Homepage 302 redirect - Which option makes most sense?
-
Edit: Here's a simplified version of this issue and how I have fixed it thus far.
On AmbitionSnowskates.com, there is a video section. There is no content on this page, it 302 redirects to the newest video. If you access ambitionsnowskates.com/video/, you are redirected to ambitionsnowskates.com/video/safari-time/.
The original post (OP) was about a site with recurring events. There is a cycle between to which subpage the homepage should redirect. For this reason, I was wondering if I should redirect mysite.com to mysite.com/active-subpage/ or the other way around (and have the content directly on the homepage).
I was also wondering how this will affect the result in SERPs. It turns out Google shows the title and description of the destination page, but shows the URL of the original URL (the homepage).
Knowing this, I can tailor my meta descriptions to be about both the company and the current event; a mix of the two means I won't have to switch or duplicate meta descriptions between active events.
I do appreciate the real solution though: in my opinion there should be unique content on the homepage with according CTA. I'm trying to push this as the best fix, with redirections being an alternative, but albeit more complex, solution.
Again sorry for being so unclear. I wish I had had an example from the beginning.
I'm leaving this opened in case someone wants to chime in.
Ben
Hey guys, I need a hand on this one
We have a website with 3 events and we want the homepage to show the upcoming event.
- Event 1 is in February
- Event 2 is in April
- Event 3 is in June
These events are recurrent year after year.
Currently the homepage shows the content of event 1 at the root level (site.com/) . The other events have a unique URL (site.com/event-2, site.com/event-3).
Later in the year, after event 1 is over, we change the homepage content to event 2 and move event 1 to its own URL. In other words...
Current structure
Today:
- Event 1: site.com/
- Event 2: site.com/event-2
- Event 3: site.com/event-3
In March:
- Event 1: site.com/event-1
- Event 2: site.com/
- Event 3: site.com/event-3
And so on.
I want to make sure each event has its own URL and is properly indexed.
Option A
I can redirect the homepage to the right event: site.com -> 302 -> site.com/event-1.
If that's the way to go, what will be the SEO impact, i.e. what content will show up in SERPs? The destination page's content/meta description and title?
Option B
What I could also do is keep the current structure (content moved to the root), but redirect temporarily the event's unique URL to the homepage:
Today:
- Event 1: site.com/
- Event 1: site.com/event-1 -> 302 -> site.com/
- Event 2: site.com/event-2
- Event 3: site.com/event-3
In March:
- Event 1: site.com/event-1
- Event 2: site.com/
- Event 2: site.com/event-2 -> 302 -> site.com/
- Event 3: site.com/event-3
And so on.
Again, if that's the way to go, how will this impact SERPs, which title and description will I see for the homepage and individual events?
If you have other options, I'm all ears!
Thanks a lot! (I mean it)
-Ben
-
You really do not want to have a URL that is considered temporary unless you are changing domains or doing something like building a new website. From a search engine 1st perspective now if you want this thing to rank I think what you should do and tell me if I'm way off okay man is to use a landing page for instance go to http://www.blueprintmarketing.com then where you see the home button in navigation let your mouse hover over it. You will then see a drop down click on that it is a landing page. All landing pages is a separate way to add pages to your site that would work in this situation where you can keep the original site example.com and off of example.com you will not need any example.com/newevent you simply have the power with landing pages to turn them on and off what framework are you using for WordPress if you don't mind me asking?
-
Hey Thomas - we use Wordpress but we can customize it any way we like. I would guess the fix is plateform-agnostic though.
Indeed it would be easier to have CTAs on the homepage but that's not an option.
As far as rel=canonical, I wouldn't be comfortable instructing search engines that the homepage's canonical URL is an event's page, or instructing that an event's canonical URL is the homepage, because it isn't. Rel=canonical doesn't "fit" the temporary nature of the structure.
-
Yes we're OK with that.
-
so now is a rule of thumb you need a minimum of 300 words per page or blog post.
-
Hey Dave - we have a fair amount, enough to justify having distinct pages.
-
You need toKeep your homepage you need so it either has a update in the form of a call to action expressing the event or use landing pages
what platform are you working on don't let me ask asking? Is it WordPress, HTML?
try setting it up so you have one homepage that stays as your homepage in addition you will add landing pages that contain event information. Please look at the links below
http://unbounce.com/landing-pages/
http://www.copyblogger.com/landing-pages/
I hope this better answers your question. It is extremely hard to understand why you doubt rel=canonical it is one of the best ways to go about constructing a website. However if you are going to constantly be changing your homepage URL I think that is a terrible idea the one I say that I mean changing it like example.com/event-1 to example.com to example.com/event-5 that is what landing pages are for not redirects
sincerely,
Thomas
PS if you can take a screenshot or something that would be awesome
-
How much unique content is there on each event page?
-
I understand try https://www.optimizely.com/resources/multivariate-test-vs-ab-test
Hop it works,
Tom
-
There is only 1 domain (say www.site.com). I am looking to redirect pages within that domain, either from the homepage to an event page (www.site.com/my-event-1/), or from the event page to the homepage.
Redirecting seems like the right thing to do because I want to make sure each event has its own URL (maybe saying URI or slug is more correct).
I can't have 4 pages (1 per event) and the homepage with duplicate content. I don't think rel=canonical can help here, so my best bet is most likely redirections.
Does that clear it up a bit? I wish I could show an example but I can't, it's on a dev server.
-
Hi Ben,
it seems to me that you have quite a bit going on. Number 1 I would not start jumbling the domains around to redirect to each other I would use a simple system like event Brite its free and even SEOmoz uses it to create events. I would do this for each particular event and put it on the correct home page or website. just so you know what you described will most likely destroy any quality ranking that you have. Did you ask to do a 302 redirect because it is a temporary redirect? Please do not do what you have proposed for your own sake honestly you would be better off dating the link that you want indexed
so my site is example.com/event-12/2012/
may next website is example2.com/event-1/2013
and so on when you use a 302 redirect you completely stop any link juice or search engine good stuff from passing through your website to the next. It is very common to see a calendar with events set up and when they pass they are no longer worried about
to get the word out simply use
Each event will have its own indexed URL
PS 302 redirecting your website will not benefit you in any way you will not pass link juice and will honestly just put yourself through more work than needed.
If I understood you correctly this should be the correct answer. If I did not please let me know and I would like to help you whatever is wrong.
I apologize why is it that you have 3 websites?
Respectfully,
Thomas
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
-
Redirecting Ecommerce Site
Hi I'm working on a big site migration I'm setting up redirects for all the old categories to point to the new ones. I'm doing this based on relevancy, the categories don't match up exactly but I've tried to redirect to the most relevant alternative. Would this be the right approach?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Google cache is showing my UK homepage site instead of the US homepage and ranking the UK site in US
Hi There, When I check the cache of the US website (www.us.allsaints.com) Google returns the UK website. This is also reflected in the US Google Search Results when the UK site ranks for our brand name instead of the US site. The homepage has hreflang tags only on the homepage and the domains have been pointed correctly to the right territories via Google Webmaster Console.This has happened before in 26th July 2015 and was wondering if any had any idea why this is happening or if any one has experienced the same issueFDGjldR
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adzhass0 -
Upper to Lower Case and Endless Redirects
I have a site that first got indexed about a year ago for several months. I shut it down and opened it up again about 5 months ago. 2 months ago I discovered that the upper case in the pages: www.site.com/some-detail/Bizname/product was a no-no. There are no backlinks to these pages yet, so for search engines I put in 301 redirects to the lower case version thinking after a few weeks Bing and Google would figure it out and no longer try to crawl them. FYI there are thousands of these pages, and they are dynamically created. Well, 2 months later google is still crawling the upper case urls even though it appears that only the lower case are in the index (from when I do a site:www.site.com/some-detail ) search. Bing is also crawling the upper case although I'm not seeing any of the upper case pages and only a small percentage of the lower case ones show using a site:www.site.com/details.... command Assuming there are no backlinks will they eventually stop crawling those uppercase pages? If not, again assuming there are no backlinks, should I 410 the upper case pages, or will that remove any credit I am getting for the page having existed for over a year prior to changing the upper to lower?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
Redirect advice
My website has two versions of the homepage: http://www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk/http://www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk/index.cfmI wondered if I could set up a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file so that only the http://www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk page was returned as the homepage?Colin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NileCruises0 -
How to conduct catch 301 redirects & have the separate 301 redirects for the key pages
Hi, We've currently done a site migration mapping and 301 redirecting only the sites key pages. However two GWT (Google Webmaster Tools) is picking a massive amount of 404 areas and there has been some drop in rankings. I want to mitigate the site from further decline, and hence thought about doing a catch 301 - that is 301 redirecting the remaining pages found on the old site back to the home page, with the future aim of going through each URL one by one to redirect them to the page which is most relevant. Two questions, (1) can I do a catch 301 and if so what is the process and requirements that I have to give to the developer? (2) How do you reduce the number of increasing 404 errors from a site, despite doing 301 redirects and updating links on external linking sites. Note: The server is apache and the site is hosted on Wordpress platform. Regards, Vahe
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vahe.Arabian0 -
2-stage 301 redirects
Dear colleagues, I have quite an unusual situation with one of my client's websites, and I could use an advise from someone who experienced the same circumstances: They are currently planning on launching a new site under the same domain (by September), when several key current pages are intended to be replaced with new equivalent pages under new URLs. So far it's pretty simple, BUT - due to a merger with another company they will be migrating their entire website to a different domain within a year. My question is - what would be the optimal solution for redirects? We are considering a 301 from the current pages to the new pages under the same domain, and once the new domain is activated - aside from defining 301 redirects from the new pages under the same domain to the new domain, we will cancel the original 301 from the old pages to the new pages on the same domain, and instead define new 301 for those pages to the new domain. What do you think? Is there a better solution - like using 302 redirects for the first stage? Has anyone tried such a procedure? Your input will be highly appreciated! Thanks in advance, Omer
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Usearch0 -
How do I go about changing a 302 redirect to a 301.
Hello Friends! Thanks for viewing my question. Ok,My question today is How do I go about redirecting a 302 link to a 301 link. I understand the benefits of doing this as far as link juice and how the Search Engines views the two Re-Directs. I am wanting to know where I would start to do this. Thank you in advance for any help or suggestions!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FrontlineMobility0 -
404 Redirecting to the home page
One of my clients that is managing their own server and website recently moved servers. Which then broke their custom 404 page. Instead of fixing this or putting the site back to the old server they redirected the 404 to the home page. I've been working on getting their 404's appropriately redirected, or old urls redirection using a 301 for a month or two. I read the HTTP Status Codes best practices. It just discusses usability. What technical seo back lash can happen?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | triveraseo0