302 redirects, canonicalise or redirect (301)?
-
Hey Guys,
I am fairly new to 'technical' SEO as I was lucky enough in my old role to have technical expertise in the team for things like this, now I am learning myself and it is a slow and painful process, so your expertise is soooo much appreciated! My I.T. dept say that I have 3 instances on my website where the Hybris platform is creating a 302 redirect automatically - the first:
- URL doesn't exist - Hybris creates a temp 302 - the system does not create case sensitive url's
| http://www.example.fr/Example/Marques/0180/brand/CHANEL | URL doesn't exist | TRUE | 302 |
| http://www.example.fr/Example/Marques/0015/brand/Giorgio-Armani | URL doesn't exist | TRUE | 302 |
| http://www.example.fr/fr/Example/marken/0507/brand/lancome | URL doesn't exist | TRUE | 302 |I believe these are being redirected due to the fact that capital letters are being created in the url.
- Multi-lingual redirects
I have a German and French version of my site and whenever any switches from one URL to the other using our language selector a 302 is created.
- Dynamic URL elements
Dynamic url elements and special characters are being created in the URL, I am not sure where this is happening, but my I.T. department would like me to go and see whether this is something that can be created by a browser.
If anyone has any similar problems or have any advice or insights even, I would love to hear from you! Thanks
-
Thank you Ethan, Yes I will recommend a 301 redirect to the I.T. guys, but I do think that my I.T. guys wont like me much
Please can I ask - why would I need to create more content to canonicalise it if I already have two url's? Would I not just add code to both pages?
If the page 1 url exists and temp redirects it to the page 2 url, would I not just add code to both pages? Or if I add code to the page 1 url, would it be exactly the same to the other variations?
Please teach me this as I will need to explain it to the I.T. dept as this was there recommendations. I think I will most definitely need tech help moving forward!
Thanks a lot for your time!
-
Thanks Patrick,
This is indeed helpful. I have read these links; SO:
-
Redirects should be 301.
-
I need to add href lang tags (for google and bing) on my website and I need to look more into geo targeting in more detail.
- Do you recommend I need to find out why these urls are being created? and yes this has also crossed over with the duplicate content project we are running too. But 301's are a solution until I figure out why these url's are being created so we can get it fixed.
I will check the sitemap today.
Thanks for your advice
-
-
Hi there
I recommend learning the best practices for redirects, as well as hreflang attributes and language tags - you should also read into country targeting your sites in Google and Bing - this is a big deal for international SEO and targeting.
I would also look into your dynamic URLs by reading through this resource from Google on potential duplicate content - this will help you categorize and manage your URLs, helping Google understand their purpose. You should also check your internal links and sitemap to make sure that there are not dynamic URLs listed there.
This will require your web development team as well, so make sure they read and understand these resources, both for current and future situations. Some of this has the tendency to get pretty technical and indepth so if you need help, know that Moz has a fantastic Recommended Companies page to help.
That being said, 301 redirects are preferred by search engines, 302s passes 0% link juice and most cases should not be used, and all URLs (and their dynamic variations) should have a canonical tag to the preferred URL.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
Do a 301, there's no need to create more content just to canonicalize it. 302's aren't too bad, but the permanent redirect is best practice.
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
-
Help with 302 Temporary Redirect warning via MOZ crawl
Hi Guys, This is my first post so hopefully I'm using the forum correctly. MOZ crawl tells me that I have 35 pages with a temporary redirect The URL column displays 302 Found along with the http:// URL Redirection Location column shows the corresponding https:// URL This all seems pretty self explanatory. However, I’ve checked my .htaccess file and I can’t see any 302 references in it. I'm trying to figure out where the 302 redirects are from and how I can make them permanent Please can anyone help me out? My .htaccess looks like it needs a little tidy (there are 2 if blocks) <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
Web Design | | ianalannash
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.mysite.com/$1 [R,L]</ifmodule> BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [R=301,L]</ifmodule> END WordPress0 -
How to Redirect Old Domain to a New Domain?
One of my clients has chosen a new domain for her website so we will redirect the old domain to the new. I understand that once redirected, most of the authority built up over the years for the old domain will pass through to the new domain. Is this correct? Can this be done through the Wordpress dashboard, say with a plugin perhaps? I have a plugin called 404 Redirected I was going to try to use for this purpose. Finally, the client has other domains (5 total) she has used for one reason or another. She wants to consolidate all of them and have everything redirected to her new domain. Do you see any downside to this in terms of crawling, Google trust and authority? I know there are some user experience issues to deal with, but we're addressing those. I just don't want to do anything that may cause Google not to trust the new domain. Thanks, Dino
Web Design | | Dino640 -
How to rewrite/redirect a folder name with .htaccess
I have a folder in my site that I want to rename. I don’t want to just rewrite the URL and keep my old folder name, I want to change the folder name and then do whatever is necessary with .hataccess to not lose search engine rankings. The folder name I want to change has a space in it and also is misspelled (whoops x2) Example. Mysite.com/old foldr/page.html Mysite.com/newfolder/page.html How would I go about doing this with .htaccess? Do I just switch the folder name on my server and then set up a redirect, or do I do a rewrite? Sorry now familiar with the terms or .htacces. Thanks all
Web Design | | SheffieldMarketing0 -
Is it possible to redirect the main www. domain - but keep a subdomain active?
Hi Mozzers, Quick question, which I hope one of you can answer... Let's say I have a website (i) www.example.com and on that a subdomain exists, (ii) subdomain.example.com. Let's say I want to change my main domain from www.example.com to www.newwebsite.com. I'd 301 all content, use GWT to notify Google of a change of address etc etc. Having done that, is it still possible to keep the original subdomain active? So, even though www.example.com has been redirected / transferred to www.newwebsite.com, subdomain.example.com would still exist. If that is possible, what is the implication for Domain Authority? On the one hand, I have transferred the main site (so DA from that will transfer to the new site); but part of that root domain is still active. Make sense? Any answers? Thanks everyone...
Web Design | | edlondon0 -
Home page redirect - will this cause an SEO problem
Hello, We are using Wordpress to build a wiki site. The wiki plugin we're using (Wordpress Wiki lite) can only be set up on an internal page like nlpwiki(dot)org/wiki Can we redirect the home page to the /wiki subdirectory and use nlpwiki(dot)org/wiki as our home page? I've never done that, just wondering if it will be indexed as the home page or if there are any connonical issues. Thanks!
Web Design | | BobGW0 -
Redirection Of Mobile Traffic
Hi, I hope someone can help me with this, we have been working on creating a mobile version of our website, but does anyone know of a way of ensuring that mobile traffic is redirect to our mobile version, ie m.mydomain.com Thanks Rich
Web Design | | mos_rich0 -
Page Redirection solution
Page Redirection solution needs, there are 2 sites in the same folder and one page of old site is bxxxxxseo.com/products.php new site bxxxxxseo.com/product_list.php .there are many old page indexed i wanna redirect all old pages to relevant pages of new site using SEO friendly way .Any help really appropriate. Thank you
Web Design | | innofidelity0 -
Display a message after 301 redirect.
I know this one is a little more technical than pure SEO, but it somewhat ties in. I'm redirecting 2 sites to one. The companies have combined, and I've imported all their content that has been created, and the url mapping is set up correctly. So it currently is set up like this: A.com --> C.com
Web Design | | WilliamBay
A.com/blogpost-1 --> C.com/blogpost-1 B.com --> C.com B.com/blogpost-20 --> C.com/blogpost-20 What i would like is some method a redirect when landing at C.com or C.com/blogpost-XX. And in turn display a message in a DIV so I can style it. And yes, I have nothing better to do on a Friday night 🙂0