301 to Intermediate Page then Rel=Canonical from Intermediate to target page
-
Hi
I'm working on an eCommerce site and don't have direct access to the CMS. I had requested developers to provide me a facilty to 301 via htaccess however this is working slight differently. I need guidance from experts whether it's okay or not:
Old Page: example.com/old
Target New Page: example.com/new
After Implementing the redirect, It redirects to an intermediate page or in other words, The same target URL with a question mark added:
example.com/new? (notice the question mark in the new URL)
This intermediate page has a canonical tag for the exact target URL.
So,
if I 301 redirect example.com/old
to example.com/new? (Intermediate page)
and If the intermediate page example.com/new? has a canonical tag for the exact target URL (example.com/new), Will I be able to pass the link juice and authority of old page to the new page?
-
Sorry - I got an email that you left a response, but then it was gone(?) Might be a system glitch. Could you reply again?
-
It's not ideal. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to guess how Google will interpret that, and it can vary a lot with the situation. In theory, a 301+canonical could work like a chained 301-redirect. A two-link 301 chain isn't great, but it's not awful, and it will pass some link-juice. A 301+canonical is probably slightly worse, in practice, I doubt the outcome is consistent across sites.
Keep in mind, too, that a 301 lands the user on a new URL, whereas a canonical doesn't. So, this could cause more people to link to the intermediate page, bookmark it, etc. (also not ideal).
I'm curious - why can you set up a 301 to an intermediate page but no to the target page. It seems like you'd need more CMS access to do what you did then solve the original problem.
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
-
What is the danger of adding rel="prev" and rel="next"...
Our search results pages are, unfortunately, heavily indexed by Google. While the long term plan is to replace these somehow with our product pages, in the short term we are doing all we can to improve things. One of our issues is that we don't have a canonical link or rel="next" or rel="prev" on these pages. Would like to add these to consolidate duplicate content as well as help Google drill down within these pages to crawl the links within them. The concern is... If ten people arrive at our site via: http://www.oursite.com/?goodstuff=puppies&page=1 and 10 people also arrive at our site via: http://www.oursite.com/?goodstuff=puppies&page=2 Would adding rel="next" and rel="prev" potentially have a damaging effect on us by removing one of these entry points and therefore removing 10 potential visitors? Or would it still show both links, but instead would show the canonical in both locations? In short, could adding these tags actually backfire? Thanks very much! Craig
On-Page Optimization | | TheCraig0 -
"Issue: Duplicate Page Content " in Crawl Diagnostics - but these pages are noindex
Saw an issue back in 2011 about this and I'm experiencing the same issue. http://moz.com/community/q/issue-duplicate-page-content-in-crawl-diagnostics-but-these-pages-are-noindex We have pages that are meta-tagged as no-everything for bots but are being reported as duplicate. Any suggestions on how to exclude them from the Moz bot?
On-Page Optimization | | Deb_VHB0 -
Too Many On-Page Links
Hello. So, my SEO team has worked very hard to finally resolve RogerBot/GoogleBot specific Crawl Errors either manually or programmatically can be fixed for our Budget Blinds USA Pro Campaign. We've done a good job even if a lot of it came from Robots.txt file entries as this was the most efficient way our client chose to do it. Good news is most of it is CMS configuration and not bad site architecture. That being said our next big volume of Crawl Errors is "Too Many On-Page Links". Our Moz DomainRank is 61. Our client, on this new version of the website, added a large nav-based footer which has duplicate links from the Header Main Navigation. I believe our solution is to put in No-Follow Metatags at the Footer Link Level, so we don't zap Page Authority by over-dividing as you recommend. Is this the best way to resolve this? Is there any risk in this? Or is a 61 DomainRank high enough for RogerBot and GoogleBot to crawl these anyway? Please advise,
On-Page Optimization | | Aviatech0 -
On-page SEO reviews
Hi everyone 🙂 I was hoping someone could point me in a direction on where I could get my website's on-page SEO a review with recommendations. Title tags, meta description, code, H1s, content and so on... I know you can find most of what I'm asking online, but I would like a professional with a new set of eyes to help out. Thanks in advance for your time in helping!
On-Page Optimization | | AutoGlassRescue0 -
On Page SEO Tool
Hello - I'm looking for one tool that does the following and was wondering if anyone knew of such a tool? In a perfect world I would like to enter in one domain name and have a report generated that shows All Internal links, link titles, and anchor text All internal broken links / redirects All images, image size and image alt, if the image alt is missing. I'd love to be about to export these reports to excel and quickly run my on page optimization. The goal is to produce a checklist for a developer to execute quickly. Thanks for your help Gabe
On-Page Optimization | | Gabe0 -
Framed Pages and Dynamic Pages
Has anyone else had experience with different CMS's for Ecommerce . Ones that create static pages and others that dynamically create pages. What differences have you seen with rankings on google with the two. Here are two examples of sites using static framed pages and one with a system that dynamically creates pages - http://www.gardeningexpress.co.uk/ - static frames and http://www.floraselect.co.uk - dynamically
On-Page Optimization | | onlinemediadirect0 -
Should one page with markers or six separate pages?
Hi - I'm working on a site that was set up with 6 bios on one page, with markers jumping to each person's name. I was thinking about separating those into 6 different pages, but not sure if that's the right thing to do. Advice about keeping the bios on one page vs splitting them up? (Am I more likely to rank for those peoples' names if I have a unique page, or is the one page url with each different marker in it, just as good?) Ranking well for those names isn't a huge goal of the site, but it would be nice to make the choice that would help with that rank. Thanks for your input Emma
On-Page Optimization | | emmas0 -
Can I have a strong brand category page and a strong product page?
It seems Google base and other Comparison Shopping Engines like to see the brand in the product name. But, on my category page for that brand, website optimizer tells me including the brand name with each product is cannabilizes links. For example; I have a page for jewelerABC with 20 pieces of jewelry listed as well as original content about jewelerABC. I do not currently name these products as xyz by jewelerABC. This page comes up nicely in the serps. But in Google base The top listings for jewelry by jewelerABC seem to have every product named xyz by jewelerABC or JewelerABC xyzs. What is the best way to optimize.for both? Stephen
On-Page Optimization | | stephenfishman0