Redirecting a domain
-
I was setting up a new campaign and received the following error from Roger Robot.
"We have detected that the domain www.sitename.com and the domain sitename.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here."
I know about redirecting a PAGE using 301 Redirects and how to specify the www. canonical in Google webmaster tools, but is there a "DOMAIN" redirect that I'm missing.
What would you suggest doing given the error message above.
Thanks,
Bill
-
I thought it would be super cool if someone would post the exact syntax to use in .htaccess to make this happen. For all the hordes of info out there on redirects and htaccess, it's amazingly hard to find the code for this one. Here is what worked for me:
<code>RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]</code>
-
I looked at the server headers for the URL mentioned in the screenshot, and the site is running IIS6. I don't have the instructions for doing the domain redirect for that handy, and it's been ages since I've done it, but at least now we know we can't just say use .htaccess.
-
Thanks for the info.
I'll dig in and see what I can find.
-
I'm getting access to the FTP and Host Server.
If they have a cPanel I'll look for that. May need your help later, once I know more what I'm dealing with.
Thanks so far
-
If you're using Firefox, go get the Domain Details addon
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/domain-details/
Then go surf to your site and it should tell you (based on the headers) what kind of server you're running (for instance, seomoz is running Apache 2.2.14)
The most common solution is using htaccess, which can determine at the server level which version to show and 301 all traffic there. Not all web servers support this, though (which is why Kyle asked the question). IIS7+ can support it, as can the most popular open source ones (nginx, lighthttpd, Apache).
Here's an article on how it works
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/rewriterule-split-personality-explained
-
You would probably need more information than just looking at the client side. The only way that could work out is if the file extensions were .aspx or .php or something like that.
Essentially what i was getting to, is you would set the redirect differently depending on what type of hosting you are using. If it was microsoft base you would set it in IIS, while if it was linux based you would added it to your root .htacess file.
Hope that helped!
-
not sure... this site belongs to a friend. Can I tell from just looking at the html or do I need to access the server/host?
-
What type of hosting/server do you have linux based or microsoft?
-
Hi Bill.
Your issue is a common one and yes, there is a solution.
First step is to determine which version of a URL you wish to represent your site, with or without the www. For purposes of this discussion I'll assume you wish to keep the www prefix. In that case, you need to set up a redirect to send all non-www traffic to it's www equivalent.
If you have cPanel access to your web server, you should find a Redirect tool there. Otherwise, you need to modify your htaccess file. If that less sentence is not something you are familiar with, then contact your web host and let them know your wishes. They can easily set this up for you.
For a demo of how it works, type in "google.com" in your web browser. Notice how the address is always changed to http://www.google.com/. That action is because of a properly configured redirect.
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 Showing As 307 Redirects
Hi, Our clients are adamant that they have set up 301 permanent redirects on their websites, but when we check using Screaming Frog and various online HTTP status code checkers they are showing as 307 temporary redirects. Examples;
Technical SEO | | Webpresence
http://www.lifestylelifts.co.uk/home-lifts/
http://www.terrylifts.co.uk/ Again, the client says they are seeing 301 redirects. Why are we seeing 307's? Who is right? Very puzzling, any theories would be very much appreciated 🙂 Thanks in advance. Lee.0 -
Are .clinic domains effective?
We acquired a .clinic domain for a client, they are right now running under a .ca and I was just wondering if there were any cons to making the switch. On the flip side are there any pros? I've tried to search for the answer but couldn't seem to come across anything, thank you if you have any knowledge or could point me to a resource.
Technical SEO | | webignite0 -
Which domain should i set up a blog on?
I have a client who uses a .com for there website in Australia. Were now building an external blog which will be on a subdomain. We recently discovered they also own the Australian version of there domain name. Should we build there blog on: blog.currentdomain.com 2) blog.newdomain.com.au Thanks
Technical SEO | | acs1110 -
301 redirects
Hi, I am a working on a new web site, and I want to redirect all the urls of another site (on a different host) to this one. According to both hosts it is "impossible" to do this for all urls. I don't believe that to be the case, but how do I do this? And, should both sites be hosted on the same server first?
Technical SEO | | vibelingo0 -
To 301 redirect or not to 301 redirect? duplicate content problem www.domain.com and www.domain.com/en/
Hello, If your website is getting flagged for duplicate content from your main domain www.domain.com and your multilingual english domain www.domain.com/en/ is it wise to 301 redirect the english multilingual website to the main site? Please advise. We've recently installed the joomish component to one of our joomla websites in an effort to streamline a spanish translation of the website. The translation was a success and the new spanish webpages were indexed but unfortunately one of the web developers enabled the english part of the component and some english webpages were also indexed under the multilingual english domain www.domain.com/en/ and that flagged us for duplicate content. I added a 301 redirect to redirect all visitors from the www.domain/en/ webpages to the main www.domain.com/ webpages. But is that the proper way of handling this problem? Please advise.
Technical SEO | | Chris-CA0 -
Google , 301 redirects, and multiple domains pointing to the same content.
Google, 301 redirects, and multiple domains pointing to the same content. This is my first post here. I would like to begin by thanking anyone in advance for their help. It is much appreciated. Secondly, I'm posting in the wrong place or something please forgive me simply point me in the right direction I'm a quick learner. I think I'm battling a redirect problem but I want to be sure before I make changes. In order to accurately assess the situation a little background is necessary. I have had a site called tx-laws.com for about 15 years. It was a site that was used primarily by private resource and as such was never SEO'd. The site itself was in fact quite Seo unfriendly. despite a complete lack of marketing or SEO efforts, over time, SEO aside, this domain eventually made it to page one of Google Yahoo and Bing under the keywords Texas laws. About six months ago I decided to revamp the site and create a new resource aimed at a public market. A good deal of effort was made to re-work the SEO. The new site was developed at a different domain name: easylawlook up.com. Within a few months this domain name surpassed tx-laws in Google and was holding its place in position number eight out of 190 million results. Note that at this point no marketing has been done, that is to say there has been no social networking, no e-mail campaigns, no blogs, -- nothing but content. All was well until a few weeks ago I decided to upgrade our network and our servers. During this period there was some downtime unfortunately. When the upgrade was complete everything seemed fine until a week or so later when our primary domain easy law look up vanished off Google. At first I thought it was downtime but now I'm not so sure. The current configuration reroutes traffic from tx-laws to easylawlookup in IIS by pointing both domains to the same root directory. Everything else was handled through scripting. As far as I know this is how it was always set up. At present there is no 301 Redirect in place for tx-laws (as I'm sure there probably should be). Interestingly enough the back links to easylaw also went away. Even more telling however is that now when I visit link: easylawlookup.com there is only one link, and that link is to a domain which references tx-laws not easy law. So it would appear that I have confused Google with regards to my actual intentions. My question is this. Right now my rankings for tx-laws remain unchanged. The last thing I want to have happen is to see those disappear as well. If easy law has somehow been penalized and I redirect tx-laws to easy through a 301 will I screw up my rankings for this domain as well? Any comments or input on the situation are welcome. I just want to think it through before I start making more changes which might make things worse instead of better. Ultimately though, there is no reason that the old domain can't be redirected to the new domain at this point unless it would mean that I run the risk of losing my listings for tx-laws, ending up with nothing instead of transferring any link juice and traffic to easy law. With regards to the down time, it was substantial over a couple of weeks with many hours off-line. However this downtime would have affected both domains the only difference being that the one domain had been in existence for 15 years as opposed to six months for the other. So is my problem downtime, lack of proper 301 redirect, or something else? and if I implement a 301 at this point do I risk damaging the remaining domain which is operational? Thanks again for any help.
Technical SEO | | Steviebone0 -
How to 301 multiple domain names to a single domain
Hey, I tried to find and answer to this seemingly simple question, but no luck. So, I have one domain name with a website attached to it. I also registered all the other domain names that are similar to it or have different extensions - I want to redirect all the other domain names to my one main domain name without getting penalised by the big G. It looks like this: www.mainsite.com - this is my main domain I also have www.mainsite.com.au, www.mainsite.org, and www.mainsite.org.au which I all want to just redirect to www.mainsite.com I have been told that the best way to do this is a 301 redirect, but to do that you need to make a CNAME for all the other domains that points to www.mainsite.com. My problem is that I cannot seem to create a CNAME record for http://mainsite.com - I have it working for http://www.mainsite.com but not the non www record. What should I be doing differently? Is it just my DNS provider is useless? Thanks, Anthony
Technical SEO | | Grenadi0 -
301 Redirect Help
Hello! I am getting ready to launch my freshly coded site in the next week or so. My product URLs are changing SLIGHTLY and want to confirm I am going about things the right way: A. My LIVE site store URLs look like http://hiphound.com/shop/dog-collars . My DEV site store URLs look like http://hiphound.com/dog-collars . No /shop directory. B. The dev firm installed the rewrite rule below: ############################################ enable rewrites Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine on #RedirectMatch 301 ^/shop?/$ http://hiphound.com/ RedirectMatch 301 ^/shop?/$ http://hiphound.com ########################################### C. When I manually enter a URL with /shop in the address the website redirects to the correct page which is good. QUESTIONS I HAVE 1. Is the above redirect correct? I need them to permanent. Don't think the above is right... 2. Will links in the Google index be redirected as well? I am assuming yes but just want to confirm. 3. For each page indexed in Google will its pagerank, etc. be passed to the new page using just the 301 above? 4. Do I need to create addtional 301s for each page? So mapping the old page to the new page? Please advise. The goal here is to of course preserve the rankings of the pages already in the Google index. THANK YOU!!! Lynn
Technical SEO | | hiphound0