Holy Redirects
-
Currently working on a project for a medium sized site (http://sleeponcall.com/) but the SEOMoz crawl crawled over 14,000 pages because the report is showing more than 8,000 redirects.
The client has no clue how this happened as their previous web programmers may not have been on the ball.
What could be causing the problem and what is the best way to untangle this mess?
-
Carl
If you check through Everett Sizemore's pro webinar about E-comerce SEO, he covers the correct way to set up of Megneto for ecommerce, from memory he also offers some additional resources you can check out. i think its around 45 mins in.
http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/ecommerce-seo-fix-and-avoid-common-issues
Hope that helps
-
Did you have a look at the file I made for you? Hope so, took me 20 minutes to compile and all
As William said, look for 301 or 302 mentioned in the .htaccess file, if those are mentioned there, that's a sign that things are being redirected.
A rebuild is always useful, but of course, the budget probably isn't there and I can respect that.
Let us know about the .htaccess file..
-
If you have the resources I suggest rebuilding it under Magento again. Might be well worth the time if you have a lot of problems with the previous design.
-
I agree the way the entire site is setup is strange. Still trying to get answers from the original site builders as to what they did and why.
-
Look for the numbers 301,302 redirects.
i.e. [r=301,nc] and something along those lines. Look for the culprit that way and remove it.
I thought Magento was up to date on these problems, are you running the latest? I find it odd that everything is within the sub /index.php/'category'.
-
Thanks for the help, the site is in fact run on Magento.
I'll have the programmer check the redirect code in the .htacess file, is there anything specific I should be looking for in the Magento setup?
-
Hi Carl,
I immediately fired up Xenu and did a test, there's an option to set redirects as errors, to locate the redirects. Here's is the downloadable export: http://www.imoddigital.com/sleeponcall/sleeponcall.xlsx
When you look at the file in Excel, the redirect pages won't appear as 200, they'll either be 301 or 302, this will allow you to isolate the troublesome pages.
Please do check your .htaccess file like Justin has suggested, that would have been my very first point of call.
Hope that helps!
Christopher
-
Its sounds like pages are on a redirect loop....
Run a scrawl using link sleuth and identify the URL's that are redirecting and you can take it from there.
Perhaps do the scan, and then report back with an example of why they are redirecting and we can be of better assistance.
Greg
-
My guess would be that at some point the url structure of the site has been changed and have 301'd from the old url structure to the new one.
Have you checked the .htaccess file on the server to see if there are any redirect code in there?
Another possibility is the platform could be causing it. What platform is the site created in? If it is an off the shelf e-com system then configs can cause these kind of issues, I believe magento is a culprit of this if its not set up correctly.
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
-
Setting Up A Website For Redirects
I've got an old defunct domain with a lot of backlinks to individual pages. I'd like to use these backlinks for link juice by redirecting them to individual pages on the new domain (both sites belong to the same company). What is the best way to set this up? I presume I need some kind of hosting & site, even if it's just a default Wordpress install, which I can then use to set up the redirects? Would it be best done using .htaccess file for 301 redirects or some other way?
Technical SEO | | abisti20 -
Change URL or use Canonicals and Redirects?
We just completed a conclusive a/b test on a client's landing page. The new page saw a 30% bump in conversions, yay! Now what? Option 1: Change the url of the new page to that of the old page, retire the old page. Option 2: Redirect the old page and anything that was pointing to it to the new page, make the new page the canonical. I'm afraid of option 1 because I think Google's WTF penalty will be a bit harsher than option 2, but I wanted to sanity check that here. Any thoughts or experienced advice would be very appreciated!
Technical SEO | | LindsayDayton0 -
Tracing Redirects to a Site
I wonder if anyone has used any tools where you can trace the redirects pointing to a site? I know there are a number of tools out there that can be used to check where a URL redirects to, but I was wondering if anyone has used a tool where I could trace all redirects with the final URL? I am using this for competitor research so I don't have access to Analytics or Webmaster Tools.
Technical SEO | | BeattieGroup0 -
Is an international redirect hurting my ranking
We're a small international company that redirects users based on their language identifier.
Technical SEO | | _entreprenerd
I've now taken a big interest in and also how it affects ranking. When I look at my MOZ dashboard the fundedbyme.com domain has a higher ranking than fundedbyme.com/en/ for example. Our company wants to target other markets such as Spain and Germany, I am imposing penalties on myself by not having rel="canonical" in place and redirecting to the TLD?0 -
Secure Vs Non-Secure Redirects
I have a client who has a lot of duplicate pages on their site. The pages are secure and then non secure counterparts. Not sure why they have this in place but i recomended that they redirect on to the other or vice versa using 301 redirects. I am getting some questions as to why they should do this. Does anyone have a good document outlining the reasoning behind this? For me its just a matter of cleaning up duplicate content but wondering if there is any technical data out there.
Technical SEO | | gkellyiii0 -
Rel=cannonical + 301 redirect
Hi All I am currently working on a DotNetNuke site. I have enabled friendly URL's which have changed the url structure from the default setting of TabId=x to whatever the page name is set as. I will use the following page as an example - www.notarealdomain./graphicdesign.aspx Now I would like to know if it would be worth my time to change this to "/graphic-design.aspx through the use of a 301 redirect and/or a rel=can. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | masterpete0 -
CNAME redirect for Press Releases
Our company is moving our press release section over to Business Wire. Business Wire will be hosting the press releases on their servers http//ourcompany.newshq.businesswire.com, but we want it to display as if these are hosted on our site www.ourcompany/press-releases/. This is where our press releases are hosted now. They are recommending using a CNAME redirect to essentially mask their URL and display ours. We don't want to lose out on the search value that our press release area has built up over time. Will the CNAME redirect cause any SEO problems?
Technical SEO | | ryanwats0 -
Is a 302 redirect the correct redirect from a root URL to a detail page?
Hi guys The widely followed SEO best practice is that 301 redirects should be used instead of 302 redirects when it is a permanent redirect that is required. Matt Cutts said last year that 302 redirects should "only" be used for temporary redirects. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-interview-googles-matt-cutts-on-redirects-trust-more For a site that I am looking at the SEO Moz Crawll Diagnostics tool lists as an issue that the URL / redirects to www.abc.com/Pages/default.aspx with a 302 redirect. On further searching I found that on a Google Support forum (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=276539078ba67f48&hl=en) that a Google Employee had said "For what it's worth, a 302 redirect is the correct redirect from a root URL to a detail page (such as from "/" to "/sites/bursa/"). This is one of the few situations where a 302 redirect is preferred over a 301 redirect." Can anyone confirm if it is the case that "a 302 redirect is the correct redirect from a root URL to a detail page"? And if so why as I haven't found an explanation. If it is the correct best practice then should redirects of this nature be removed from displaying as issues in the SEO Moz Crawll Diagnostics tool Thanks for your help
Technical SEO | | CPU0