How important is having a 301 redirect?
-
Is having a 301 redirect a must for rankings when it comes to the www and non-www version of a site?
I am on the bottom of page 1 for my main key phrases but I can't do a 301 redirect with my web host that I've been with for over a year.
I've been considering changing web host (currently with Yahoo) but I also have concerns about transferring the site and the impact it might have because of the changing ip address.
So my options are
- Stay Put
- Change Web host
Which would you recommend?
-
I took a look at bronxpad.com in opensiteexloreer.org.
If this is the website you are referring to, when you implement these 301 redirects make sure you also redirect bronxpad.com/index.html and www.bronxpad.com/index.html to www.bronxpad.com, for the same reason as the non-www to the www.
-
GoDaddy would work, and in my experience, they offer great customer service.
-
If you have links pointing to both, then a 301 redirect will help your website's domain and page authority, which will help your rankings.
Any reputable US hosting company should be fine.
-
Any recommendations on hosting providers? I am based out of the Bronx in New York.
-
I have links pointing to both versions but the majority being the www version. I am based out of New York and I was wondering if hosting with a New York Web host would benefit or not.
-
The reason we 301 redirect non-www to www is to make sure search engines do not index two versions of your website. You can check it though a Google search: "site:yoursite.com"
This will give you all of the pages indexed by Google. If there is a yoursite.com and www.yoursite.com in the results, two versions are indexed, and a 301 redirect might allow you to rank even higher.
If there are two versions indexed, I would consider changing your host if you can secure a properly located IP address. Changing your sites IP address can affect rankings due to geo-location, so make sure it is properly geo-located. Most reputable hosting companies can easily take care of this.
-
David is right, you need to check the links made to both the non www and www version. Normally Google recommends 301 redirect because if there are some links made to your non www version then 301 redirect will pass link value (link juice) of non www version to www version (or vice versa).
If there are not much links made to your non www version, then I guess there is not much to worry and you can just keep it as it is (If its really hard to do it as it is in your case).
-
Also, in regards to changing hosts, I wouldn't worry about the IP address implications too much. As long as you move to a reputable host you should be fine.
-
The non www to www is often used to consolidate links, if you had external links pointing to both versions of your domain. Without being able to inspect your site, specifically if you have an issue with links pointing to each version of the domain, it's hard to say how much of an impact it will have. Still a best practice to put in place to avoid the issue though.
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
-
Someone redirected his website to ours
Hi all, I have strange issue as someone redirected website http://bukmachers.pl to ours https://legalnibukmacherzy.pl We don't know exactly what to do with it. I checked backlinks and the website had some links which now redirect to us. I also checked this website on wayback machine and back in 2017 this website had some low quality content but in 2018 they made similar redirection to current one but to different website (our competitor). Can such redirection be harmful for us? Should we do something with this or leave it, as google stop encouraging to disavow low quality links.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kahuna_Charles1 -
Redirect Chain Advice
Hi, i hope you can help. My site crawl is showing that I have a redirect chain on my home page. Basically it shows I am going from : http: > https: > https://www. I need everything to go from http:// and http://www directly to https://www. without the chain. Below is a copy of the htaccess, can anyone see if there is an error in there that could be causing it. RewriteEngine On
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DaleZon
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress In addition, i have seen that they have a plugin called SSL insecure content fixer installed. It is showing this under its status: Array ( [HTTPS] => on [PHPHANDLER] => /usr/local/php70/bin/php [HTTP_X_REAL_IP] => 109.158.20.158 [HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO] => https ) I think possibly this might have something to do with the issue, any thoughts are appreciated Thanks0 -
Is it best to 301 redirect or use canonical Url when consolidating two pages?
I have build several pages (A and B) with high quantity content. Page A is aged and gets lots of organic traffic, ranks for lots of valuable keywords, and has only internal links to this page. Page B is newer (6 months) and gets little traffic, ranks for no keywords, but has terrific content and many high value external links. As Page A and B are related to a similar theme, I was going to merge content from page B onto page A, but don't know which would be the best approach for handling the links going to page B. For the purposes of keep as much link equity as possible, is it best to us a 301 redirect from B to A or use a canonical URL from B to A?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cutopia0 -
How long should I keep the 301 redirect file
We've setup an new site and many pages don't exist anymore (clean up done). But for many of them we have new pages with new url's. We've monitored the 404 and have now many URL's redirected with 301 (apache file). How long should we keep this in place? Checking all links manually to see of new url is in place of the old url (in google) is too much work. tx!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KBC0 -
To redirect or not to redirect, that is the question
I work for a software company that is redeveloping the website (same domain.) We have tons of content in the form of articles and documents for support, how to use the product better, case studies, and blog posts. I've downloaded a landing page report and many of these have low impressions and little or no clicks (some ranked high other very low.) Should I redirect all this content to the new site where some of it won't exist or forget about it because of the lack of juice? Is there a rule-of-thumb threshold for redirecting for content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody15969167212220 -
Create a link or redirect?
We have 60 demo movie pages on our site. We no longer link to these movie pages internally, because they are outdated; however, a lot of our partner companies are still linking to these pages. Some of these pages will have 10-15 linking root domains and a page authority of 30+... so pretty decent authority. These pages only include a movie on the pages, no links. I am trying to pass some of the link juice from these pages to other pages on our site. I am wondering if I should: A)Include transcripts on these pages, then link back to our current product page or solution pages? B)Set up redirects from these pages to a product or solution page? C)Set up a redirect to our homepage? Any advice? Thanks, Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mike.Goracke0 -
"Starting Over" With A New Domain & 301 Redirect
Hello, SEO Gurus. A client of mine appears to have been hit on a non-manual/algorithm penalty. The penalty appears to be Penguin-like, and the client never received any message (not that that means it wasn't manual). Prior to my working with her, she engaged in all kinds of SEO fornication: spammy links on link farms, shoddy article marketing, blog comment spam -- you name it. There are simply too many tens of thousands of these links to have removed. I've done some disavowal, but again, so much of the link work is spam. She is about to launch a new site, and I am tempted to simply encourage her to buy a new domain and start over. She competes in a niche B2B sector, so it is not terribly competitive, and with solid content and link earning, I think she'd be ok. Here's my question: If we were to 301 the old website to the new one, would the flow of page rank outperform any penalty associated with the site? (The old domain only has a PR of 2). Anyone like my idea of starting over, rather than trying to "recover?" I thank you all in advance for your time and attention. I don't take it for granted.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RCNOnlineMarketing0 -
Login redirect 302
Ok - anyone knows what to do with the temporary redirect to the login page? In our e-commerce system we have a checkout page, which requires user to be logged in - if they are not, we redirect them to the login page using simple php header("Locaiton: url"). This however has been found as a Warning as it's a temporary redirect. I can't really put there permanent redirect for obvious reasons so if someone could give me some clue on this situation that would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | coremediadesign0