Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Direct link vs 302 redirect
-
So we have recently relaunched a site that we manage. As part of this we have changed the domain. The webdesign agency that built the new site have implemented a direct link from the old domain to the new domain. What is best practice a direct link or a 302 redirect? Thanks
-
Thanks a million for the help guys.
-
Hi Conor,
Chris's answer here is perfect.
You definitely don't just want to link from the old site to the new; you want the old site to be "gone" and to serve a 301 redirect to tell search engines "this resource has permanently moved, and is now over here ----> [new site]".
301 redirects are vital; 302s do not pass authority from one URL to another (there is speculation that a 302 that has been in place for a very long time might be treated as a 301 by Bing, but let's go with the fact that they're next to useless in most cases for passing SEO value).
The 301 redirect should be implemented on a page by page basis, meaning that the home page at www.oldiste.com redirects to www.newsite.com. www.oldsite.com/page1.html redirects to that page's new location, e.g. www.newsite.com/page1.html, and so forth. As Chris says, you do not want www.oldsite.com/page23.html to redirect to the home page of www.newsite.com. The only case in which you'd want to do this is if /page23.html no longer exists on the new site.
How this is done depends on what type of server your site sits on. If you are using an Apache server, the web developers will do this in the site's .htaccess file. If you are using a Microsoft IIS server, this will be done in a control panel. The web development company will clearly know which server you're using and where this will be done.
Some servers and hosts still implement 302 redirects as standard and not 301s, which is very frustrating from an SEO point of view. There should be nothing more difficult about creating a 301 than a 302.
The short version is: 301 the old site to the new if you want to transfer the authority from the old site to the new one. This will ensure that you bring most of that authority with you.
-
A 301 is telling Search engines (and any links) that this link or site has moved permanently, this would then mean the value of the links would be moved to the new location. A link would imply the site is staying and a % of link juice would flow though it compared to more through a 301. Other problem could be you may have duplicate content if your moving the domain.
If you do get a 301 done make sure they don't just 301 it all to the homepage it should be moved each category moved to its counter part (or as close to) as possible to maintain the transfer of authority & juice.
Hope that helps, and good luck!
-
Sorry yes I got a bit confused there. It is moved permanently so it should be a 301 rather than 302. But what is difference between the direct link and the 301. Is it just a case that the 301 can be more difficult to implement? I will not actually be implementing the redirect myself. This will be done by a 3rd party webdesign agency. I suppose I am keen to keep as much of the authority as possible from the old domain. Thanks
-
Is it a temp redirect ? If you're planning on move permanently you may want to think about 301ing the whole site to its relevant counter parts. a Direct Link is good for building up some authority and slowly migrating the site over time making sure each stage goes to plan rather than 301 the whole thing and panic if something goes wrong. It really boils down to your longer term goal.
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 redirect destination for 18k highly-linked pages
Technical SEO question regarding redirects; I appreciate any insights on best way to handle. Situation: We're decommissioning several major content sections on a website, comprising ~18k webpages. This is a well established site (10+ years) and many of the pages within these sections have high-quality inbound links from .orgs and .edus. Challenge: We're trying to determine the best place to redirect these 18k pages. For user experience, we believe best option is the homepage, which has a statement about the changes to the site and links to the most important remaining sections of the site. It's also the most important page on site, so the bolster of 301 redirected links doesn't seem bad. However, someone on our team is concerned that that many new redirected pages and links going to our homepage will trigger a negative SEO flag for the homepage, and recommends instead that they all go to our custom 404 page (which also includes links to important remaining sections). What's the right approach here to preserve remaining SEO value of these soon-to-be-redirected pages without triggering Google penalties?
Technical SEO | | davidvogel0 -
Should we Nofollow Social Links?
I've been asked the question of whether if we should nofollow all of our social links, would this be a wise thing to do? I'm not exactly getting a clear answer from search results and thought you guys would be best to ask 🙂 Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | JH_OffLimits0 -
Can I use a 301 redirect to pass 'back link' juice to a different domain?
Hi, I have a backlink from a high DA/PA Government Website pointing to www.domainA.com which I own and can setup 301 redirects on if necessary. However my www.domainA.com is not used and has no active website (but has hosting available which can 301 redirect). www.domainA.com is also contextually irrelevant to the backlink. I want the Government Website link to go to www.domainB.com - which is both the relevant site and which also should be benefiting from from the seo juice from the backlink. So far I have had no luck to get the Government Website's administrators to change the URL on the link to point to www.domainB.com. Q1: If i use a 301 redirect on www.domainA.com to redirect to www.domainB.com will most of the backlink's SEO juice still be passed on to www.domainB.com? Q2: If the answer to the above is yes - would there be benefit to taking this a step further and redirect www.domainA.com to a deeper directory on www.domianB.com which is even more relevant?
Technical SEO | | DGAU
ie. redirect www.domainA.com to www.domainB.com/categoryB - passing the link juice deeper.0 -
How can I stop a tracking link from being indexed while still passing link equity?
I have a marketing campaign landing page and it uses a tracking URL to track clicks. The tracking links look something like this: http://this-is-the-origin-url.com/clkn/http/destination-url.com/ The problem is that Google is indexing these links as pages in the SERPs. Of course when they get indexed and then clicked, they show a 400 error because the /clkn/ link doesn't represent an actual page with content on it. The tracking link is set up to instantly 301 redirect to http://destination-url.com. Right now my dev team has blocked these links from crawlers by adding Disallow: /clkn/ in the robots.txt file, however, this blocks the flow of link equity to the destination page. How can I stop these links from being indexed without blocking the flow of link equity to the destination URL?
Technical SEO | | UnbounceVan0 -
301 Redirect for multiple links
I just relaunched my website and changed a permalink structure for several pages where only a subdirectory name changed. What 301 Redirect code do I use to redirect the following? I have dozens of these where I need to change just the directory name from "urban-living" to "urban", and want it to catch the following all in one redirect command. Here is an example of the structure that needs to change. Old
Technical SEO | | shawnbeaird
domain.com/urban-living (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe/the-vale (single page w/ content) New
domain.com/urban
domain.com/urban/tempe
domain.com/urban/tempe/the-vale0 -
How to fix broken links?
Hi, I use WordPress CMS with Yoast SEO plugin. I have just found out that my 403 errors increased dramatically. It seems that all my tags below of each post are being broken for some reason. When i click on the tags i get the following massage: **403 Forbidden Request forbidden by administrative rules. ** I assume it has something to do with the configuration within Yoast SEO plugin. Dose anyone know how should i fix that? Thanks, Raviv evsGujA
Technical SEO | | Indiatravelz0 -
What is link Schemes?
Hello Friends, Today I am reading about link schemes on http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356 there are a several ways how to avoid Google penalties and also talk about the low quality links. But I can't understand about "Low-quality directory or bookmark site links" Is there he talked about low page rank, Alexa or something else?
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
Add to Cart Link
We have shopping cart links (<a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p"></a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">The SEOMoz site crawls are flagging these as a massive number of 302 redirects and I also wonder what sort of effect this is having on linkjuice flowing around the site. </a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">I can see several possible solutions: Make the links nofollow Make the links input buttons Block /cart/add with robots.txt Make the links 301 instead of 302 Make the links javascript (probably worst care) All of these would result in an identical outcome for the UX, but are very different solutions. What would you suggest?</a>
Technical SEO | | Aspedia0