Main page redirect affecting search results?

[nongard1]

Question....    A recent change was made to our page www.BGU.edu by a marketing person.  So now when you type in www.BGU.edu it actually redirects to a different page www.BGU.edu/inquiry

This is a really bad idea  isn't it?   I do not know enough about SEO to know a lot, and just joined SEOmoz but do I need to tell the admin to change it back?

[nongard1]

Thank-you!

[NaescentAdam]

Ah that's ok  I'm newbie myself..

When you go to a webpage the website returns a code to let the browser or Google, or who ever is browsing what the current status of the webpage is. Normally you go to a webpage and you are returned a 200, meaning everything is ok, but you dont need to know it all the time so the browser hides it.

If you try and find a page that is not there the server returns a 404 code, often people designing websites try and redirect you to a customised 404 code/error page, so that they can try and retain you, but in the background the server is returning a 404 code to tell the browser it couldn't find the page it wanted.

With a 301 redirect, what we do is force who ever is trying to access that page to go to another page and tell them that its permanent by telling the server to issue a 301 code.

This tells Google that the page is moved to a new location and should be considered the same page for future purposes. Its kinda like going to the post office to tell them you have moved address and to forward all your mail on.

Now you normally do a 301 redirect using a .htaccess file, but that's a whole other can of worms

Although saying all that I'd assumed it was a 301 but I wanted to give you a tool to check them out yourself and tested it. The website is showing a 302 code which is a temporary redirect. Very bad... but then you new you that

Use this http://web-sniffer.net/ and look mid way down under the yellow bar..

Adam

[ThompsonPaul]

Very, very bad idea. To make matters even worse, they've used a 302-redirect, which further compromises the ability of the home page to hold it's rank.

Yes, you need to have the admin change it back, as there doesn't seem to have been any compelling reason for the change. The one bright side is that, because the 302 redirect was used, it will be easier to change it back.

Paul

[nongard1]

What is the 301?  Sorry for being a newbie!

[NaescentAdam]

Agreed very bad, looks really odd too.

What if you don't have an inquiry but to gain an overall impression of the site?

You could do the same thing with a jquery overlay or just a box for inquiries, but I always think the home page should encapsulate the business in an instant then give you direction for more resources. Why not have a prominent link to the inquiry, or generate lead pages on some of you keywords etc....

Adam

p.s. also all your links to the home page are going to leak link juice with the 301 in place.

[nongard1]

Thank-you!   This is a very small Christian grad school, who is ministry focused not tech focused.   I am working with them in social media (which is my area of expertise) but the webpage is such a mess I have to find some solutions there to to make the social media pay off...

Thank-you for making my case clearly.

Fortunatly the IT person is very responsive to my suggestions, even though they do not appear to have much SEO or page management experience.

I have always understood that not only is it rude, but that now they are not getting the main index page indexed...  A massive Faux Pas!

[EGOL]

This is a really bad idea  isn't it? In my opinion, it is a very bad idea.

It's best to keep the site locked up so that the marketing people can't monkey with it.

Universities are really bad about managing websites.  They change department URLs from egol.edu/chemistry to chemistry.egol.edu and then to chem.egol.edu and then to egol.edu/chem

Somebody gets the idea that they need to change the URLs so they then run wild with it.

Then, thousands of high schools, other universities and other webmasters have linked to these various URLs, which have been changed at whim without redirects.   It is really rude to the people who have linked to you and it shows that the university webteam do not plan and don't know what they are doing and are inconsiderate about the people who are willing to send them traffic.

I have a website that links to lots of university resources and we have to check those links every year because university marketing monkeys keep changing them.  I am betting that 20 to 30% of the URLs must be edited every year.

Sorry for the rant.