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
-
Removing 301 redirect from 2.5 yr old domain
Hello, Need Advise. We are in Automobiles We have an Automotive site - build 3 yrs back - which is our main site (Site A) We built a separate niche site on Used cars 2.5 yrs back (Site B - url http://www.usedcarindelhi.com) - did seo - promote it for a year and later on in feb 2013 - did 301 domain redirection to Site A Now - we thinking to rebuild Site Site B again and remove redirection Will there be any harm on Site A, as we have now removed the redirection or shall we pass on link from home page of Site B to Site A i.e say Powered by Site A (on Top) or at all no direct linking is actually needed. PS :- Also - can anyone let know the backlink quality of www.usedcarindelhi.com. Its PR 3, DA - 18, Majestic Citation Flow - 18, Trust Flow - 11 . Pl advise
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Effect SERP's internal 301 redirects?
I'm considering installing Wordpress for my website. So I have to change the static URL's from /webpage.html to /webpage/. Yet I don't want to lose in the SERP's. What should I expect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wellnesswooz1 -
Duplicate content reported on WMT for 301 redirected content
We had to 301 redirect a large number of URL's. Not Google WMT is telling me that we are having tons of duplicate page titles. When I looked into the specific URL's I realized that Google is listing an old URL's and the 301 redirected new URL as the source of the duplicate content. I confirmed the 301 redirect by using a server header tool to check the correct implementation of the 301 redirect from the old to the new URL. Question: Why is Google Webmaster Tool reporting duplicated content for these pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOAccount320 -
Should you cache redirects?
I would like to know what fellow SEO people think, should you cache a redirect? Problems I see with caching redirects are meta refreshes and there might be a slow down in page load, but is it a big issue? Should we cache redirects? Do pages get indexed more if you cache redirects? Our ecommerce product pages are all dynamic, and currently we cache redirects but i'm seeing a lot of meta refresh issues. Another area that cropped up is that, the redirect doesn't pass on query parameters. Our system dumps URLs and they are redirected to SEO ones, but the redirect doesn't pass on parameters like Google Analytic tracking tags. What are your thoughts? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Embed Same Video On Multiple Pages or 301 Redirect Into 1?
I have 3 pages that rank VERY well for related terms such as: -How to get widgets -How to become a widget -Getting widgets -etc. I am incorporating a video on the topic and rewriting much of the content on the site. I am wondering if it is wise to 301 redirect all 3 pages to 1 page that has the new/better video content or if I should leave the old content that is ranking well and embed the video on the top of each. The anal retentive side of me wants a nice new site structure and 1 powerful page. However, if the 3 pages are currently ranking (sometimes 2 pages in the same top 10 results), should I mess with what is working? Ultimately my goal is to increase the avg time on site as these 3 pages are top traffic pages for the site. However, they do not convert at all, as they are for a product we don't offer. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheDude0 -
What happens with a 301 redirected page?
Hi All, What happens with an indexed page that I 301 redirect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
Is it removed from the Google index after a while? Thanks0 -
301 Redirects After Company Acquisition
We recently acquired a company, and now we are going to redirect all of the pages on their site to their respective pages on our site. Do we need to keep the original pages on their site active? For how long? Ideally, we would like to redirect everything and remove the old site entirely so we don't have to pay to keep hosting it. Is this possible? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pbhatt1 -
Large Site SEO - Dev Issue Forcing URL Change - 301, 302, Block, What To Do?
Hola, Thanks in advance for reading and trying to help me out. A client of mine recently created a large scale company directory (500k+ pages) in Drupal v6 while the "marketing" type pages of their site was still in manual hard-coded HTML. They redesigned their "marketing" pages, but used Drual v7. They're now experiencing server conflicts with both instances of Drupal not allowing them to communicate/be on the same server. Eventually the directory will be upgraded to Drupal v7, but could take weeks to months the client does not want to wait for the re-launch. The client wants to push the new marketing site live, but also does not want to ruin the overall SEO value of the directory and have a few options, but I'm looking to help guide them down the path of least resistance: Option 1: Move the company directory onto a subdomain and the "marketing site" on the www. subdomain. Client gets to push their redesign live, but large scale 301s to the directory cause major issues in terms of shaking up the structure of the site causing ripple effects into getting pulled out of the index for days to weeks. Rankings and traffic drop, subdomain authority gets lost and the company directory health looks bad for weeks to months. However, 301 maintains partial SEO value and some long tail traffic still exists. Once the directory gets moved to Drupal v7, the directory will then cancel the 301 to the subdomain and revert back to original www. subdomain URLs Option 2: Block the company directory from search engines with robots.txt and meta instructions, essentially cutting off the floodgates from the established marketing pages. No major scaling 301 ripple effect, directory takes a few weeks to filter out of the index, traffic is completely lost, however once drupal v7 gets upgraded and the directory is then re-opened, directory will then slowly gain back SEO value to get close to old rankings, traffic, etc. Option 3: 302 redirect? Lose all accumulate SEO value temporarily... hmm Option 4: Something else? As you can see, this is not an ideal situation. However, a decision has to be made and I'm looking to chose the lesser of evils. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks again -Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bacon0