Does any one have experience with SEO and .NET using 301 redirects?
-
A while ago I altered some of the URL's of my website. Google now thinks that I have two duplicate pages (duplicate content), I have asked my third party web developers (Who use .NET and a custom built CMS system) to simply 301 redirect the old URL to the other.
However, my web developers say the following:
"Solving the problems by 301 permanent re directs are out of the question as this would create infinite loops. Likely to bring down our server."
They also wont do a canonical, as they say there is only one page (but two URLs)
Firstly, has any one heard of this before and do they think this is true?
Also, does anyone have an alternative method of getting rid of the old URL?
Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
-
Hi Thomas
At the risk of being blunt, they're having you on.
Having used the .net system and a lot of CMS', while I know the inifinite loop problem does exist, it is not a "stock" problem with .net or any CMS I've encountered. If the 301s are returning a loop, it;s likely the dev team's implementation of the CMS and not the .net framework to blame. From this point of view (which isn't the whole story of course), it's their job to solve it.
In addition, adding a canonical to one URL would help the problem. If only one page exists, adding a canonical tag to the one page is a strong directive to Google to index only that version of the URL. That means, eventually, Google would stop indexing the other URL flagging the duplicate content. So this would solve the issue.
That's presuming that the other URL that's creating duplicate content is a variant of the page, like a query string (www.domain.com/example and www.domain.com/example?query). If it was a completely different URL (www.domain.com/anotherexample) and it is showing the same content, but not redirecting, then there would be 2 pages in existence. Again, either a redirect or canonical will help, although you could also get the devs to add <noindex,nofollow>to the meta tag of the page.</noindex,nofollow>
If all else fails, you could use your robots.txt file to block any crawler from reaching the URL.
Here's a handy guide that helps explain all these options.
Hope this helps.
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
-
How to Choose destination page for a 301 redirect?
I am doing some SEO for a wedding chapel in Vegas. There are some old packages that no longer exist and the bounce rate for the page is high so I am planning to 301 the page. How to best determine the best 301 destination? I have a few options. As an example the page was optimized for garden weddings. The page itself does not place well in the SERPS for garden weddings in Las Vegas, but our outdoor wedding packages in Las Vegas page places in the top 10. So that page is in an option. However, there is a different location that has a garden setting. Is that a better choice? Some content might match better than others, but any page I choose would be relevant content. Thank you so much 🙂
Technical SEO | | leslieevarts0 -
301 redirects for all urls - legal dispute
The website in question is a very high traffic website with substantial credibility in it's subject matter (sorry, can't share more details) that delivers an overwhelming majority of traffic from SEO, much of which is new visitors. A legal dispute has resulted in both parties agreeing to forward a percentage of the total URLs to alternative websites (only 1 website for each party). All URLs for the domain will be forwarded elsewhere. It does not make sense to me that the "sum of the parts" will be as strong once the redirects are implemented but I am looking for feedback. It is fair to say that the alternative domains of each party are no where near as strong as the domain being "parted out." Will the SEO juice be distributed to each domain in full? Will both parties lose out substantially? Feel free to ask for clarifications and I'll do the best I can given the legal parameters. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | ReachMaineAgency0 -
URL Structure & SEO - Should we be using sub-folders?
Hi all, As part of our content marketing efforts we have run a number of initiatives in the past and created pages on the website to go along with them (also where the links for these particular projects point to). However, the URL structure isn't actually a reflection of where the pages sit on the site. Unfortunately I'm unable to provide a URL for reasons I won't bore you with, but here's an example: We recently ran a competition that was very successful in generating links. The URL for this is www.domain.co.uk/competition. However, the page actually sits within the About Us section - which is where all of our news and content marketing pages go - and uses a URL override. How much of an issue is this in regards to A) Our SEO in general?; and B) Ensuring we receive as much equity from the links we earn as possible? A brief explanation of what URL overrides actually are would also be useful! (We have a digital marketing agency who handle most of our SEO) Thanks in advance guys! John
Technical SEO | | NAHL-14300 -
Redirect 301 & Wild Cards
Afternoon All! Question, I am having trouble getting my head around redirects and I am wondering if someone could help me on this.... We recently changed our website and although were using the same database, were using a different URL structure. So for example... Old URL siteurl.com/products/product/moredetails/merlin.id1553.html
Technical SEO | | scottiedog
New URL siteurl.com//vertigo/dl/product.php?p=1553 As you can see the product has the same ID number, just in a different directory. What I'd like to happen is.... If you go too siteurl.com////.idXXXX.html then you are 301'd too siteurl.com//vertigo/do/product.php?p=XXXX Obviously XXXX is the ID number of the product in our database. Any thoughts? I need help! Thanks in advance.0 -
Switching forum software - 301 redirects?
Hi everyone I'm working on a successful Wordpress site that also has a forum attached. The forum currently uses YAF forum software, which requires Windows hosting. The site owner wants to switch to Linux hosting. This is not a problem for WP, but it does mean that we'll need to transfer the forum to Xenforo or something similar that runs on Linux. We're OK with the technical side of this, but we're worried about the SEO implications. The URL for every forum post (more than 50,000 of them) is going to change during this transfer. It seems completely impractical to 301 each of those, so should I just 301 the URLs that have inbound links? Also, what is google's algo going to think when we suddenly have ~50,000 404s? Many thanks in advance! J
Technical SEO | | van280 -
Should I consolidate multiple domains to a single site with 301 redirects?
Our client wants all his sites to be re-designed and perhaps consolidated into one domain. What are the dangers of using 301s on all his already ranking and established domains to their new forward-slash location? If there are some good articles that describe this exact issue please post a link.
Technical SEO | | dsmdesign0 -
301 redirect blog posts from old URL to new one
I moved a wordpress blog from domain.com to domain.com/blog . I want to redirect the links in google from the old domain.com to the new one, but I also want to put a new site/application at domain.com..so I'm thinking an .htaccess 301 redirect at the root wouldn't work. Any tips?
Technical SEO | | callmeed0 -
What factors matters the most when using a 301 permanent redirect?
Hi SEOmozzers, I have a client that has couple of duplicates but I am debating if i should just kill those pages or use 301 Permanent redirects. I know SEO moz provides 2 important factors to look at which are PA and link root domain. 1.Which one matters the most? or which one should I look at first to make a decision? 2. I have empty pages creating duplicate content with a PA of 14 and 1 linking root domain. my thought is to kill the page by inserting a meta NO INDEX. If you don't agree and think I should 301 to an existing page that needs link juice, let me know. Thank you mozzers 🙂
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0