I have multiple URLs that redirect to the same website. Is this an issue?
-
I have multiple URLs that all lead to the same website. Years ago they were purchased and were sitting dormant. Currently they are 301 redirects and each of the URLs feed to different areas of my website. Should I be worried about losing authority? And if so, is there a better way to do this?
-
I would go further than that and check the link profiles of all the domains. Any sign of spam, unnatural anchor text etc then do not redirect as you'll inject that problem into your site. Even if you believe them to be dormant and never used I would just check in case you were not the original owner. Always worth doing that check.
-
With 10 URLs ( I think you mean 10 different domains?), you should be fine. If those URLs have a lot of links pointing to them, though, there could potentially be an issue. So, if there were 1,000 links to each one, then you'd be redirecting 10,000 links. It really depends on how many links we're ultimately talking about.
I have seen situations where thousands of domains were redirected, and that was a problem--it was also a problem with about 100 domains redirected, as they all had links pointing to them.
What I would do is look at your analytics to see which of them are actually sending traffic to your site, which ones have links pointing to them. Then only redirect the ones that have traffic and links and ones that are on-topic.
-
I would be shocked if it were an issue based on what you have here. I think you are fine.
Robert
-
Thank you for the reply. It is about 10 URLs to a golf website and some URLs i.e. bestgolf.com point to the main page whereas i.e. bestgolfclubs.com point deeper into the site (all examples.) Just want to make sure that this isn's seen as duplicate content, cause it's not. Just different dot-coms to the same website.
-
Yes and No,
You said to the same website so are the urls redirecting to pages that are similar to the ones that they are directed to? Multiple must be defined, but let's say it is 30 and they are going to similar pages on the site; there is no problem.
If you simply got a bunch of sites that had lost their domain and they all have disparate content, then you could be setting yourself up for a problem. Could be is the operative term though. We took over a client who had roughly 100 "micro-sites." They were all for the same service and were not strong sites. For most we redirected only the home pages and let the other pages 404. For a few sites we let them die and for a couple the client refused to let us take them down (even though they had no traffic!).
I hope that helps a bit.
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
-
I'm struggling to understand (and fix) why I'm getting a 404 error. The URL includes this "%5Bnull%20id=43484%5D" but I cannot find that anywhere in the referring URL. Does anyone know why please? Thanks
Can you help with how to fix this 404 error please? It appears that I have a redirect from one page to the other, although the referring page URL works, but it appears to be linking to another URL with this code at the end of the the URL - %5Bnull%20id=43484%5D that I'm struggling to find and fix. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Nichole.wynter20200 -
Thoughts on different base URLs for different website language?
Hello mozzers, Currently in the process of setting up a new website for a new entity. I was wondering what your thoughts were on using different base urls for different languages. Example: ABCgroup.com -> English
Technical SEO | | yacpro13
groupeABC.com -> French I've never done this before; I've been one to prefer using a subfolder structure. However, for this case, the expected visitors are truly split between 2 languages, and therefore having a base url in the visitor's language is appealing. Would this approach be detrimental if all pages have a proper hreflang tag? Thanks!0 -
How do I optimize a website for SEO for a client that is using a subdirectory as a seperate website?
We launched a subdirectory site about two months ago for our client. What's happening is searches for the topic covered by the subdirectory are yielding search results for the old site and not the new site. We'd like to change this. Are there best practices for the subdirectory site Specifically we're looking for things we can do using sitemapping and Webmaster tools. Are there other technical things we can do? Thanks you.
Technical SEO | | IVSeoTeam120 -
301 Redirect
Hello, On the 26.2.13 we changed domain names having followed the guidance of both Matt Cutts Youtube videos and googles own online documentation. We have a 301 redirect in place from our old domain ukmotorhomehirerental.com to our new site leisurerentalsdirect.com on a page to page basis. The site structure has not been altered in anyway. Google has been informed of the change of address. After the change the new domain transition was pretty seamless and ranked in the same postion in the SERPsThe one thing I've not done yet is tell all the webmasters who link to the old site that the address has changed (could this be it?)
Technical SEO | | Badapplemedia0 -
301 redirect or maual edit of new urls
Hello forum! I will get right to the point,I have a 4 year old PR4 site with lots of links (vacation rentals marketplace, like Homeaway), In about a month from now new CMS will be ready and I will be doing redesign of the site. The problem that I have is (as many of you can guess) losing all the old links that rank high = losing traffic / revenue. Two posiblle solutions here: 1. 301 redirect for each page that ranks high - point it to new url 2. Manually editing new urls created by new CMS and making them to be the same as old ones. This means that some number of urls (the ones that rank high and generate traffic) would be exactly the same while other ones would be generated by CMS thus dufferent in many ways (unicode,different keywords etc.) What would You do here? I am more for 301 redirect but I read all kinds of horror stories in drop of SERP. Thank You for help and advices in advance.
Technical SEO | | Gregos0 -
URL specific websites with i-framed application
I have 300 URL specific websites that rank well in Yahoo and Bing. Unfortunately I don't have access to the websites due to a previous marketing agreement (before my time). I do have access to the application that is i-framed into the websites. I was thinking about adding a paragraph below the application with a link to the primary website. How does google look at these links. If I add the link, there will be an additional 300 links showing up at the same time. Not what they want to see from my personal knowledge base. At the same time, its not black hat SEO, I am just trying to link to the other websites which I own which are related. What are people thoughts.
Technical SEO | | FidelityOne0 -
Redesign existing websites / worried about urls / mapping
Hi Guys, While redesigning existing websites that will have page name changes such as: example.com/products to be called example.com/solutions example.com/about-us to be called example.com/about should I 301 the old url to the new url. In the past I have not done this & I'm just wondering from an SEO point of view how bad is this? (On a scale of 1 to 10 how bad is this not 301ing urls, 10 being really bad & 1 being fine), Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0 -
Domain Redirect Issues
Hi, I have a domain that is 10 years old, this is the old domain that used to be the website for the company. The company approximately 7 years ago was bought by another and purchased a new domain that is 7 years old. The company did not do a 301 redirect as they were not aware of the SEO implications. They continued building web applications on the old domain while using the new domain for all marketing and for business partner links. They just put in a server level redirect on the folders themselves to point to the new root. I am on Tomcat, I do not have the option of a 301 redirect as the web applications are all hard coded links (non-relative) (hundreds of thousands of dollars to recode) After beginning SEO; Google is seeing them as the same domain, and has replaced all results in Google with the old domain instead of the new one..... My questions is.... Is it better to take the hit and just put a robots.txt to disallow all robots on the old domain Or... Will that hurt my new domain as well since Google is seeing them as the same? Or.... Has Google already made the switch without a redirect to see these as the same and i should just continue on? (even the cache for the new site shows the old domain address) Old Domain= www.floridahealthcares.com New = www.fhcp.com *****Update after writing this I began changing index.htm to all non relative links so all links on the old domain homepage would point to fhcp.com fixing the issue of the entire site being replicated under the old domain. I think this might "Patch" my issue, but i would still love to get the opinion of others Thanks Shane
Technical SEO | | Jinx146780