New to SEO. How do I set up a 301 Redirect? What Else should I do?
-
Hello,
I am new to web design. I designed my own site using dreamweaver and did all my seo on my own, I read a few books. Long story short I rank on the bottom of page 1 just after 3 months and the keywords are highly competitive. Now, I am up against some heavy hitters from national brands versus my local real estate site.
I don't have a 301 redirect, and am not sure what else I should be doing to get my site ranked higher. I have back links from various sites, ( non-paid ) so it's what others call white hat.
When I grade my site on website grader I get a great score versus the sites that are higher than me. I'm guessing my sites age is an issue.
I guess I'm looking for some guidance.
Thank you all,
Here is my site to view.
-
I use Dreamhost, Amazon Cloud (AWS) and Rackspace. Nearly all the stuff you'll need can be done on Dreamhost. Dreamhost is a good web hosting company.
-
WHich hosting company do you prefer?
-
You will be limited to whatever Yahoo allows you to do. They aren't that flexible. Think about it this way. Have you ever heard of a large company use Yahoo? If you keep hanging around in these forums, you will outgrow Yahoo really quick.
-
Ok, I have yahoo as my host. I can't seem to find the htaccess. Any ideas?
-
Here, read this: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
Print it and go to Starbucks.
Oh, one other thing. To make things faster in web development, I have a design made in PSD and then have it coded into WordPress. That way I don't have to mess with Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is fine, but not when I'm working on sites that I expect to grow. With WordPress (and many CMS'), it automatically 301s old pages. If not, then there's a plugin.
-
Thanks, I'll research it. I use Yahoo as my host company, so I'm sure they have htaccess.
-
Without knowing your setup its hard to say whats best to do since there is many ways to do a 301. However an easy way is to use htaccess ( if your server support this ) but most of them does.
More info how to do a 301 with htaccess can be found here
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
-
Possible issues with 301 redirecting to a new domain name
Ive got a current domain and after a bit of a rebrand Im considering 301 rediecting the current site to a newly purchased domain. Id redirect each age to idential pages. Am I likely to see any issues. I know this is the recomended way from Google but just wondering how smoothly it works and whether Im likely to see any ranking drops or other problems?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | paulfoz16090 -
Is 1:1 301 redirect required on indexed URL when restructing URL even if the new URL is canonicalized?
Hello folks, We are restructuring some URLS which forms a fair chunk of the content of the domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HB17
These content are auto generated rather than manually created unlike other parts of the website. The same content is currently accessible from two URLs: /used-books/autobiography-a-long-walk-to-freedom-isbn
/autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-isbn The URL 1 uses the URL 2 as the canonical url and it has worked allright since Moz does
not show the two as duplicate of each other. Google has also indexed the canonical URL although
there is still a few 'URL 1s' which were indexed before the canonical was implemented. The updated URL structure will look like something like this: /used-books/autobiography-a-long-walk-to-freedom-author-name-isbn
/autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-authore-name-isbn It would be great to have just a single URL but a few business requirement prevents
us from having just the canonical URL only even with the new structure. Since we will still have two URLs to access the same content and we were wondering
whether we will need to do a 1:1 301 redirect on the current URLs or since there will be canonical URL
(/autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-authore-name-isbn),
we won't need to worry about doing the 1:1 redirect on the the indexed content? Please note that the content will still be accessible from the OLD URL (unless 301ed of course). If it is advisable to do a 1:1 301 redirect this is what we intend to do: /used-books/autobiography-a-long-walk-to-freedom-isbn 301 to
/used-books/autobiography-a-long-walk-to-freedom-author-name-isbn /autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-isbn 301 to
/autobiography/used-books/a-long-walk-to-freedom-authore-name-isbn Any advice/suggestions would be greated appreciated. Thank you.0 -
301 redirecting staff Domain to Company Domain
My colleague owns a domain (A) for about 10 years that he does not use. The domain's content is the same as my company's website (B) content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi5
Question: Can I 301 redirect domain A to domain B's homepage or is it better he just closes down his website since this would not be SEO best practices? thank you0 -
New site started ranking, lost ground after 301...?
Hi everyone. So we decided to re-brand a website starting with a fresh domain and fresh website (new everything). The first 4 weeks the site was performing really well and started bringing organic traffic for several targeted keywords (small amounts, but something). Around 5 weeks later, we decided to perform a 301 Redirect from an older site we had that really hadn't changed since 2007. As soon as we performed the 301, we started loosing ground on the keywords that were starting to perform. I may help to mention that we were targeting different keywords on the new site, versus the keywords/industry that were targeted on the older site... because we were focusing on another but similar industry. Now, 10 weeks later we are still not showing up for the keywords that we were starting to make headway on in the first four weeks of starting.... any ideas why? suggestions? The 301's were performed properly. We verified them, and we check Google WMT for any additional ones that may still be out there, but try to fix them as soon as possible. We have grown the site from just a few pages to over 60+ pages in the last 2 months with unique and fresh content targetting those keywords... Thank you in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | co.mc0 -
Redirecting 2 aged site to brand spanking new one
Does 301 redircting 2 aged domain to a new one have a compounding effect? Ive redirected domain #1 to teh new site and my new domain has now jumped to position 6 on Google for the keyword. I have noticed that the sites above me are all aged domains and some with very few backlinks. Number 1 is 4 years old and 20 backlinks, thats it! I am wondering, if I redirected a 11 year old domain that is in the same niche, but never really targeteed that same keyword, would that bump my site even higher? Obviously i am building quality backlinks to the new domain and making sure these are hard to get high quality backlinks. Thanks for your help guys
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
How do I 301 Redirect a complete folder?
Hi, I am want to delete a folder and all the contents. I then need to redirect anyone that is trying to reach a file in that folder to another page on my site. example: www.mydomain.com/folder/ (contains 50 pages) I want to delete the folder and all 50 pages. So if someone tries to reach www.mydomain.com/folder/page1.php the redirect would take them to a specific page on my site. Doing this to clean up old content. How would I do this on the .htaccess? I have redirected a page but not a folder. Thanks in advance! Force7
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Force70 -
Not allowing me 301 Redirect
I am trying redirect my old site to my new site, both on the same domain. For one reason or another, I am having a hard time redirecting the some of the old urls to the new site. Please let me know how I can fix this issue. Below are the following old urls that are not allowing me to redirect: <colgroup><col width="636"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/press/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/press/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/accommodations/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/dining/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/entertainment/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/events/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/flintstones/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/beach.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/dining.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/pools.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html |0 -
301 Redirect - How Long Until Recovery?
How long after one moves a page and sets up the 301s should the site take to regain its previous rankings? Context: i've ported a site to a new framework. Along the way, several high ranked pages needed to have new URLs setup, as well as the site moved from www.domain.com to simply domain.com. About 1 week after the change, the site's traffic went down 70% and has been there for about another 2 weeks. I suppose it could be something about the new framework that is causing problems though according to SEOMoz tools, the new framework is checking out pretty well. I assume the problem is reconciling all those old www inbound links with the new non-www location. It is all 301'd however ... so it should be working, but is not. So my questions are: 1. How long should it take Google to reconcile these changes and put us back to original SERP positions 2. is there something inherently problematic with switching from www to non-www?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NealCabage0