301 redirect: canonical or non canonical?
-
Hi,
Newbie alert!
I need to set up 301 redirects for changed URLs on a database driven site that is to be redeveloped shortly.
The current site uses canonical header tags. The new site will also use canonical tags.
Should the 301 redirects map the canonical URL on the old site to the corresponding canonical for the new design . . . or should they map the non canonical database URLs old and new?
Given that the purpose of canonicals is to indicate our preferred URL, then my guess is that's what I should use. However, how can I be sure that Google (for example) has indexed the canonical in every case?
Thx in anticipation.
-
The most accurate way is to do it manually. Doing a site:YOURDOMAIN.com in Google will alert you to most of the ugly URLs you want to get rid of.
-
Thanks for that David . . . makes sense.
Can you recommend any tools to help with this job or is it still mostly a manual process?
Cheers.
-
"Should the 301 redirects map the canonical URL on the old site to the corresponding canonical for the new design . . . or should they map the non canonical database URLs old and new?"
Any URL's that are indexed should be redirected to the correct version. For example if you have both a database URL and a canonical URL both indexed in search results, then they both should be sent to the correct version.
Also, having only canonical URLs in your submitted sitemaps will help to remove a lot of these, even without redirects.
-
Ok, here is my understanding regarding canonicals and how it works with redirect. 301 redirect means the old URL is shifting its all value and user to the new domain (unlike 302 that only derives traffic but contain the URL value to itself only).
Whereas Canonicals indicates Google the preferred version of the domain so theoretically if you use the canonicals on every page Google should pick the redirected page as 301 will take Google to the final destination anyways…
What will I do?
If Possible, I will map all the redirected URLs and remove canonicals from there just to be on the safe side but I don’t think having there will be much of a difference as Google as at least that smart.
Hope this helps!
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 a Year Later
I inherited the digital maintenance of a website that was relaunched a year ago. In looking at Google Analytics, organic search a year later is still down 33%. I fear they did not install 301 Redirects but can't really get a specific answer from them. Is it possible to install them a year later to help with Google indexing and get back some of the organic traffic?
Technical SEO | | stansamples0 -
Removing Multiple 301 Redirects
During my last redesign (and migration to Drupal) some of the updated SEO friendly url's on the new site were misspelled. Rather than updating the 301 redirects to point to the correct page the developer just added an additional 301 redirect. So it was redirected like this website.com/oldpage (301 to) website.com/new-paige (301 to) website.com/new-page Instead of website.com/oldpage (301 to) website.com/new-page I'll be finishing another redesign and updating to https soon, should I remove the redirect to the misspelled domain and just have one 301 from the original page? These multiple redirects have been up for over a year. Thanks for any specific advice!
Technical SEO | | talltrees0 -
301 redirect chains
Hi everyone, I've had my site for a while now and have changed the structure a number of times. I'm confident my 301's work well and am not concerned about dead ends on my site. My question is, is there a way to find 301 redirect chains? i.e. can I export my link data from webmaster tools and run it through some software that tells me how many steps my 301's are taking to get to the final page? I don't know for sure that there are long 301 chains in my link structure, but I have a suspicion and it's very hard to check by going through them manually. Thanks in advance Will
Technical SEO | | madegood0 -
Where is the 301 redirect?
Hi, in the last week I take an issue for 301 permanent redirect for a subfolder in the main website! In that folder i have a index.php file for a google map fullscreen edition and the only link who connects the wordpress website with the subfolder is only a direct link! Is that an error of seomoz app or something else? Thanks 1.jpg
Technical SEO | | petrospan0 -
Is 301 redirecting all old URLS after a new site redesign to the root domain bad for SEO?
After a new site redesign ...would it hinder our rankings if we 301 redirected all old URLS that are returning 404 error codes to the root domain (home page) ? Would this be a good temporary solution until we are able to redirect the pages to the appropriate corresponding page? Thanks so much!
Technical SEO | | DCochrane0 -
My home page 301 redirects - is this an SEO problem
When ever a browser calls my site canineconcepts.co.uk, it is automatically 301 redirected to canineconcepts.co.uk/en I am not sure if I should be concerned about this from an SEO perspective or not. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | CanineConcepts0 -
How do I redirect non www pages to www on a windows server?
As the .htaccess file cannot be worked on, I added this php code 301 redirect if the URL does not contain a www on all the pages (small website - 10 pages) : header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" ); header( "Location: $location" ); I want to know if this is ok for SEO? Has anyone done this on a windows server? Or if you have any better methods, it would be great if you can share. Please help. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | ArjunRajkumar0 -
200 Redirects for SEO instead of 301
We are working with a company on re-platforming our website. On a call yesterday they outlined a strategy to use 200 redirects for our top keywords instead of 301s. I am not familiar with this type of redirect and was wondering if anyone could provide some more insight.
Technical SEO | | EvergladesDirect0