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
-
301 Redirects for Multiple Language Sites in htaccess File
Hi everyone, I have a site on a subdomain that has multiple languages set up at the domain level: https://mysite.site.com, https://mysite.site.fr , https://mysite.site.es , https://mysite.site.de , etc. We are migrating to a new subdomain and I am trying to create 301 redirects within the htaccess file, but I am a bit lost on how to do this as it seems you have to go from a relative url to an absolute - which would be fine if I was only doing this for the english site, but I'm not. It doesn't seem like I can go from absolute url to an absolute url - but I could be wrong. I am new to editing the htaccess file - so I could definitely use some advice here. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amberprata0 -
Going from 302 redirect to 301 redirect weeks after changing URL structure
I made a small change on an ecommerce site that had big impacts I didn't consider... About six weeks ago in an effort to clean up one of many SEO-related problems on an ecommerce site, I had a developer rewrite the URLs to replace underscores with hyphens and redirect all pages throughout the site to that page with the new URL structure. We didn't immediately update our sitemap to reflect the changes (bad!) and I just discovered all the redirects are 302s... Since these changes, most of the pages have a page authority of 1 and we have dropped several spots in organic search. If we were to setup 301 redirects for the pages that we changed the URL structure would there be any changes in organic search placement and page authority or is it too late?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody16116990439410 -
International SEO and Website Redirection
Hey there Mozzers, If you have a website for example www.example.com and you wanted to target Australia and UK and you owned the .com.au and .co.uk. Would that be ok if everything redirected to the .com ? I know that having the .com.au is a signal for Google but the redirection is causing me troubles. Would that be huge of a difference if everything redirected to the .com version of the site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AngelosS0 -
How to redirect an url in .htaccess when "redirect 301" doesnt work
I have an odd page url, generated by a link from an external website, it has: %5Cu0026size=27.4KB%5Cu0026p=dell%20printers%20uk%5Cu0026oid=333302b6be58eaa914fbc7de45b23926%5Cu0026ni=21%5Cu0026no=24%5Cu0026tab=organic%5Cu0026sigi=11p3eqh65%5Cu0026tt=Dell%205210n%20A4%20Mono%20Laser%20Printer%20from%20Printer%20Experts%5Cu0026u=fb ,after a .jpg image url, and I can't get it redirect using the redirect 301 in .htaccess to the properly image url as I use to do with the rest of not found urls eg: /15985.jpg%5Cu0026size=27.4KB%5Cu0026p=dell%20printers%20uk%5Cu0026oid=333302b6be58eaa914fbc7de45b23926%5Cu0026ni=21%5Cu0026no=24%5Cu0026tab=organic%5Cu0026sigi=11p3eqh65%5Cu0026tt=Dell%205210n%20A4%20Mono%20Laser%20Printer%20from%20Printer%20Experts%5Cu0026u=fb to just: /15985.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Status0 -
301 Redirect htaccess
Hi Guys, I have a website that has plenty of links with parameters. For example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | UrbanMark
http://www.domainname.co.uk/index.php?app=ecom&ns=catshow&ref=Brandname-Golf-Shorts&sid=201v04gxs2hlozv161tfo43qk98583el I want to place a wildcard redirect on the .htaccess but don't know what exactly code for this. Ideally I want the URLs above to be: http://www.domainname.co.uk/Category/Brandname-Golf-Shorts Any help pls. Thanks,
Brucz0 -
301 redirect w/ dynamic pages to static
I am trying to redirect old dynamically created pages to a new static one (single page). However, when I implement the redirects, it still uses part of the old dynamic url. For instance... dynamic.php?var=example1 dynamic.php?var=example2 dynamic.php?var=example3 should all redirect to: static.html. However, they are redirecting to: static.html?var=example1 static.html?var=example2 static.html?var=example3 The page is resolving fine, but I don't want google to misinterpret the new static page as numerous page with dup content. I tried this in PHP on the dynamic.php page as follows, but it the problem above persisted: header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheDude
header('Location: http://www.mysite.com/static.html'); I tried doing it in my .htaccess file as follows, but the problem persisted: redirect 301 /info/tool_stimulus.php?var=example1 http://www.mysite.com/static.html
redirect 301 /dynamic.php?var=example2 http://www.mysite.com/static.html Can anyone solve this in PHP or w/ htaccess? Help!!! 🙂0 -
Questions about 301 Redirects
I have about 10 - 15 URLs that are redirecting to http://www.domainname.comwww.domainname.com/. (which is an invalid URL)The website is on a Joomla platform. Does anyone know how I can fix this? I can't figure out where the problem is coming from.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnParker27920 -
Question about 301 redirect for trailing / ?
I am cleaning up a fairly large site. Some pages have a trailing slash on the end some don't. Some of the existing backlinks built used a trailing slash in the url and some didn't. We aren't concerned with picking a particular one but just want to get one set and stick to it from now on. I am wondering, would I clean this up within the same redirect in the htaccess file that takes care of the www and non www? example RewriteEngine On
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PEnterprises
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.domain.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com$1 [L,R=301] I currently use that to redirect the www. to the non www as you can see. However here is what I was confused about. Would this code be enough to redirect ALL pages with a / to the ones without? or would I also need to add another code (so there is 2) to my htaccess like below? RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com$1 [L,R=301] RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.domain.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com$1 [L,R=301] That way, now, even the non www pages with a trailing slash will redirect to the non www without the trailing slash. Hopefully you understand what I am getting at. I just want to redirect EVERYTHING to the non www WITHOUT a / Thank you Jake0