros and cons? I'm especially concerned about our SEO with this and how this may impact the way search engines read our site. So far, nothing's come up on scans, but I'd like to stay one step ahead of this. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | ogiovetti0 -
Need 301 Advice with a Recovered URL from a Domain Typosquatter
I am new to a SMB and someone bought the plural version of our domain back in 2005 and has yet to let it expire. The domain was just renewed for another year so we finally decided to contact a lawyer and go through the domain name dispute process. This seems like a pretty cut an dry case and the lawyer is very confident that we'll have the domain within 30-40 days. Currently the plural version domain 303s to spammy web pages, shows shady ads and is just a malicious looking page in general. I am not savvy enough to know the exact complexities of what's happening on the backend but it's spammy. Knowing the history of the plural version domain, how would you treat it after we acquire it? Obviously, I wouldn't want to put our site in jeopardy by 301ing the plural version of our URL to our current healthy site but at the same time many customers might go to that domain by accident so eventually I'd like to 301 it. If it's any help, the plural version has a robots.txt that prevent G from crawling it..thank you in advance for your guidance!
Technical SEO | | ssimarketing0 -
301 redirects - one overall redirect or an individual one for each page url
Hi I am working on a site that is to relaunch later on this year - is best practise for the old urls (of which there are thousands) to write a piece of code that will cover all of the urls and redirect them to the new home page or to individually redirect each url to its new counterpart on the new site. I am naturally concerned about user experience on this plus losing our Google love we currently have but am aware of the time it would take to do this individually. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Pday1 -
Redirect a 301 Redirect
Does any link juice get passed from a permanent redirect to a new 301 redirect? If so, are there any studies which indicate an estimated percentage?
Technical SEO | | RedCaffeine0 -
Best practice for eCommerce site migration, should I 301 redirect or match URLs on new site
Hi Guys, I have been struggling with this one for quite some time. I am no SEO expert like many of you, rather just a small business owner trying to do the right thing, so forgive me if I say something that makes no sense 🙂 I am moving our eCommerce store from one platform to another, in the process the store is getting a massive face lift. The part I am struggling with is whether I should keep my existing URL structure in place or use 301 redirects to create a cleaner looking URLs. Currently the URLs are a little long and I would love to move to a /category/product_name type format. Of course the goal is not to lose ranking in the process, I rank pretty well for several competitive phrases and do not want to create a negative impact. How would you guys handle this? Thanks, Dinesh
Technical SEO | | MyFairyTaleBooks0 -
During a site platform transition, should we 301 redirect all URLs or only those with inbound links?
We have an ecommerce client transitioning to a new platform. Due to the nature of the platform, all the pages will have different URLs. There are between 7000-8000 total pages on the website. We wrote 301 redirects for all URLs which are showing inbound links. Unfortunately, automating this process is pretty difficult and hand writing URLs for 8000 links is unfeasible. Is it worth investing the time to 301 redirect all 8000 URLs, or are we safe with only doing those with inbound links? One other option would be to implement a generic redirect for all the rest of the old URLs that sends them to the homepage. Would this be a good compromise?
Technical SEO | | outofboundsdigital0 -
Should I 301 redirect my country specific sites, or use them as linking root domains?
I have loveelectronics.co.uk, but I also own 10 other country code specific domains. I am short on links (i'm actually still setting up the website) and wondered that until i have country specific content, should I 301 redirect these websites to the homepage of my main site, or could I use them as links which would mean I have more linking root domains? Sorry if this is a beginner question, but it would be good to know so I can sort this.
Technical SEO | | jcarter0