301 or 302 Redirects with locale URLs?
-
Hi Mozers,
I have a bit of a tricky question I need some help answering. My agency are building a brand new website for a client of ours which means changing the domain name (yay...). So! I have my 301's all ready to go for the UK locale, however, the issue I have is that the site will also eventually have French, German and Spanish locales - but these won't be ready to go until later this year. We will be launching in just English for September. The current site already has the French and German locales on it as well.
Just to make sure I'm being clear, the site will be www.example.com for launch, but by lets say November, we will also have a www.example.com/fr/ and www.example.com/de/ site launched too.
So what do I do with the locale URLs? As I said above, the exisitng site already has the French and German locales on it, so I don't particularly want to redirect the /fr/ and /de/ URLs to the English homepage, as I will want to redirect them to the new URLs in November, and redirecting more than once is bad for SEO right?
Any ideas? Would 302s maybe be the best suggestion?
Thanks!
Virginia
-
Thanks Greg. Yeah, I didn't really want to go down the 302 route, it makes everything so much more time sensitive!
-
Thanks Rob!
I'm trying to encourage my client as much as possible to start work on the translations of the sites ASAP so that we don't end up going down the Google Translate route. I've advised against this already.
Your advise has been really helpful!
Thanks
-
Hi Virginia,
In all honesty, it's probably not going to matter very much which kind of redirect you are using. If I understand you correctly, your current redirect chain will look like:
www.example.com --> www.example2.com
www.example.com/fr --> www.example2.com
www.example.com/de --> www.example2.comThe reason redirects won't matter is that in November your second French, Dutch, etc. sites are going live. The redirects will have to be changed in November to look more like this:
www.example.com --> www.example2.com
www.example.com/fr --> www.example2.com/fr
www.example.com/de --> www.example2.com/deGiven that there is a maximum of 6-8 weeks when these redirects will be active, Google will barely have time to index them before you are changing your redirect chain all over again. In my books, that makes these redirects somewhat redundant - either way you are going to have some SEO changes occurring during that time which will probably be in a downward direction. That being said, you will want to finish up with 301 redirects since that will be the permanent fix.
However, once the new redirects are placed and indexed, you should see things return to normal and even improve if the new sites are featuring good UX. Keep in mind that any redirect is going to hurt your link profile a little bit, so you can expect to lose some rankings once your redirects are indexed.
Bottom line:
- Focus on ensuring the new sites are well put-together with good content
- Make sure proper translations are taken care of (this is a HUGE problem with multi-lingual sites)
- Try to avoid Google Translate plugin for translation services (doesn't sound like this is what you're doing)
- More importance should be placed on the UX of the site and the link profile impacts of 301 redirects
- Make sure 301 redirects are what you finish up with after the new sites go live in November
Feel free to reach out if I can be of more assistance.
Cheers,
Rob
-
Also, I understand your confusion in 301 vs 302. I mean essentially, your redirect is temporary. But 302 redirects are meant more so for short time periods, probably with a month being the max amount of time you would want to do this. You'll want to use a 301 to maintain linking power. There's no harm in doing so and then replacing it later.
-
You would remove the old 301 redirect from www.example.com/fr/ to www.example.com and add a new one from www.example.com/fr/ to www.example2.com/fr/ , then force a recrawl on your site.
-
But what will happen when I have to 301 again? Currently, I will have to redirect from www.example.com/fr/ to my new English only site which is www.example.com. But then in 3 months time, I will have a www.example2.com/fr/. So I want my old www.example.com/fr/ to redirect to my new www.example2.com/fr/ website. So how would that work?
-
Personally I think a 301 redirect would be the best.
-
I reckon you must use 301 as it seems like you're moving your sites permanently so there is no point to have 302 at all.
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 have a Wordpress site that ranks well and a blog (uses blogger) with slightly different URL/domain that also ranks decently. Should I combine the 2 under the website domain or keep both?
I realize that I am building essentially 2 different sites even though they are connected, but on some local town pages i have 2-3 results on Page #1. Nice problem to have eh? But i am worried as for a lot of my surrounding towns my competitor has the top listing or definitely ahead of me, so i am wondering if i combine or convert my blog into the same domain as my site, then all of that content + links should hopefully propel my site to #1. Anyone have an experience like this? thanks, Chris
Local Website Optimization | | Sundance_Kidd0 -
Ranking nationally but not locally
Hi everyone, I'm working with a client that has a strange situation. He's ranking for his target keyword on a national level but when searching locally, he's in the 100s (see attached). Any idea what could be going on here? He did have an old domain that got hacked that is redirecting to his current domain. Thanks, Tim lmSSXdT
Local Website Optimization | | TimKelsey0 -
How can my categories rank for my different branches? Tidied site up but now local rankings are worse
Dear Mozzers , I am wondering if someone could please help with some advice and assistance on the following for our Tool hire site: Basically I like to know how we can rank for our categories for our different branch locations ?. We have a branch finder page and separate branch pages but I do not know if I should have an internal link from all our branch pages to all my different categories or not or is google clever enough to know that I have x locations and x categories and I should rank all the categories in all the locations. I think my site structure is fairly straightforward and on the face of it similar to what others do who have multiple branches . For example I enclose a link to 2 of our categories - carpet cleaner hire category and a floor sander hire category carpet cleaner category - http://goo.gl/cMyS4i floor sander category - http://goo.gl/4ipUyA Heres a link to our Branch Finder - http://goo.gl/UyTQdK Heres a link to one of our Branches for example - Bristol Branch - http://goo.gl/9TXHTK And heres our link to our google plus Bristol page - google plus bristol branch page - https://goo.gl/h0IwAK . We have link from our bristol page going to the bristol google plus page and visa versa. Currently within our internal linking structure there is No direct link on the branch pages to the categories ?. Is this something we need to do or not necessary ?. - If we do it , then it may mess up or confuse the page as I someone need to get all the category links on the branch pages ? We have lots of good unique content , lots of citations for our branches and categories etc but we just don't seem to rank at all well for any of our categories in local search. For example if somene was to search for - Carpet cleaner hire "City Name " or Floor sander hire "City Name" (City name being where our branches are). We dont rank very well for most of our cities. Even without putting the city name in we dont rank to well in local search. We used to have individual pages for our categories in each of the cities we have branches with unique content on all and these did rank quite well in a few cities but never top 3 in most and we got rid of these last month (start of Oct) as I was told that google may see this as quite spammy or doorway pages if I have a carpet cleaner hire Bristol page or a floor sander hire Bristol page etc ?.. All my location landing pages now just 301 back to the appropriate category. I am wondering if getting rid of these landing pages was a good idea as by tidying things up , I've seemed to have lost my local rankings for my cities. Can someone please advise if what I did was right and what else I should look at doing ?> Could it be an internal linking issue I need to sort ? Any assistance much appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC12
thanks
Pete0 -
Schema training/resources for local SEO?
I am currently in the process of apply schema for dozens of clients (many are large retailers). Although I am not a developer, I do know the basics of schematic markup & structured data. I do work with a development team and I'm trying to provide them with schema application best practices. Obviously there are many good articles/blog posts out there about schema. However I'm looking for a more substantial training course, webinar or resource website about schema application. Does anybody have any good recommendations?
Local Website Optimization | | RosemaryB0 -
How best to clean up doorway pages. 301 them or follow no index ?
Hi Mozzers, I have what is classed as doorway pages on my website. These have historically been location specific landing pages for some of our categories but from speaking to a number of different webmasters , then general consensus is that they are not in google guidelines so I will be getting punished by having them. My options are : I can 301 the pages back to their original category pages . This will conserve some link juice to pass back to the respective category page. I can set these as Follow No index. Not sure what will happen here with regards to link value etc. What would be best ?... Some of the pages do currently rank "fairly well" for some of the locations so I am getting traffic from them but I also know I will be getting a algorithmic penalty for having them so how best I clean these up ?. Also , by cleaning up the site structure , would I see any benefit here ? or will I have to wait for a new panda update/ refresh ? I thought the panda refresh won't use a new dataset thanks Pete
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Recommended blogs and sites about local seo
HI.
Local Website Optimization | | corn2015
Can you please tell me some great blogs/sites to read daily about local seo? I'm really wanting to beef up my knowledge in this area to assist local businesses. Corn1 -
Local SEO + Best Practice for locations
Hi All, Based on a hypothetical scenario, lets say you are a plumber. You live and operate within Chelsea in London. You have established a Google places profile and incorporated schema data to tell Google your fixed place location. In addition you operate in several nearby towns with no fixed location presence. i.e Brentford, Bromley, Catford, Cheswick and Tottenham. I create a feature rich page on 'How to find a quality plumber'. Within the page I incorporate the following description: blah blah, as a quality plumber serving the community of Chelsea, we also offer our services to nearby towns of Brentford, Bromley, Catford, Cheswick and Tottenham. I create hyperlinks for the towns (Brentford, Bromley, Catford, Cheswick and Tottenham) that allow the user see in details a full list of services, operation hours, etc. Naturally all towns will have there own unique content (no duplication). Question
Local Website Optimization | | Mark_Ch
Is the above scenario the correct way to provide local seo or is this approach considered spammy to Google? Thanks Mark0 -
Having portal page that takes you to website with a different url
We are in the planning stages for this. Our client wants his (as yet) domain name to be a portal page for this new campaign. His domain name is a non-keyword company name (i.e. widgetsgalore.com) We already have a website with content tailored to his business ready to go. In fact, we did a campaign back in '06 to '09 that was highly successful. At that time it was just the webpage with a keyword rich url. Now for some reason the client wants his company name url (widgetsgalore.com) to be the portal page (landing page) that once potential clients click on it takes them to the website with the content. What are the pros and cons of doing what client asks about making his widgetsgalore.com a portal page vs. going directly to the url with all the content/forms, etc? This is a local site, with audience limited to southern california.
Local Website Optimization | | Manifestation0