Considering redirecting or canonicalization - Best Practice
-
Hi,
I'm having a techinical problem and I would like advise on the effects this is having on my SEO efforts.
My old site www.oldsiteexample.com (live for about 8 years)
Directs to my new site www.example.com which is fine BUT
When I type me new website into the tool bar both sides are found & do not direct to one domain;
www.example.com & example.com (both the same site)
What is the best practice here? Direct my new non www to my new www site considering my old website directs to the www.
Advise & the SEO affects this is having my website would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
-
MJ, the challenge with that suggestion is it sounds like you are maintaining two websites. That solution would not work for any situation with UGC or any data which changes over time.
Even in cases where the pages were purely static content, a canonical tag would notify search engines of the page you wish to be indexed but not users.
-
A 301 will pass over the link equity also!
-
Also, Ryan is of course correct to say you can use the www. or non www. version - I just have a preference for www. because I think it looks neater!
-
I agree that a 301 is most certainly the best long term solution; however the canonical also provides an opportunity to send over some of the value to the new page/domain before you do that. Hence I usually implement the canonical for a month or two, then redirect. Especially when you're moving to a new domain, it's a good way to faze in the move over rather than going cold turkey, as it were.
If the site has over 600 pages, I'd pick the 50-100 most common landing pages (see Google Analytics) and transfer them. If 10 of the pages get 10000 visits each and the other 590 get 2 visits each, maybe just do the top ten. Hope that makes sense!
-
You can use the www or non-www version of your site. The important thing is to choose one version and remain consistent. It sounds like you prefer the "www" version which is a perfectly fine choice.
When given a choice between canonical or 301, the best practice is 301. Both work, but a 301 is preferred.
Two additional best practices:
1. I know it can be a lot of work but you really should redirect each page of the old site to the corresponding page on the new site. If you simply changed domains the 301 can be written with a single regex statement to replace "oldsiteexample.com" with "example.com"
2. Check your existing 301s on the old site and adjust them to directly point to the new site. You want to avoid any instances where a user has to hop through multiple 301s to arrive at a target page.
-
cheers for the advise. a) I'm looking to transfer the value from my old domain to my new one.
The site has over 600 pages, It wouldn't really be ideal for me to put canonical tags on each of the old pages to the relevant new pages. (can this be done automatically?)
B) Yes I was looking for advise on the new site and which domain should be the main ie: the www (I'll go with the www considering my old site directs to the www)
-
P.S. for got b) !! If it's b), I always redirect to the www. page. You can set that in webmaster tools and also do server side redirects.
-
Not 100% sure what you're asking - do you want to a) transfer value from an old domain to a new domain? Or b) do you want to know whether you should redirect non-www. URLs to the www. equivalent?
If it's a), I'd keep the old site live for a couple of months and set up canonical tags on each page and point them towards the most relevant page on the new site. Leave that to sink in for a couple of months, then I'd 301 pages on the old site to the new site (to the same pages you'd pointed them at with the canonical tag). Leave the 301s in place for at least 180 days, after that you can kill the old site altogether.
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 do you fix redirect chains and temporary redirects?
Hi, I have a lot of issues popping up with temporary redirects and redirect chains. I'm still confused as to what exactly redirect chains are and I don't know how to find where the "chains" are or how to fix them. I'm having two issues mainly:1. Temporary RedirectsI have around 100 pages on our www.twowayradiosfor.com website that are being flagged as temporary redirects. All of them have one thing in common: they are review pages (basically, when a customer clicks on the Review button to review a certain product, they are redirected to a review page for that product).URL Example: https://www.twowayradiosfor.com/reviewhelpful.asp?ProductCode=CLS1410-COMBO&ID=44&yes=noI went into our website and set any URL containing the following as noindex:/review.aspWill that fix the issue? If yes, will I also need to do that for any URL containing /reviewhelpful.asp?2. Redirect ChainsIt seems like basically every product page on my website has this issue (over 100 pages). Here's an example of one:https://www.twowayradiosfor.com/Motorola-CLS1110-p/cls1110.htmI don't see any broken links on this page or links that redirect to another page that redirects, etc. What is causing this? Is it something on my header bar that is redirecting (since that header bar appears on every page, maybe that is why this issue shows up on a lot of pages)?I am new to Moz and still trying to figure this stuff out. I really appreciate any help. Thanks, Sawyer
Technical SEO | | AllChargedUp0 -
Can i do 301 redirect
So this is what im doing, 301 redirect to my site/allen-webdesign points to main domain Allen is the city i have a page called local-webdesign with all the cities. Will this improve my ranking or should i stop?
Technical SEO | | jsdfw0 -
Remove a page after redirection
Hi, I had page eg. www.example.com/page1 and I redirect 302 it to > www.example.com/page2 After that I fatch this page (page2) with GSC and this page was index in serp. Can I remove this old redirect page > www.example.com/page1 now? Will this remove harm my page?
Technical SEO | | Tormar0 -
Best practice around removing large section of the website
We are looking at removing a large section of our website that is getting low/no traffic. My current thought of removing this would be to delete the pages and add 301 redirects to a similar page within the site that is not being deleted. This will be removing 400+ pages, does it this make sense? Or should we point them to the homepage? Finally should we do this in one batch or should we slowly remove the pages over the course of a couple weeks. Thanks - appreciate the help in understanding the best practice in terms of SEO.
Technical SEO | | webactive0 -
SEO Redirect
If we have several hundred domain names currently using a park page, would we be better served having them redirect to our corporate homepage for SEO purposes?
Technical SEO | | mkessler0 -
Where is the 301 redirect?
Hi, in the last week I take an issue for 301 permanent redirect for a subfolder in the main website! In that folder i have a index.php file for a google map fullscreen edition and the only link who connects the wordpress website with the subfolder is only a direct link! Is that an error of seomoz app or something else? Thanks 1.jpg
Technical SEO | | petrospan0 -
Redirect everything from a certain url
I have a new domain (www.newdomain.com) and and an old domain (www.olddomain.com). Currently both domains are pointing (via dns nameserves) at the new site. I want to 301 everything that comes from the www.oldsite.com to www.newsite.com. I've used this htaccess code RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.newsite.com$
Technical SEO | | EclipseLegal
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newsite.com/$1 [R=301,L] Which works fine and redirects if someone visits www.olddomain.com but I want it to cover everything from the old domain such as www.olddomain.com/archives/article1/ etc. So if any subpages etc are visited from the old domain its redirected to the new domain. Could someone point me in the right direction? Thanks0 -
Which one is best? Parameters or Meta
I have issue regarding duplicate pages on website as follow. http://www.vistastores.com/review.html?pr_page_id=90344 http://www.vistastores.com/review.html?pr_page_id=90345 I checked my Google webmaster tools and found that Google have already set Parameter with pr_page_id. So, what is this? Will Google index all that pages? Can I use following Meta tag to block indexing? Which one is best?
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0