Understanding Canocalization, domain structure, redirects
-
Hey guys,
My background is more in marketing aspect of SEO and I'm afraid my technical knowledge is not where it should be. I'm confused about how to find out whether a site is splitting link juice by having to many domains(?) that are not redirected properly. Am I asking that right? How do you figure that out? And, once you know, do you just go to the ones that are not redirecting and add a 301? Where is the best place to add a 301?
I know there's a difference in the eyes of the search engines between, say, example.com and www.example.com and probably other forms, correct?
I'm not a programmer or IT specialist, I'm a marketing consultant, but I feel like I'm really missing it when it comes to understanding all this stuff (looking at HTTP headers, using GWT, reading source code, etc) and am not sure the best way to learn it effectively so I can be sure I'm not missing something when consulting with clients.
Help? Please?
Thanks,
David
-
I have found Danny Dovers SEO Secrets very useful as a beginners as its not just secrets. I believe the Art of SEO is another worthy reference.
-
John,
You rock, thank you! I will take your advice and do just that. I'm also going to spend a lot more time in the Q & A forum and learn all I can regarding the technical aspects of SEO.
Really appreciate you taking the time, thanks again,
David
-
To find out if your site is splitting domains, try going to different pages and seeing if they're served. For example, go to http://example.com, http://www.example.com, http://example.com/, http://www.example.com/. These should all end up with the same URL at the top when the page loads. If it doesn't, that means your server needs to be configured to do these canonical redirects. Depending on what software you use, this can vary, but the Q&A forum has had a lot of answers related to configuring redirects, so look there, or try Googling it.
I'm not sure it'll make a huge different if you decide to use example.com or www.example.com, but whichever you do choose, be consistent throughout your site.
If you really want to learn to get into the nitty-gritty of web pages, the main tool I use to view web requests, http headers, source, etc is Firebug, a Firefox Add-on. Chrome has something similar, which I think came pre-installed (if you can right click something, and choose "Inspect element", you have it). To learn it, play around with it a bit. The HTML tab in Firebug (Elements tab in Chrome) will show you the source of where you're selecting in the page. The other tab it sounds like you'll be interested in is the Net tab (Network tab in Chrome). Here you can see all the different files the page is loading, and you can view their statuses, headers, and responses.
Another tool I use frequently in Firefox & Chrome is the Web Developer Toolbar. It lets you enable/disable a lot of different things (caching, images, CSS, JavaScript), and clear your cache with a few clicks.
-
I'd have a little explore round the SEOmoz "learn seo" section - really invaluable information.
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
-
Someone redirected his website to ours
Hi all, I have strange issue as someone redirected website http://bukmachers.pl to ours https://legalnibukmacherzy.pl We don't know exactly what to do with it. I checked backlinks and the website had some links which now redirect to us. I also checked this website on wayback machine and back in 2017 this website had some low quality content but in 2018 they made similar redirection to current one but to different website (our competitor). Can such redirection be harmful for us? Should we do something with this or leave it, as google stop encouraging to disavow low quality links.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kahuna_Charles1 -
301 Redirect from Authoritative but Loosely-Related Domain
We acquired a health-related blog about a year ago with good domain authority and a pretty strong link profile (TF ~40). We have been publishing good relevant content in it but it's not really paying dividends and we are considering doing a 301 to our money site, which is focused primarily on senior issues but has a lot of health-related content. The question is - with the two domains only being loosely related in subject matter, do we stand to harm our main site by redirecting from the other domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sa_787040 -
Domains and Domain Authority
Looking for some advice 🙂 I have a domain that has been registered since 1999 and currently hosts my website - the problem is that my business has moved in a different direction and my URL is no longer associated with my main product offering. For example in the past I was xyzgarden.com however now something like xyzhomedecor.com is much more appropriate. How should I handle this so that I am not at a disadvantage for SEO. thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MainstreamMktg0 -
How Can I Redirect an Old Domain to Our New Domain in .htaccess?
There is an old version of http://chesapeakeregional.com still floating around the web here: http://www.dev3.com.php53-24.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/component/content/category/20-our-services. Various iterations of this domain pop up when I do certain site:searches and for some queries as well (such as "Diagnostic Center of Chesapeake"). About 3 months ago the websitetestlink site had files and a fully functional navigation but now it mostly returns 404 or 500 errors. I'd like to redirect the site to our newer site, but don't believe I can do that in chesapeakeregional.com's .htaccess file. Is that so and would I need access to the websitetestlink .htaccess to forward the domain? Note* I (nor anyone else in our organization) has the login for the old site. The new site went live about 9 months before I arrived at the organization and I've been slowly putting the pieces together since arriving.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smpomoryCRH0 -
New Website Look/Structure - Should I Redirect or Update Pages w/ Quality Inbound Links
This questing is regarding an ecommerce website that I hand wrote(html) in 1997. One of the first click and buy websites, with cart/admin system that I also developed. After all this time, the Old plain HTML look just doesnt cut it. I just updated to XHTML w/ a very modern look, and believe the structured data will index better. All products and current category pages will have the identical vrls taken from the old version. I decided to go with the switch after manual penalty, which has since been removed... I figured now is the time to update. My big question is that over the years, a lot of my backlinks came from products/news that are either no longer relevant or just not available. The pages do exist, but can only be found from the Outbound Link Source. For SEO purposes, I have thought a few things I can do but can't decide which one is the best choice. Any Insight or suggestions would be Awesome! 1. Redirect the old link to the most relevant page in my current catalog. 2. Add my new header/footer to old page(this will add a navigation bar w/ brands/cats/etc) 3. Simply add a nice new image to the top of these pages linking home & update any broken/irrelevant links. I was also considering adding just the very top 2 inches of my header(logo,search box, phone, address) *note, some of these pages do receive some traffic. Nothing huge, but consider the 50+ pages, it ads up.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Redirect 301 or Canonical.
Hello all, I have a page with a long post title and url path name (more than 70 caracters and 115). This page has many visits but I am changing the SEO website structure according to SEOMOz and forums guidelines so: I WILL CREATE A DUPLICATE PAGE WITH THE SAME INFO. This issue has been marked as an issue in the SEO tools, for long names>70 and url path names>115 My question is which option should I use and you would recommend me? 1. OPTION 1: Ideally I would like to keep the old post, so I should use the canonical tag, but my main concern is if the search engines in terms of SEO, even the canonical has been done, will penalise my SEO as there is still a post with bad SEO optimising, or if this is not the case because I already used the canonical. 2. OPTION 2: Eliminate the post and redirection 301 to the new page to keep the juice. I would prefer option 1, as I keep both post and page, but only if searchengines do not penalise my SEO as they detect a long post name and url path name. Thank you verty much, Antonio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aalcocer20030 -
301 Redirect question
Which is the best way to set up the 301 redirect on my main home page? http://horsebuggy.com to http://www.horsebuggy.com Or does it make a difference? Boodreaux
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0 -
301 Redirect shenanigans.
So our website (www.FrontlineMobility.com) Has a canonical link redirect to the non www. version. However when I put in website.com it comes up with a small list of links and says this site links to www.website.com. So I'm curious if I used to wrong canonical linking method( that is the method I tried and I placed it in the Head Tags.) I greatly appreciate any assistance in this matter ^.^
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FrontlineMobility0