Questions about root domain setup
-
Hi There,
I'm a recent addition to SEOmoz and over the past few weeks I've been trying to figure things out. This whole SEO process has been a bit of a brain burner but its slowly becoming a little more clearer.
For awhile I noticed that I was unable to get Open Site Explorer to display information about my site. It mentioned that that there was not enough data for the URL. Too recent of a site, no links, etc. Eventually I changed the the URL to include "www." and it pulled up results.
I also noticed that a few of my page warnings are because of duplicate page content. One page will be listed as http://enbphotos.com. The other will be listed as http://www.enbphotos.com.
I guess I'm not sure what this all means and how to change it. I'm also not really sure what the terminology even is and something regarding root domain seemed appropriate but I'm not sure if it is accurate.
Any help/suggestions/links would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Chris
-
My mistake - I thought that was the code that enbphotos wanted to add to the .htaccess, however if that is the code it is pretty obvious that the rewrite engine is engaged Alan haha cheers. My apologies for misreading the response.
Other than that I agree with what Alan says...
-
The engine is already invoked, with that code.
Add a few blank lines between RewriteEngine on and the other lines
Keep those other lines together. (I don't think they work)
And put the new code one blank line after invoking the engine.
keep a blank line after the new code.
-- Those other lines say this:
IF a request comes for proofs.enbphotos.com
OR a request for www.proofs.enbphotos.com
THEN redirect it to http://accounts.exposuremanager.com
- but it doesn't work, so either there is a problem (your apache doesn't redirect or some config has turned it off - or it could be that the proofs subdomain has a different document root.
-
what is the small bit or rewrite code that is already in there? Does it already engage the RewriteEngine? If so you don't need that line twice but you can just add your other code below the existing and it should work.
A lot of hosting environments that are on shared servers for instance allow you to put redirects etc in place through interfaces and then create the .htaccess for you...
-
Hi Alan, Thanks again for your response. I just wanted to follow up with you and see if you had any pointers for my below response? It turns out I have a .htaccess already in play. It's for a CNAME/subdomain setup. Do you know if I can just add the bit of code that you linked me too directly below what is already in my htaccess?
-
Thanks very much for your responses! I looked at those threads and I was about to add that bit of redirect code when I noticed I already have an .htaccess uploaded to my server. It has a small bit of code redirecting a subdomain/cname thing.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^proofs.enbphotos.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.proofs.enbphotos.com$
RewriteRule ^.*$ "http://accounts.exposuremanager.com" [R=301,L]Can I just add the other bit of redirect below this?
Thanks again for your help!
-
This is a common issue with sites in relation to duplicate content - I would look at setting up a 301 (permanent) redirect from none www version of your page to the www version.
Have a look at the SeoMoz guide to redirection here - http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection
Hope this helps
-
Hello Chris.
I see you have an apache server.
You should be able to add a few lines of redirect code in your .htaccess file in the document root directory.
Here is a response from Ryan Schwab that answers your need to redirect:
http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-there-an-easier-way-from-the-server-to-prevent-duplicate-page-content
Unfortunately, some people have linked to you with www and some without it.
You may suffer a little for a while, but you could come out of it even better than you were before.
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
-
Question About Thin Content
Hello, We have an encyclopedia type page on our e-commerce site. Basically, it's a page with a list of terms related to our niche, product definitions, slang terms, etc. The terms on the encyclopedia page are each linked to their own page that contains the term and a very short definition (about 1-2 sentences). The purpose of these is to link them on product pages if a product has a feature or function that may be new to our customers. We have about 82 of these pages. Are these pages more likely to help us because they're providing information to visitors, or are they likely to hurt us because of the very small amount of content on each page? Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | mostcg0 -
Sub Domain Redirect
Hey Everyone, Here is the situation : Currently, a website's sub domain is being redirected to the main website home page. We're having issues getting the sub domain pages indexed. Just want to confirm that it is because of the redirect on the sub domain URL. Should we kill the sub domain redirect and set it up as it's own page? Will that solve the indexing issue for the sub domain pages. More explanation below: subdomain.domain.com currently redirects to domain.com We're having issues indexing pages belonging to the sub domain ( subdomain.url.com/page1 or subdomain.url.com/page2) Appreciate your input in advance. Cheers,
Technical SEO | | SEO5Team0 -
Remove page with PA of 69 and 300 root domain links?
Hi We have a few pages within our website which were at one time a focus for us, but due to developing the other areas of the website, they are now defunct (better content elsewhere) and in some ways slightly duplicate so we're merging two areas into one. We have removed the links to the main hub page from our navigation, and were going to 301 this main page to the main hub page of the section which replaces it. However I've just noticed the page due to be removed has a PA of 69 and 15,000 incoming links from 300 root domains. So not bad! It's actually stronger than the page we are 301'ing it to (but not really an option to swap as the URL structure will look messy) With this in mind, is the strategy to redirect still the best or should we keep the page and turn it into a landing page, with links off to the other section? It just feels as though we would be doing this just for the sake of google, im not sure how much decent content we could put on it as we've already done that on the destination page. The incoming links to that page will still be relevant to the new section (they are both v similar hence the merging) Any suggestions welcome, thanks
Technical SEO | | benseb0 -
Followed Linking Root Domains and No Followed Linking Domains
If you have more NoFollowed Linking Root Domains than Followed Linking Root Domains is that a problem?
Technical SEO | | INN0 -
Redirect to new domain.... (which is penalised)
Hey - how's things? I have a client who wants to redirect his main domain to a new one.... there are a couple of problems I see and thought I'd ask on moz. 1 - The new domain has been incorrectly parked on the old domain with no redirection in place... when you do "site:domain.com" in Google, there are no serps for the new domain (the old domain still ranks well), it doesn't seem to rank anywhere and doesn't return any results in OSE. Is it wise to redirect to this domain or will rankings drop on both? 2 - The new domain uses .mobi as its suffix and will be replacing a .com - but is much more related to the business keyword wise. Is using mobi a problem. Overall the SEO on the site is abysmal and I will be reworking everything - so there will be lots of changes going on at the same time. I'm just wondering if it is worth redirecting the new domain at all, or trying to get brand new domain and use that.... or just to stick with the original aged domain... I think that is my only concerns at the moment
Technical SEO | | agua0 -
URL redirect question
Hi all, Just wondering whether anybody has experience of CMSs that do a double redirect and what affect that has on rankings. here's the example /page.htm is 301 redirected to /page.html which is 301 redirected to /page As Google has stated that 301 redirects pass on benefits to the new page, would a double redirect do the same? Looking forward to hearing your views.
Technical SEO | | A_Q0 -
Mod rewrite question
Sorry in advance if this isn't the best place to ask this question. Google Webmaster Tools has recently identified a ton of "Not Found" pages, which are actual pages with some digits appended at the end. For example, suppose an actual page on my blog is: (A) http://www.example.com/blog/2012/09/my-post-title/ This page works just fine. However, GWT has identified the following page as a "not found" page: (B) http://www.example.com/blog/2012/09/my-post-title/9157586677/1846732913010 This appears to be happening to hundreds of posts on my site. In each case, the "9157586677" portion of the URL is identical, but the remaining 13 digits change from page to page. I haven't been able to determine exactly what is causing this to happen - it's probably a social plug-in for Wordpress, or perhaps Disqus, but I'm not sure which one. I'll go through a process of elimination to narrow it down over the coming week. As a quick fix, I'd like to create a ModRewrite rule so that requests for (B) get 301 redirected to (A). Since there are hundreds of posts, I need to do this in a way that works regardless of what's in the "/2012/09/my-post-title/" part of the URL. Unfortunately, mod-rewrite is outside of my area of expertise. Can somebody please suggest how I can handle this? Thanks in advance. PS - As for tracking down the cause, I've looked at the source of the pages in the "Linked From" area of GWT and the Not Found link is nowhere to be found. That is why I assume the bad link is being generated by some javascript that is a part of one of my plug-ins. Update: It seems like Disqus is the source of these phantom links. There's considerable discussion here. I'll continue searching for a long-term solution. Meanwhile, I'd still appreciate help with the mod-rewrite question above. Thanks again.
Technical SEO | | ahirai0 -
Redirect Multiple Domains
This is a follow-up question from one posted earlier this month. I can't linked to that because it's a private question so I'm trying to summarize it below. We have a number of domains – about 20 - (e.g. www.propertysharp.com) that point to our main domain ip adress (www.propertyshark.com) and share the same content. This is no black-hat strategy whatsoever, the domains were acquired several years ago in order to help people who mistyped the websites url to reach their desired destination. The question was whether to redirect them to our main domain or not. Pros were the reportedly millions of incoming links from these domains - cons was the fact that lots of issues regarding duplicate content could arise and we actually saw lots of some pages from these domains ranking in the search engines. We were recommended to redirect them, but to take it gradually. I have a simple question - what does gradually mean - one domain per week, per month?
Technical SEO | | propertyshark0