Explaining 301 redirects instead of 302
-
I am trying to explain in layman's terms to a client why using 302 for their redirects (which they have done themselves) is not right. There view is they do not seem to listen or believe what is being said to them and do not want to do permanent damage to the old domain so are using 302 redirects. I have explained over and over 301 is needed but I do not seem to be good at communicating this. Can someone give me a good example or description I can use to get my point across?
-
Keri, the problem with this analogy is that it reinforces the concept of a fallback or safety net.
Who wouldn't feel better going off to college knowing that if by some chance it didn't work out, you'd still have Mom & Dad keeping your nice warm bed and comfy room waiting for you.
That's exactly the unfortunate attitude FreshFire is up against - the site owners think it's more valuable to keep that fallback in place than to fully commit to the new site.
Which is why I suggested that maybe there's more to the issue than just "not getting it".
Paul
-
If you really think there isn't an underlying problem & he just needs a more comprehensible explanation, the best luck I've had explaining this to clients is by getting away from anything technical and from temporary/permanent and even talking about redirects at all.
I explain to them how they are actually wasting resources in competition with themselves, allowing others to gain success at their expense. (You're not gonna beat 'em with logic - gotta hit 'em in the pocketbook)
So... goes something like...
Google decides how much a site is worth. The more the site is worth, the higher it shows in the results.
Google currently thinks you have two sites for the same topic, so they are effectively competing against each other to try to gain points from Google.
Let's say your current site has a value of 8, and your old site has a value of 5.
But your biggest competitor's site has a value of 9.
So overall even though you have more "Google Value", you've split it over 2 sites so neither one of them alone has the power to beat the single site that has a score of 9.
So you're losing business opportunities to your competitor because Google places him above both of your other sites.
But if you use the technical tools available (called 301 redirecting) you can tell Google to combine the values of your 2 sites to determine the new value. You won't get to just add the two totals together (Google isn't quite that generous) but your combined site will get about 8+3 for a total of 11.
So now, once the changes have worked their way through the system, your competitor (9) is now losing opportunities to you (11) and must play catch up. And you accomplished that not with a lot of very expensive new work, but by using the existing tools that were designed just for this purpose.
Do you want to sit in the background and compete against yourself, or get out front and compete against (and have a much better chance of winning over) your competitor?
There are lots of analogies that can be created to put this concept into everyday terms, but I find in this case it's better to stick closer to the actual Search Engine paradigm.
Paul
-
When an otherwise smart person seems to obstinantly insist on ignoring good advice, I always look for a hidden or unstated reason that might better explain the actions, rather than just writing it off as "he just doesn't get it".
I suspect you may need to dig deeper to find out what it is he's afraid of that makes him think he needs to avoid "doing permanent damage to the old domain". I strongly suspect there's an underlying issue there. Maybe he doesn't fully agree with the direction of the new site? Doesn't trust its new business model or tools? You may need to do some real digging to figure out why he seems to feel so strongly that he needs to keep his failsafe or fallback position.
Paul
-
- yay! I will try.
You see it's harder to explain than you think!
-
How about a 302 is when you go off to college in another state (you still keep your voter registration, your permanent address, your license plate, etc in your home state), and a 301 is when you are moving for good to another place and you're setting up residency there?
-
Do you think the graphic that Dr. Pete created might help at all?
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-seos-guide-to-http-status-codes
-
Exactly!!! lol - Any ideas? It's hard to explain to a non pc person....
-
Sanket, the poster of the question understands what link juice is, and why a 301 is needed. He's looking for a way to explain it to his clients to convince them.
-
I know what it means! lol I am trying to think of a way to explain it to someone not into SEO or website i.e. a laymans response! - How to phrase it in simple terms....
-
Link juice means ranking power you can beat your competitor for ranking in Google. If any DoFollow site contains high page rank then you get high link juice from that site, if that site contains more outbound links then you get less linkjuice from that site. For example read this link.
-
They don't understand link juice....
-
Hi,
302 redirect is temporary bases and it does not passes any link juice and inbound links of that page, in most of cases it does not use. 302 you can use when your site is temporary under-construction and your content temporarily moved somewhere else. 302 refers to the HTTP status code so when you open that page and age does not forund you get 404 status code. If you are using 302 redirect then Create a custom error page for 404s which will give visitors that encounter your error page an indication of how to get back on track. Read this link for knowing more about how to use 302 http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-discussing-302-redirects/
301 redirect is permanent redirect and pases between 90-99% of link juice and inbound links and page rank. It is best method to implementing redirects on website. 301 redirect is preferable for both you and search engine also.
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
-
301 redirection help needed!
Hi all, So if we used to have a domain (let's say olddomain.com) and we had a new site created at newdomain.com how do we properly setup redirects page to page. Caveat, the urls have changed so for instance the old page oldomain.com/service is now newdomain.com/our-services on the new site. Do we need to have hosting on the old site? Do we need to setup individual 301s for each page corresponding to the new page? Just looking for the easiest way to do this CORRECTLY. Thanks, Ricky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley3 -
301 redirect to search results page?
Hi - we just launched our redesigned website. On the previous site, we had multiple .html pages that contained links to supporting pdf documentation. On this new site, we no longer have those .html landing pages containing the links. The question came up, should we do a search on our site to gather a single link that contains all pdf links from the previous site, and set up a redirect? It's my understanding that you wouldn't want google to index a search results page on your website. Example: old site had the link http://www.oldsite.com/technical-documents.html new site, to see those same links would be like: http://www.newsite.com/resources/search?View+Results=&f[]=categories%3A196
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jenny10 -
A 302 Redirect Question | Events Page Updates
Hello Moz World, I have a client that has a TON, like close to a thousand pages that have a 302 redirect set up. After further investigation, I found that every month they update their events page & Demo Request page, and the old events pages still exist but, get a 302 redirect to the updated page. From what I gather, this is a default mechanism set up by the hosting provider. My questions; is this an example of when to use a Rel=canonical? Also, is there a method for integrating this without having to go into every page and integrate the code snippet? And Lastly, How should I go about ensuring this doesn't happen in the future? Thanks ahead of time, you guys rock! B/R Will H.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarketingChimp100 -
Several 301 Redirects to Same Page
Hi, I have 3 Pages we won't use anymore in our website. Let's call them url A, url B and url C. To keep their SEO strength on our domain, I've though about redirecting all of them to url D. For what I understand, when 301 redirecting, about 85-90% of the link SEO juice is passed. Then, if I redirect 3 URLs to the same page... does url D receive all the link SEO juices for URLs added up? (approximately)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading1
e.g. future url D juice = 100% current url D juice + 85% url A juice + 85% url B juice + 85% url C juice Is this the best practice, or is there a better way? Cheers,0 -
301 redirect recommendations
One of our clients we are working on have two sites the main with a PR5 and a separate one with a PR4. We are planning on doing a 301 from the PR4 to a page on the PR5 Is it best to do: www.PR4.com ----> www.PR5.com/releveantPR4page or www.PR4.com/page ----> www.PR5.com/releveantPR4page Most pages on the PR4 site can fit into one PR5 page logically. However the PR4 has an about us, contact us, blog/with posts, FAQ, Applications, Legal Resources which are all pretty out dated.. The PR4 site is kinda messy and we are not sure if it will be easy to 301 each page individually with the user in mind. can we do a sitewide 301 redirect from the root PR4.com to a page PR/5.com/releveantPR4page and also do deeper 301's? PR4.com/PR4page ---> PR5.com/releveantPR4page
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
301 redirect or Link back from old to new pages
Hi all, We run a ticket agent, and have multiple events that occur year after year, for example a festival. The festival has a main page with each event having a different page for each year like the below: Main page
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gigantictickets
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-tickets (main page) Event pages:
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-2010-tickets/hawksbrook-lane-beckenham/2009-08-15-13-00-gce/11246a
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-2010-tickets/highhams-hill-farm-warlingham/2010-08-14-13-00-gce/19044a
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-2011-tickets/highhams-hill-farm-warlingham/2011-08-13-13-00-gce/26204a
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-2012-tickets/highhams-hill-farm-warlingham/2012-06-29-12-00-gce/32168a
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-2013/highhams-hill-farm/2013-07-12-12-00 my question is: Is it better to leave the old event pages active and link them back to the main page, or 301 redirect these pages once they're out of date? (leave them there until there is a new event page to replace it for this year) If the best answer is to leave the page there, should i use a canonical tag back to the main page? and what would be the best way to link back? there is a breadcrumb there now, but it doesn't seem to obvious for users to click this. Keywords we're aming for on this example are 'Leefest Tickets', which has good ranking now, the main page and 2012 page is listed. Thanks in advance for your help.0 -
301 or 302 Redirects to Mobile Site
When it's detected that a mobile device is accessing the site it has the ability to redirect from www.example.com to m.example.com. Does it make more sense to employ a 301 or 302 redirect here? Google says a 301 but does not explain why (although usually I stick to "when in doubt, 301") . It seems like a 302 would prevent passing link juice to the mobile site and having mobile-optimized results also showing up in Google's index. What is the preference here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOTGT0 -
301 Redirect To Corresponding Link No Matter The URL?
Hey guys I have hosting on Host Gator with I believe an apache web server. I need a code to put in the HT ACCESS to redirect all WWW URL's to their corresponding http URL. I haven't been able to get a code to work. For example, http://www.mysite.org/page1.html -> http://mysite.org/page1.html , without having to redirect hundreds of pages individually Here is the format my server uses in the HT ACCESS file for 301 redirects. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.org$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mysite.org
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DustinX
$RewriteRule ^Electric-Pressure-Cookers.html$ "http://mysite.org/Pressure-Cookers.html" [R=301,L] Thanks0