301 vs 302
-
We recently launched a redesign and I noticed from running a crawl using Screaming Frog SEO that our redirects are all being seen as 302. I know 302 is a temporary redirect, but does this hurt SEO rankings when all our redirects are being seen as 302s instead of 301s?
Also, the way I implemented the redirects was by using the IIS Manager Tool. Is it possible that our IIS Manager Tool is not configured properly and instead of adding the redirect as 301, it is inserting it into the rewrite file as 302s?
-
Good to know!
-
302 is temporary. Its possible that the IIS Manager tool is not configured or check command to make it 301
All the best !
-
I'm in complete agreement that a 301 instead of a 302 is the best practice here, but wanted to point out that 302s do not necessarily pass no page rank at all. Check out this test study by Geoff Kenyon which dispels the theory that 302 pass no page rank at all, but clearly 301 is preferable in most cases.
-
A 302 is a temporary redirect. A good use of a 302 is when you have a form submission and want to redirect from the processing page. A 302 does not flow any page rank.
A 301 is a permanent redirect. Search engines obey this directive that page1.html is now page2.html. It will not only de-index page1.html but move most of the rank page1.html had over to page2.html.
If you're using IIS7 or later you should be able to easily add a 301.
-
All redirects should be a 301 in order to pass link benifits of the legacy page. You will still lose some link juice through a 301 but a 302 shall not pass benefits heres another thread on this topic.
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
-
Rel=Canonical Vs. 301 for blog articles
Over the last few years, my company has acquired numerous different companies -- some of which were acquired before that. Some of the products acquired were living on their previous company's parent site vs. having their own site dedicated to the product. The decision has been made that each product will have their own site moving forward. Since the product pages, blog articles and resource center landing pages (ex. whitepapers LPs) were living on the parent site, I'm struggling with the decision to 301 vs. rel=canonical those pages (with the new site being self canonicaled). I'm leaning toward take-down and 301 since rel=canonicals are simply suggestions to Google and a new domain can get all the help it can to start ranking. Are there any cons to doing so?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mfcb0 -
301 vs Canonical - With A Side of Partial URL Rewrite and Google URL Parameters-OH MY
Hi Everyone, I am in the middle of an SEO contract with a site that is partially HTML pages and the rest are PHP and part of an ecommerce system for digital delivery of college classes. I am working with a web developer that has worked with this site for many years. In the php pages, there are also 6 different parameters that are currently filtered by Google URL parameters in the old Google Search Console. When I came on board, part of the site was https and the remainder was not. Our first project was to move completely to https and it went well. 301 redirects were already in place from a few legacy sites they owned so the developer expanded the 301 redirects to move everything to https. Among those legacy sites is an old site that we don't want visible, but it is extensively linked to the new site and some of our top keywords are branded keywords that originated with that site. Developer says old site can go away, but people searching for it are still prevalent in search. Biggest part of this project is now to rewrite the dynamic urls of the product pages and the entry pages to the class pages. We attempted to use 301 redirects to redirect to the new url and prevent the draining of link juice. In the end, according to the developer, it just isn't going to be possible without losing all the existing link juice. So its lose all the link juice at once (a scary thought) or try canonicals. I am told canonicals would work - and we can switch to that. My questions are the following: 1. Does anyone know of a way that might make the 301's work with the URL rewrite? 2. With canonicals and Google parameters, are we safe to delete the parameters after we have ensures everything has a canonical url (parameter pages included)? 3. If we continue forward with 301's and lose all the existing links, since this only half of the pages in the site (if you don't count the parameter pages) and there are only a few links per page if that, how much of an impact would it have on the site and how can I avoid that impact? 4. Canonicals seem to be recommended heavily these days, would the canonical urls be a better way to go than sticking with 301's. Thank you all in advance for helping! I sincerely appreciate any insight you might have. Sue (aka Trudy)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TStorm1 -
301 a website to mine within a subfolder
Hey there Mozzers, I have purchased a very amazing Social Media Related Plugin. I already have a business website about digital marketing which pretty much falls in the same category. I am thinking of transferring that plugin into a subfolder of my own website. Is there anything I should keep in mind when I do that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AngelosS1 -
Flip-Flopping domains - 301 redirect question
We have a client who has had the following domain setup for some time: longdomain.com 301 -> shortdomain.com Now, they would like to go back to the original longdomain.com, and will have the following setup: shortdomain.com 301 -> longdomain.com Obviously, I'm concerned about redirect loops cached in the browser. I plan to have the 301's from longdomain.com changed over to 302's for two weeks ahead of the change, so that hopefully when the change happens, browsers and search engines are more ready to respond. I also plan to establish rel=canonical on the longdomain.com pages after the switch. Is there anything else you'd recommend to help with the changeover? Should we plan for an intermediary period were both domains are serving the content, so that the redirects can be purged, before being re-established the other direction? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bit-Wizards0 -
301 issues
Hi, I have this site: www.berenjifamilylaw.com. We did a 301 from the old site: www.bestfamilylawattorney.com to the one above. It's been several weeks now and Google has indexed the new site, but still pulls the old one on search terms like: Los Angeles divorce lawyer. I'm curious, does anyone have experience with this? How long does it take for Google to remove the old site and start serving the new one as a search result? Any ideas or tips would be appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Google Not Seeing My 301's
Good Morning! So I have recently been putting in a LOT of 301's into the .htaccess, no 301 plugins here, and GWMT is still seeing a lot of the pages as soft 404's. I mark them as fixed, but they come back. I will also note, the previous webmaster has ample code in our htaccess which is rewriting our URL structure. I don't know if that is actually having any effect on the issue but I thought I would add that. All fo the 301's are working, Google isn't seeing them. Thanks Guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
Would it be better to Start Over vs doing a Website Migration?
Hey guys /gals I have a question please. I have a computer repair business that does extremely well in search and is on the front page of google for anything computer repair related. However, I am currently re-branding my company and have completely redesigned every aspect of the UI and the SEO Site structure as well as the fact that I have completely written vastly different content and different title tag lines and meta descriptions for each page. So basically when doing a migration we know that we want to keep our content, titles, headlines and meta descriptions the same as to not lose our page rank. Seeing that I have completely went against the grain in all directions on a much needed company re-branding and everything is completely different from the old site is it even worthwhile 301 redirecting my old urls to the new ones that would (best) correspond with the new? In the plainest English, would I do better at Ranking the New Website QUICKER without doing 301 redirects from the OLD to the NEW? In an EXTREME instance like what I have done, would the Domain Migration IMPEDED me ranking the new site seeing how nothing is the same? I have build a Rock solid SILO Site Architecture on the New site which is WordPress using the Thesis Framework and the old domain is built on JOOMLA 1.5 Thank fellas Marshall
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarshallThompson0 -
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