Temporary Redirects on Magento
-
I've recently taken over a client who uses the Magento platform and there was definitely a duplicate issue with his homepage. It redirected www to non www, however the canonical tag was setup wrong and pointing to the www version.
When I looked at OSE for both versions the non www has only 7 linking domains and a page authority of 32. The www version has 24 linking domains and page authority of 39. As the domain is fairly new, I decided to redirect the non www to www and keep the canonical the same. (I changed the internal linking structure etc).
When I run both URLs through this tool: http://www.ragepank.com/redirect-... it's returning a whole bunch of 302, rather than 301 redirects. What's the deal with that? Is that a Magento setting that I can fix or something a little harder?
I'm not sure if it's proper etiquette to post the URL of a client, so if that would help and is OK, please let me know.
Thanks
-
Been looking for this for ages.
Thanks
-
Wouldn't call myself an expert by any stretch, however, I've have set up and still run a few Magento stores.
The reason I asked which version your site is running, is because I believe they rolled out the 301 option in version 1.4.2.0 (based on the release notes I checked). Definitely strange you don't see it when using version 1.5.1.0.
You can solve it instead, as you rightly point out, using a rewrite rule in .htaccess, like the second extra rule from the Creare article:-
RewriteCond %{http_host} ^yourdomain.co.uk [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.co.uk/$1 [R=301,NC]
I don't usually find I need this, because Magento solves the www issue with that 301 dropdown menu option which is missing for you.
I don't generally need the first extra rule from that article, either:-
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.php RewriteRule ^(.)index.php$ http://www.yourdomain.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]
When I switch on Web Server Rewrites in the Magento backend, and correct the Magento root (if necessary) in .htaccess, as described in that article, the removal of index.php from URLs is usually solved. If you do still have the index.php problem, however, you could solve it in .htaccess too.
I'm definitely not an apache/mod_rewrite expert so I can't vouch for the syntax necessarily, however it certainly looks correct.
If I were you (or your client), I'd also want to get to the bottom of why I don't see that 301 option in Magento, as it could be symptomatic of an incomplete upgrade in the past. It could of course, be something else obvious which I'm missing - definitely worthy of further investigation though.
-
Hi Neil,
1.5.1.0.
Do you have much experience in rewriting htaccess files for Magento? I assume this article pretty much sums it up?
http://www.crearegroup-ecommerce.co.uk/blog/e-commerce-seo/htaccess-rewrites-for-magento-shops.php
Cheers
-
Hey Brad.. that is strange. I guess the next logical question would be which version of Magento is the site running?
-
Haha I only have two options (Yes or No):
| <label for="web_url_redirect_to_base">Redirect to Base URL if requested URL doesn't match it</label> | I.e. redirect from http://example.com/store/ to http://www.example.com/store/ |
-
You should have three options in that dropdown.. No, Yes (302 Found), and Yes (301 Moved Permanently). 301 should be the third option on the list.
-
Hi Neil,
Thanks for the superfast answer, appreciate it.
OK I switched that option from Yes to No. This fixed the temporary redirect problem. However, now both the www and non www versions are returning a 200 response (see http://www.ragepank.com/redirect-check/).
Is this an easy fix in Magento? I know in other systems such as Volusion we don't have access to htaccess. I'm guessing I can't do anything about this and I just have to worry about setting up the correct canonical?
Thanks
-
Hey Brad.. firstly, posting client URLs is fine as far as SEOmoz Q&A is concerned, however, it's entirely up to you in terms of client privacy.
Magento has a setting in the back-end for solving www/non-www canonicalisation (System > Configuration > Web > URL options). You'll see a setting for redirect type ("Auto-redirect to Base URL"), and obviously you'll want to ensure it's set to 301 rather than 302.
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
-
After 301 redirect
hello i do after 301 redirect from old domain to new since 3 month ago my qa : should i replace the backlinks links to new doamin Or the he backlinks in the old link will works
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cristophare790 -
301 redirects Ruby on Rails
Can anyone point me to the best way to implement 301 redirects on a Ruby on Rails website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianvest0 -
Penalty after 301 redirect?
We run a training center. We had 1 main website and 2 dedicated websites to certain themes. The 2 dedicated websites are older and the main website is about 6 months old. The 2 dedicated websites had a top 5 ranking for their most important keywords. 2 weeks ago we imported all the content from the dedicated websites into the main website. Then immediately after we did a perfect 301 redirect of these websites to the main website. 2 SEO companies checked it for us and so I'm very sure this is done right. Google immediately caught this up and gave the main website a boost. We where in the top 10 for many important keywords for 1 week. The next week all our rankings dropped. We only have a top 50 ranking for 10 keywords. Before it was 75 keywords in the top 20. Do you know what could have caused this? Any suggestion, thought, ... is welcome!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wellnesswooz0 -
SEO for a redirected domain name
Our client is a law firm with a name that is challenging to spell. We have procured a domain name for them that is catchy, easy to spell, and plays well into their brand, or at least the current campaign. We're using the campaign domain to direct traffic to their website with a 301 redirect. We have placed the campaign domain in a variety of offline mediums including print and outdoor. The client is currently in the number 1 spot for a good number of our highest priority keywords, so I do not want to do anything to jeopardize that. I'm also not sure this campaign will be their "brand" long-term so I don't want to risk making a switch and making it back. So for now, I'm most comfortable leaving the campaign domain as a redirect to their primary domain. Recently, the client approached me complaining (legitimately) that when people google the campaign domain, they are brought to search results for an entirely different domain because Google "corrects" the domain name for them. This is obviously a bad thing, with many users defaulting to entering urls into Google instead of the address bar. If you tell Google that it was wrong about the autocorrection, our site is in the number 1 position. I liken the situation to Overstock.com using O.co as their offline domain, but overstock.com as their online domain. But imagine if you googled o.co and google brought you to a list of results for "on.co" because it assumed you fat-fingered it. Is there anything I can do to prevent the domain name from getting corrected by Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | steverobinson0 -
301 redirects
Hello, I want to ditch about 1000 pages of a 2000+ page site. I believe the 301 redirect thing is the way to go but my expertise is limited. Is there a way to do a blanket redirect ie if a user or search engine looks for a page thats not there it all gets redirected to the index page or do I have to do each one manually? Thanks Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jwdl0 -
How to decide on which site to 301 redirect
Hi there I'd like your opinions please! My client currently has their website at not-very-good-url.it which has a really good link profile they also have duplicate sites at: much-better-brand-name-url.it and much-better-brand-name-url.com but both these other sites have only a handful of links in. How important do you think a better brand url is? And therefore do you think it would be better to 301 to a better brand URL and take the risk that the link profile will get hit? Or leave the main site where it is and 301 the other two to it? Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chammy0 -
Redirect
Hi, I have one domain which was redirected today (the main domain,root) was redirected to a new subdomain of the main root domain.site was ranking for several keywords and had an authority of 35 on root domain. Site after 12 hours disappeared from google results.dont even rank for its brand name. What will happened to the new subdomain? Will rank again? Have the same keywords plus some more.old keywords are 3 and new are 2. For the old keywords on page optimization gets a c , and for the new a+c. For the new keywords don't have backlinks at all. When my site will start to rank for its old keywords? How long will be down ? Will pass the link juice and authority? If yes how soon ? Because I will loose to much money if stay longer like 1-2 weeks down. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nyanainc0 -
301 redirect for duplicate content
Hey, I have just started working on a site which is a video based city guide, with promotional videos for restaurants, bars, activities,etc. The first thing that I have noticed is that every video on the site has two possible urls:- http://www.domain.com/venue.php?url=rosemarino
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdeLewis
http://www.domain.com/venue/rosemarino I know that I can write a .htaccess line to redirect one to the other:- redirect 301 /venue.php?url=rosemarino http://www.domain.com/venue/rosemarino but this would involve creating a .htaccess line for every video on the site and new videos that get added may get missed. Does anyone know a way of creating a rule to rewrite these urls? Any help would be most gratefully received. Thanks. Ade.0