Blog subdomain not redirecting
-
Over the last few weeks I have been focused on fixing high and medium priority issues, as reported by the Moz crawler, after a recent transition to WordPress. I've made great progress, getting the high priority issues down from several hundred (various reasons, but many duplicates for things like non-www and www versions) to just five last week.
And then there's this weeks report.
For reasons I can't fathom, I am suddenly getting hundreds of duplicate content pages of the form http://blog.<domain>.com</domain> (being duplicates with the http://www.<domain>.com</domain> versions). I'm really unclear on why these suddenly appeared.
I host my own WordPress site ie WordPress.org stuff. In Options / General everything refers to http://www.<domain>.com</domain> and has done for a number of weeks. I have no idea why the blog versions of the pages have suddenly appeared.
FWIW, the non-www version of my pages still redirect to the www version, as I would expect.
I'm obviously pretty concerned by this so any pointers greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Mark
-
So far so good - every URL I try to my site is now redirected to the www subdomain and, to date, I am unaware of any side effects. I will keep monitoring but all looks good at this point.
Thanks again to everyone who helped with this.
Mark
-
Looks like that, or some approximation thereof has you sorted. I would just like to add that you should keep an eye on Webmaster Tools.
-
Take a copy of the htaccess file, if something goes wrong, then you can always go back
-
I'm hesitant to say; "Do X." because I'm not really sure what will happen - with the redirect plugin in the mix. I imagine a lot, if not all of the subdomain folders and pages have already been redirected via the plugin. So I imagine the path of least disaster at the moment is just redirecting the subdomain (sub.domain.com) to the main domain (www.domain.com) alone.
I could be totally wrong, but this one is weird.
Test out the rule and then push live. Here is the code to redirect just the subdomain to just the www domain:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^blog.domain.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/?$
RewriteRule .* http://www.domain.com [R=301,L]Double check it, triple check it and then push live. Keep a very close eye on it. I really hope we don't end up with a loop.
-
Yep, totally agree with the thinking and prefer that approach. I researched the non-www (blank subdomain) solution a while back and the rewrite rule I used was suggested in a number of places. But your suggest seems much more robust, providing there's no gotcha (I know of none).
I implemented this and it seems to be working (after a bit of a detour because of caching :)). So, I think I am good and will monitor.
A big thanks to you and Travis. I very much appreciate the prompt responses.
Mark
-
The logic I used is like this.
rather than have a rules like
If wearing jeans, you must wear the school uniform
If wearing hoodie, you must wear the school uniform
If wearing a thong, you must wear the school uniform
If naked, you must wear the school uniformyou only need one rule
If not wearing school uniform, you must wear the school uniform -
in htaccess "!" means not so try this
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]also when using regex special chars like "." should be escaped with "" see above www.domain.com
-
Here's the only (remotely) relevant entry I have in my .htaccess file (replacing my actual domain with <domain>):</domain>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^<domain>.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.<domain>.com/$1 [R=301,L]</domain></domain>The intent of this is to redirect all URLs of the form http://<domain>.com/page</domain> to http://www.<domain>.com/page.</domain> I implemented that a while back and it seems to be working just fine.
I can't find any reference to the blog subdomain. I suspect what I need to do is implement something like this:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^blog.<domain>.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.<domain>.com/$1 [R=301,L]</domain></domain>By the way, despite appearances I am "the guy" for this site. I've completely installed/configured it from scratch so anything broken is my fault
I have the smarts to backup, test, verify, restore etc so I can make changes to .htaccess myself. I just don't have significant experience of the .htaccess file itself so just need to be cautious as I go. But it's all me
Dare I suggest that what I am trying to achieve here (redirect from the blog subdomain to the www subdomain) shouldn't be too tricky?
Thanks.
Mark
-
Ok, I think I understand a bit better, you don't have a blog?
Then I would remove the dns record for blog, if you cant do that then yes you could 301 redirectYou can do this in one redirect following the logic
if not www.domain.com then redirect to www.domain.com -
Thanks again, Alan.
I am thinking that what I probably need is to 301 redirect all URLs of the form http://blog.<domain>.com/page</domain> to http://www.<domain>.com/page</domain>, yes? In short I don't want to use the blog subdomain anywhere so, to avoid SEO inefficiencies, I should presumably redirect as above so that everything ends up at the www subdomain.
I think
Thanks.
Mark
-
Sorry missed the bit about blog.
obviously blog.domain.com should not 301 to www
it should point to the correct site, then all reports and google will sort themselves out.so add one more step, test that blog does in fact resolve to the correct site
-
Travis,
I want to be really sure I understand what you are saying so let me clarify.
I do have a blog DNS entry, referring to the server (just like I have www, to the same IP address). In a "clean" installation, any page being requested to that server, SHOULD redirect to the www subdomain because I have www.<domain>.com</domain> specified in General \ Settings. Is that accurate so far?
However, "something" (probably in .htaccess) is kicking in that allows URLs with the blog subdomain to resolve (no redirection), regardless of what is in General \ Settings, yes?
Thanks.
Mark
-
Thanks Alan. I would like to verify one aspect of this.
Somehow, Moz/Google located the blog.<domain>.com pages. I honestly don't know why but I assume that if these pages have actual resolved all along, as they do now, then I could potentially have external URLs pointing to them, yes? If so, then if I just follow the suggestion you have made then won't I continue to have duplicate content issues? I fear I am missing something from your suggestion :)</domain>
PS: I just realized what you perhaps meant. I have generally seen references to "non-www" to mean URLs of the form http://<domain>.com</domain> ie. with no subdomain. But I am guessing you mean "non-www" in the broader sense - absolutely ANYTHING that doesn't have the www subdomain should redirect there. That's presumably what you had in mind, yes?
Thanks again.
Mark
-
This particular situation won't sort itself out. There's a sub involved and I suspect it's a rewrite rule that shouldn't be there. The developer appears to be somewhat sophisticated as they're using X-FRAME-OPTIONS in a way that doesn't allow iFrames to work outside of the domain.
So who knows what goodies await in .htaccess.
-
Test that non-www 301's to www
Make sure that all your internal links point to www, you don't want links that you control going thought a redirect.If those 2 are ok, then forget the report it will sort itself out over time.
-
Okay, here's what I got:
The plugin supposedly operates independently of .htaccess. So taking that at face value, I don't think you're going to get what you need out of the plugin.
I would imagine the .htaccess file is much the same as it was when the site launched, or when it was last modified by the developer. So that file is likely going to need editing to achieve what you need. However, that file isn't something you just want to play with in a live environment.
And it's not something anyone in their right mind would blindly say; "Yeah just copy and paste this rule!"
I would talk to Dale and see if he has a block of free time coming up.
-
We are using the Redirection plugin.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/
However, everything I have entered is at the page level (redirect page1 to page2). I don't know if the Redirection plugin even supports subdomain redirection. I am checking that now (a quick scan of the support page for that plugin finds every question related to subdomains unanswered :)).
It seems the working assumption is that nothing changed and that Moz/Google just found this for the first time, which I hadn't considered.
Thanks.
Mark
-
You are going to have to add a manual rewrite rule to the htaccess, preferably at the top. This might help, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1321123/redirect-from-subdomain-to-domain-htaccess But like Travis said, be careful, make a back up, because you can break your site doing this.
-
You mentioned in the above thread that you're using a redirection plugin. What is it's name? Beyond that Yoast and All in One both allow you to edit htaccess entries. (I despise that feature, btw.)
-
Thank you Travis. I have never actually edited the .htaccess file directly (not even 100% sure where it is :)) but I guess what you suggest could be put there through other means (plugins, etc).
Just to make sure I understand, though, what I actually want is a 301 redirect for all pages under the blog subdomain to the www domain. I'm not overly familiar with the .htaccess syntax for redirects (but can research) - but if you happen to have the syntax for that I'd be appreciative
Thanks again.
Mark
-
Thank you Leslie. Yes, I can browse to the blog... pages and they remain that way in the browsers URL field. So, the thinking is that this has been around all along and Moz/Google just found it? Interesting.
So, any idea on how I would fix this? I do use the Redirection plugin (and have been entering quite a few redirects recently) but as far as I can tell that plugin allows me to redirect between pages, rather than redirect subdomains i.e. I can redirect http://www.<domain>.com/page1</domain> to http://www.<domain>.com/page2</domain> but not www -> something else.
Thank you again, Leslie.
-
I'm going to guess that you have something that looks like this in your .htaccess file:
RewriteRule ^blog/$ http://blog.website.com [L,NC,R=301]WARNING
You can knock your site down with the slightest syntax error when you mess with the htaccess file. Proceed with caution.
Let us know what you find.
-
Can you access the pages at blog.yoursite.com? Do they show up in the browser? It could be an issue that has always been there that Google just found.
-
I should add that I do have a DNS record for the blog subdomain. However, that has been in place all along, including the last few weeks where these duplicate content errors didn't exist. Given the settings in Settings \ General I would expect these to be redirected to http://www.<domain>.com</domain>, which seems to be what was happening up until this weeks report.
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
-
Subdomain vs Subdirectory - Specific Case: A big blog in a subdomain
Hi. First of all, I love MOZ and learned a lot about SEO by reading articles here. Thanks for all the knowledge that i received here. I read all the articles about "Subdomain vs Subdirectory" in the MOZ community and I have no doubt that subdirectories are the best option for a blog. But, the company that I work now has a blog with more than 17.000 articles, 1.000 categories and tags, hosted on a subdomain structure. The website has a Domain Authority of 78 (I am working to improve these numbers) and the blog subdomain has the same (78). We had 2.7 million hits per month in the blog and 4.5 million hits per month in the site. I am advising the company to change the blog structure to subfolders inside the domain, but I'm finding resistance to the idea, because the amount of work involved in this change is enormous and there is still the fear of losing traffic. My questions are: Is there any risk of losing traffic with the amount of articles we have? What do we probably get if we change the blog structure to subfolders? Could we have increased authority for the domain? More Traffic? How can I explain to my superiors that we would probably have increase traffic for our keywords? Is there any way to prove or test the gains from this change before we run it? Thanks in Advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marcus.Coelho0 -
No Control Over Subdomains - What Will the Effect Be?
Hello all, I work for a university and I my small team is responsible for the digital marketing, website, etc. We recently had a big initiative on SEO and generating traffic to our website. The issue I am having is that my department only "owns" the www subdomain. There are lots of other subdomains out there. For example, a specific department can have its own subdomain at department.domain.com and students can have their own webpage at students.domain.com, etc. I know the possibilities of domain cannibilization, but has any one run into long term problems with a similar situation or had success in altering the views of a large organization? If I do get the opportunity to help some of these other domains, what is best to help our overall domain authority? Should the focus be on removing similar content to the www subdomain or cleaning up errors? Some of these subdomains have hundreds of 4XX errors.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jeff_Bender0 -
Subdomains + SEO
Hi everyone, So a little background - my company launched a new website (http://www.everyaction.com). The homepage is currently hosted on an amazon s3 bucket while the blog and landing pages are hosted within Hubspot. My question is - is that going to end up hurting our SEO in the long run? I've seen a much slower uptick in search engine traffic than I'm used to seeing when launching new sites and I'm wondering if that's because people are sharing the blog.everyaction.com url on social (which then wouldn't benefit just everyaction.com?) Anyways, a little help on what I should be considering when it comes to subdomains would be very helpful. Thanks, Devon
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EveryActionHQ0 -
Subdomain and root domain
Hey Everyone, our page has multiple domains and I'm wondering how it affects search rankings today. I saw some stuff from almost a year ago, but I'm not sure if something has changed. We currently have our root domain "www.xyz.com" and started moving some pages over to a different sub-domain "web.xyz.com" because of usability and ease of adjusting content. How much will this affect our seo? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | josh1230 -
Redirects in .htaccess file
I am using yoast seo plugin for wordpress. I have done several link changes and placed approximately 80-100 301 redirect into .htaccsses file. Is this good practice? Do they have to be there forever? Is it not slowing down site? Or should this be done in different way? Thank you very much Iris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rebeca10 -
Redirecting non www site
Hello Ladies and Gentlemen. I 100% agree with the redirecting of the non www domain name. After all we see so many times, especially in MOZ how the two different domains contain different links, different DA and of course different PA. So I have posed the question to our IT company, "How would we go about redirecting our non www domain to the www version?", "Where would we do that?", " we cant do the redirect on our webserver because the website is listed as an IP address, not a domain name, so would we do the redirect somewhere at GoDaddy?" who is currently maintain our DNS record So here is the response from IT: " I would setup a CNAME record in DNS (GoDaddy), such that no matter if you go to the bare domain, or the www, you end up in the same place. As for SEO, having a 301 redirect for your bare domain isn't necessary, because both the bare domain and the www are the same domain. 301 is a redirect for "permanently moved" and is common when you change domain names. Using the bare domain or the www are NOT DIFFERENT DOMAINS, so the 301 would not be accurate, and you'd be telling engines you've moved, when you haven't - which may negatively impact your rank. It sounds to me that IT is NOT recommending the redirect. How can this be? Or are we talking about two different things? Will the redirect cause the melt down as the IT company suggests? Or do they nut understand SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davenport-Tractor0 -
Duplicate content on subdomains.
Hi Mozer's, I have a site www.xyz.com and also geo targeted sub domains www.uk.xyz.com, www.india.xyz.com and so on. All the sub domains have the content which is same as the content on the main domain that is www.xyz.com. So, I want to know how can i avoid content duplication. Many Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HiteshBharucha0 -
Canonical or 301 redirect, that is the question?
So my site has duplicate content issues because of the index.html and the www and non www version of the site. What's the best way to deal with this without htaccess? Is it a 301 redirect or is it the canonical, or is it both?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0