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.
Will I lose Link Juice when implementing a Reverse Proxy?
-
My company is looking at consolidating 5 websites that it has running on magento, wordpress, drupal and a few other platforms on to the same domain. Currently they're all on subdomains but we'd like to consolidate the subdomains to folders for UX and SEO potential.
Currently they look like this:
After the reverse proxy they'll look like this:
I'm curious to know how much link juice will be lost in this switch. I've read a lot about site migration (especially the Moz example). A lot of these guides/case studies just mention using a bunch of 301's but it seems they'd probably be using reveres proxies as well.
My questions are:
- Is a reverse proxy equal to or worse/better than a 301?
- Should I combine reverse proxy with a 301 or rel canonical tag?
- When implementing a reverse proxy will I lose link juice = ranking?
Thanks so much!
Jacob
-
Two servers? The existing one to process the redirects and a new one to handle the reverse proxy. Or vice versa. So the DNS for the old domain would point to a server that does the redirects. However, the server that hosts the site will be set to reverse proxy.
Another way of looking at this concept would be to take down and redirect the old site, and to start a new site, with the exact same files/database, that will be used to serve the content in the subdirectory/folder.
Ask what they think of that idea. I certainly don't have all the answers to every situations, but will do my best to help you find a workable solution.
-
Hey Everett,
My dev team says it's extremely difficult to do a 301 with the reverse proxy because the reverse proxy needs the domain in order to create the reverse proxy. If we place a 301 redirect it won't be able to access the domain and will be broken.
We're unable to do a server to server process because we're using load balance applications. Do you have any recommendations with this situation?
Thanks,
Jacob
-
That's good to know. I'll follow that.
Some of the articles I read made it sound like reverse proxy was another form of 301, but it didn't make sense. Now I know why.
Cheers,
Jacob
-
You need to do both.
The reverse proxy isn't about SEO so much as the ability to use subdirectories instead of subdomains, even though the subdirectories are hosted on different servers. You have to use a reverse proxy for the technological requirements of using a subdirectory (folder) instead of a subdomain when you're hosting sites on different servers but want to combine them on the same domain.
The 301 Redirects will ensure the users (including search engines) that visit the old URL on the subdomain get forwarded on to the new URL in the subdirectory. This is what preserves pagerank, and provides a good user experience. Do not keep the content available at the old URLs; Do not allow those URLs to return a 404 Status. 301 Redirect them.
I hope that clarifies your situation.
-
My dev team would prefer a reverse proxy. Is there a reason you'd rather do a 301 than a reverse proxy?
When reading this article https://moz.com/blog/what-is-a-reverse-proxy-and-how-can-it-help-my-seo it seemed that doing a reverse proxy would be preferable to just a bunch of 301's. Is that not the case?
-
It is getting over complicated. First principal is do not harm. I would not recommend a reverse proxy. 301'ing each page carry's the juice over. A 301 does everything you need.
However prior to any 301's I would be auditing each sub domain for a penalty - ie you could be pushing a penalty to the main site. So i would suggest a very thorough audit. If in doubt rel canonical that page.
Hope that assists.
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
-
Breadcrumbs versus in context link
Hi, I remember reading that links within the text have more value than breadcrumbs links for example because in context links are surrounded by the right content (words) but google search engine optimisation starter guide says breadcrumbs are good, so which one is recommended ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Link juice through URL parameters
Hi guys, hope you had a fantastic bank holiday weekend. Quick question re URL parameters, I understand that links which pass through an affiliate URL parameter aren't taken into consideration when passing link juice through one site to another. However, when a link contains a tracking URL parameter (let's say gclid=), does link juice get passed through? We have a number of external links pointing to our main site, however, they are linking directly to a unique tracking parameter. I'm just curious to know about this. Thanks, Brett
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
What is best practice for "Sorting" URLs to prevent indexing and for best link juice ?
We are now introducing 5 links in all our category pages for different sorting options of category listings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
The site has about 100.000 pages and with this change the number of URLs may go up to over 350.000 pages.
Until now google is indexing well our site but I would like to prevent the "sorting URLS" leading to less complete crawling of our core pages, especially since we are planning further huge expansion of pages soon. Apart from blocking the paramter in the search console (which did not really work well for me in the past to prevent indexing) what do you suggest to minimize indexing of these URLs also taking into consideration link juice optimization? On a technical level the sorting is implemented in a way that the whole page is reloaded, for which may be better options as well.0 -
Does Disavowing Links Negate Anchor Text, or Just Negates Link Juice
I'm not so sure that disavowing links also discounts the anchor texts from those links. Because nofollow links absolutely still pass anchor text values. And disavowing links is supposed to be akin to nofollowing the links. I wonder because there's a potential client I'm working on an RFP for and they have tons of spammy directory links all using keyword rich anchor texts and they lost 98% of their traffic in Pengiun 1.0 and haven't recovered. I want to know what I'm getting into. And if I just disavow those links, I'm thinking that it won't help the anchor text ratio issues. Can anyone confirm?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiguelSalcido0 -
One Way Links vs Two Way Links
Hi, Was speaking to a client today and got asked how damaging two way links are. i.e. domaina.com links to domainb.com and domainb.com links back to domaina.com. I need a nice simple layman's explanation of if/how damaging they are compared to one way links. And please don't answer with you lose link juice as I have a job explaining link juice.... I am explaining things to a non techie! Thank you!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
De-indexed Link Directory
Howdy Guys, I'm currently working through our 4th reconsideration request and just have a couple of questions. Using Link Detox (www.linkresearchtools.com) new tool they have flagged up a 64 links that are Toxic and should be removed. After analysing them further alot / most of them are link directories that have now been de-indexed by Google. Do you think we should still ask for them to be removed or is this a pointless exercise as the links has already been removed because its been de-indexed. Would like your views on this guys.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
Reverse Proxy better than 301 redirect?
Are reverse proxies that much better than 301 redirects? Should I invest the time in doing this? I found out about reverse proxies here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-a-reverse-proxy-and-how-can-it-help-my-seo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianmcc0 -
Does 302 pass link juice?
Hi! We have our content under two subdomains, one for the English language and one for Spanish. Depending on the language of the browser, there's a 302 redirecting to one of this subdomains. However, our main domain (which has no content) is receiving a lot of links - people rather link to mydomain.com than to en.mydomain.com. Does the 302 passing any link juice? If so, to which subdomain? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bodaclick0