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.
Canonical Question: Root Domain Geo Redirects to SubFolder.
-
Howdy,
Working on a larger eComm site that 302s you based on your location. With that in mind should I canonicalize the final page.
domain.com => 302 => domain.com/us/, domain.com/fr/, etc... (Should these all have a canonical pointing to the root domain.com?
-
Thanks for the tips man!
-
To be very honest I don't think it will make a difference if it's going to the /us/ version rather than the root.
If you prefer - you could keep the us version on the root & only redirect the non-us visitors to a country version.
Dirk
-
My only concern is domain.com/us/ showing up on google instead of domain.com
Is there anything I can do too keep it the SERP juice going to domain.com instead of the subfolder?
-
As far as I understand there is no content on domain.com so your last line makes no sense.
If you want the default version to be the us version you should put
Don't forget that hreflang needs to be placed on every page of your site - you can check if the implementation is correct here: http://flang.dejanseo.com.au/
Dirk
-
Dirk,
Great thoughts! We're currently talk through out long term international strategy right now. We're running about 20 local sites times 3 brands. Some are on subfolders, some on subdomains, and some on ccTLDs... so this is pretty tough right now.
We luckily caught an issue with Googlebot not being able to access internationally and corrected it. So I think we're safe on that front.
Most of the regions are cross accessible (Europe/APAC/North America) but you can't get from Asia to Europe if you need to from the site. So that's on our radar!
-
So in this case we don't need point a canonical from the subfolder to the root. But I need something like...
So then... will domain.com/us/ start ranking for google.com or will domain.com rank for google.com?
-
Be careful when redirecting based on ip - you have to make sure that Googlebot (accessing your site with a Californian ip) can access the non-US versions. If you have a link on each page to change the version to another country (and these pages are accessible without being redirected) you should be ok.
An alternative to ip based redirection is to use your main domain for a country select page and to store the selection in a cookie - so you can redirect to the chosen version on subsequent visits. Check volvocars.com as an example. The advantage is of this method is that you give control to the user (I personally find it quite annoying when I'm being redirected to the local version when I'm abroad and want to visit my "home" version).
rgds,
Dirk
-
If you are just changing the content a bit based on location, I think canonicalizing them all back to the root page is OK.
If this is redirecting based on translations, you should look into using the hreflang tag. It tells the search engines that there are alternate versions of the page in different languages.
Here are some resources for you.
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
- https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights
Once that is in place, each page can canonicalize to itself.
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
-
SEO implications of moving fra a sub-folder to a root domain
I am considering a restructure of my site, and was hoping for some input on SEO implications which I am having some issues getting clarity in. (I will be using sample domains/urls because of language reasons, not an english site), Thinking about moving a site (all content) from example.com/parenting -> parenting.com. This is to have a site fully devoted to this theme, and more easily monitor and improve SEO performance on this content alone. Today all stats on external links, DA etc is related to the root domain, and not just this sub-department. Plus it would be a better brand-experience of the content and site. Other info/issues: -The domain parenting.com (used as example) is currently redirected to example.com/parenting. So I would have to reverse that redirect, and would also redirect all articles to the new site. The current domain example.com has a high DA (67), but the new domain parenting.com has a much lower DA (24). Question: Would the parenting.com domain improve it's DA when not redirected and the sub-folder on the high-DA domain is redirected here instead? Would it severly hurt SEO traffic to make this change, and if so is there a strategy to make the move with as little loss in traffic as possible? How much value is in having a stand-alone domain, which also is one of the most important keywords for this theme? My doubt comes mostly from moving from a domain with high DA to a domain with much lower DA, and I am not sure about how removing the redirect would change that, or if placing a new redirect from the subfolder on the current site would help improve it. Would some DA flow over with a 301 redirect? Thanks for any advice or hints to other documentation that might be of interest for this scenario 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Magne_Vidnes0 -
Linking from & to in domains and sub-domains
What's the best optimised linking between sub-domains and domains? And every time we'll give website link at top with logo...do we need to link sub-domain also with all it's pages? If example.com is domain and example.com/blog is sub-domain or sub-folder... Do we need to link to example.com from /blog? Do we need to give /blog link in all pages of /blog? Is there any difference in connecting domains with sub-domains and sub-folders?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Switching from HTTP to HTTPS: 301 redirect or keep both & rel canonical?
Hey Mozzers, I'll be moving several sites from HTTP to HTTPS in the coming weeks (same brand, multiple ccTLDs). We'll start on a low traffic site and test it for 2-4 weeks to see the impact before rolling out across all 8 sites. Ideally, I'd like to simply 301 redirect the HTTP version page to the HTTPS version of the page (to get that potential SEO rankings boost). However, I'm concerned about the potential drop in rankings, links and traffic. I'm thinking of alternative ways and so instead of the 301 redirect approach, I would keep both sites live and accessible, and then add rel canonical on the HTTPS pages to point towards HTTP so that Google keeps the current pages/ links/ indexed as they are today (in this case, HTTPS is more UX than for SEO). Has anyone tried the rel canonical approach, and if so, what were the results? Do you recommend it? Also, for those who have implemented HTTPS, how long did it take for Google to index those pages over the older HTTP pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Steven_Macdonald0 -
301 redirect subdirectory to new domain
I'm planning on using 301 redirects to spin out a subdirectory of my current website to be its own separate domain. For instance, I currently have a website www.website.com and my writers write tech news at www.website.com/news. Now I want to 301 redirect www.website.com/news to www.technews.com. Will this have any negative impact on SEO? What are some steps that I can take to minimize these impacts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris_Bishop1 -
Redirecting index.html to the root
Hi, I was wondering if there is a safe way to consolidate link juice on a single version of a home page. I find incoming links to my site that link to both mysite.com/ and mysite.com/index.html. I've decided to go with mysite.com/ as my main and only URL for the site and now I'd like to transfer all link juice from mysite.com/index.html to mysite.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | romanbond
When i tried 301 redirect from index.html to the root it created an indefinite loop, of course. I know I can use a RewriteRule.., but will it transfer the juice?? Please help!7 -
Should I buy a .co domain if my preferred .com and .co.uk domain are taken by other companies?
I'm looking to boost my website ranking and drive more traffic to it using a keyword rich domain name. I want to have my nearest city followed by the keyword "seo" in the domain name but the .co.uk and .com have already been taken. Should I take the plunge and buy .co at a higher price? What options do I have? Also whilst we're on domains and URL's is it best to separate keywords in url's with a (_) or a (-)? Many thanks for any help with this matter. Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeoSheikh0 -
Merging Domains... Sub-domains, Directories or Seperate Sites?
Hello! I am hoping you can help me decide the best path to take here... A little background: I'm moving to a new company that has three old domains (the oldest is 10 years old), which get a lot of traffic from their e-letters. Until recently they have not cared about SEO. So the websites have some structural, coding, URL and other issues. The sites are indexed, but have a problem getting crawled and/or indexed for new content - haven't delved into this yet but am certain I will be able to fix any of these issues. These three domains are PR4, PR4, PR5 and contain hundreds of unique articles. Here's the question... They want to move these three sites **to their main company site (PR4) and create sub domains for each one. ** I am wondering if this is a good idea or not. I have merged sites before (creating categories and/or directories) and the end result is that the ONE big site, is much for effective than TWO smaller, less authoritative sites. But the sub domain idea is something I am unsure about from an SEO perspective. Should we do this with sub domains? Or do you think we should keep the sites separate? How do Panda and Penguin play into this? Thanks in advance for the help! SD P.S. I'm not a huge advocate in using PR as a measurement tool, but since I can't reveal the actual domains, I figured I would list it as a reference point.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | essdee0 -
How to resolve Duplicate Page Content issue for root domain & index.html?
SEOMoz returns a Duplicate Page Content error for a website's index page, with both domain.com and domain.com/index.html isted seperately. We had a rewrite in the htacess file, but for some reason this has not had an impact and we have since removed it. What's the best way (in an HTML website) to ensure all index.html links are automatically redirected to the root domain and these aren't seen as two separate pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ContentWriterMicky0