What is the best way to execute a geo redirect?
-
Based on what I've read, it seems like everyone agrees an IP-based, server side redirect is fine for SEO if you have content that is "geo" in nature. What I don't understand is how to actually do this. It seems like after a bit of research there are 3 options:
-
You can do a 301 which it seems like most sites do, but that basically means if google crawls you in different US areas (which it may or may not) it essentially thinks you have multiple homepages. Does google only crawl from SF-based IPs?
-
302 passes no juice, so probably don't want to do that.
-
Yelp does a 303 redirect, which it seems like nobody else does, but Yelp is obviously very SEO-savvy. Is this perhaps a better way that solves for the above issues?
Thoughts on what is best approach here?
-
-
You are welcome.
Hmmmm.. don't know about Yelp, I've seen others using 303 too, but still 302 seems to be the way to go.
-
Thanks Federico. Any insight as to why Yelp, who is very seo savvy, uses a 303?
-
Well, personally I would go with a 302.
The reasons are:
301: the browser "remembers" that 301, so next time the user request that page, their browser will automatically redirect as the last time it accessed the page. However, the 302, as a temporary redirect will let the browser know that it should re-request the page.
Say your website www.example.com holds an english version in the root, and then a german version in www.example.com/de. If a german user accesses the site for the first time, you do the geolocation check and redirect to german version while saving a session/cookie of the chosen version. Then if the user chooses to switch to the english version you update that cookie/session to save the one that the user chose to navigate and make a 302 redirection. Next time the user accesses, having the cookie will automatically show/redirect to the appropriate language.
Using the same example, if you did a 301, then even if the user changed the language, as the browser already has a 301-permanent redirect, he will be redirected to the "first version served".
SEOwise, if we take a quick look on Google, they use 302 to redirect users to the "appropriate" version, so I guess that should be ok as long as you use rel="alternate" to point to the other versions of your site:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
EDIT: link juice flows to the page that the link is pointing. Say a link points to www.example.com then the juice goes to www.example.com, even if that page has a redirection to the german version (when accessed from germany). Anyway, it is said that 302s also pass some pagerank.
Hope that helped.
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
-
Best Way To Write H1 to Get Max CTR?
Can anyone please share some guidelines regarding how to write the H1 subject of the post which can generate the maximum CTR.?. I noticed even when i able to rank on the featured snippet with good enough search volume the CTR is too low. Anyone share some expert advice please?
On-Page Optimization | | Asifseo5968621 -
Domain Redirection
hi all - question we seem to see people ranking better naturally when they have the seo term in their title. Say we were optimising for "red buses". Our company was called Diamond we are using Diamond.co and have a DA of 32 (Page Title Diamond Red Buses | Bla) Should we buy diamondredbuses.co.uk ? Is it best to continue on our domain and redirect? Or move domains? How much would it affect?
On-Page Optimization | | KellyDSD860 -
In your opinion, best CDN provider?
Hi Moz Community, This is my first post and I just want to introduce myself and say hello! I need to know (who in your opinion) is the best CDN provider? I use the platform WordPress and currently host with HostGator if this helps. Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | xdunningx0 -
After HTTPS upgrade, should I change all internal links, or a general 301 redirect is better?
I recently upgraded to https. Of course most internal links of my old posts are still http. So I set up a 301 redirect in order to make the old link works. In terms od SEO this is good or it is better to update all the internal links to https, manually? In that case can I do it in batch with a search/replace command in the phmyadmin database? any other suggested method? thank you
On-Page Optimization | | micvitale0 -
With 301 Redirects Does Changing URLs Matter?
We are redesigning our website in order to give it a more modern visual look. For the most part all the content will remain the same. Our old site is hosted on .asp so all of our current URLs look something like this: www.example.com/products/food.asp We plan on using 301 redirects in order to update every URL and remove the .asp. Since we are going to be doing 301 redirects for every existing URL anyways, does it matter from an SEO and ranking standpoint, if we also change the content and structure of the URL? For example, would we see a ranking impact if we were to change the above example URL to www.example.com/food? Obviously we want to try to retain as much link juice and ranking factors as possible during this redesign. Another issue we are seeing is with the image file names of our existing website images. We are moving to a new CMS platform (WordPress) that automatically saves images using a folder path similar to this: wp-uploads/2015-08/food. Will that change affect our SEO or ranking at all? When Google crawls an image does it care about the full path? Any insight would be much appreciated! 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Best way to upload products to Magento?
The import/export tool Magento has is really disappointing, especially when it comes to uploading images. Creating products manually is very time consuming. Could anyone recommend a method to upload products through a feed, is there any plugins etc?
On-Page Optimization | | Jseddon920 -
Redirecting URLS on windows
Could anyone help out here please. A client of ours have reveloped their website from HTML to ASP (helpful!). They have 60 odd pages indexed in Google with the .html extension. We need to do a redirect on these pages so that all link juice is passed to the new pages. What would be the best way to do this please?
On-Page Optimization | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
What is the best out-of-the-box optimized WordPress Theme?
I've reviewed other answers on this forum and searched the web. Still looking for a good answer that's actually specific and can explain why. I've looked at studiopress.com themes, pagelines.com which I love but doesn't appear to have much optimization out of the box, http://themeforest.net/item/udesign-wordpress-theme/253220 http://www.vklabx.com/wordpress-themes/wordpress-theme-ad-flex-niche.php PS - not looking for answers that involve the use of SEO plugins, but if there's a theme you know of that takes minimal editing to improve optimization I'd be interested as well. Thanks in advance, hope this can help someone else as well
On-Page Optimization | | Aqua0