302 Redirect of www. version of a site - Pros/Cons
-
Hi,
I am considering making the 301 redirect from the domain to a 302 temporary redirect.
Currently if a user lands on "www" version of the site, they are redirected to the non "www" version. But after the redirect, they will land on an external webpage (so if a user lands on the "www" version, they are redirected to a different website, not related to my domain).
Reason I'm considering this is because I have received a large number of spammy backlinks on the "www" version of the site (negative seo). So I'm hoping that the temporary redirect will help me recover.
Your thoughts on this:
1. Is this the best way to do a 302 redirect (redirecting the www version to an external domain)?
2. Will the redirect help the main domain recover, considering all spammy backlinks are pointing to the www version?
3. What are the pros/cons, if any?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts!
Howard
-
Just to clarify, let me be more specific about what I initially planned to do:
Let's say my current website is at: example.com. Rel canonical is set so that if a user lands on www.example.com, they're redirect to the non www version.
For some reason, the negative seo targeted the www.example.com instead of the main url. So I'm thinking since all the bad links are pointing to the www version, redirecting that to somewhere else may help.
What you say makes sense, that google can detect that both versions are from the same domain.
I didn't see any major drops from the penguin last night. The main drop started middle of March and continued through April. This seems to have been an algo penalty vs. manual penalty as I didn't receive a warning.
The entire homepage wouldn't redirect, just the www domain. I doubt anyone would be affected by this since the rel canonical is set to the non www.
I think I agree with Chris on this and just wait it out and see if the disavow request goes anywhere.
-
I agree with Chris that changing the redirect to a 302 redirect is unlikely to have the desired impact. These days Google is pretty good about awarding credit for homepage links, even if the configuration isn't ideal (i.e. there is both a non-www and a www that resolves.) If they award credit for such non-ideal configurations, they probably also transfer the negative stuff.
Let me ask, though: are you sure that you're suffering from a link-based penalty caused by negative SEO? Did you receive a warning in Webmaster Tools, or did you see traffic drop on the date of a Penguin refresh?
I'm also a little confused about your configuration. You said, "after the redirect, they will land on an external webpage". If I understand you, you're saying your homepage redirects people to a different domain? If so, that really sounds like a sneaky redirect at worst, or a doorway page at best. Google doesn't want to send people to your domain if you suddenly redirect users to a new domain with something "not related to your domain."
-
Basically, though, I wouldn't count on using any redirects to get you around a penguin penalty or shorten its duration. Typically, for those who get out of penguin, it takes a lot of work on dealing with the links combined with a lot of work on content--so much so, that it seems to take a total commitment to the domain to make it happen.
It sounds like you may be preparing for the worst but that you haven't been impacted yet. If that's the case, I'd just wait it out, at this point, and if you get hit, make a commitment to a domain and stick with it.
-
Thanks Chris. Thankfully I wouldn't lose all the traffic since most links are pointing to the non www url. This would only be a temporary redirect until I clean up the bad links but I thought doing the 302 redirect before the penguin may give me a chance to clean up those links while not being completely affected by them.
-
Sounds like that will likely get what traffic you have currently going to www over to the new domain but I don't think it's going to help you recover in any way. You're either going to have to work hard at eliminating the links to the www site and/or work hard to build up authority for the new domain. If you feel reviving the www site is out of the question, this could be the way to go as I haven't heard of anyone speaking of repercussions from 302ing visitors from one domain to another due to Penguin.
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
-
Cached version of my site is not showing content?
Hi mozzers, I am a bit worried since I looked a cache version of my site and somehow content is partially showing up and navigation has completely disappeared. Where could this come from? What should I be doing? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Taysir0 -
Huge httaccess with old 301 redirects. Is it safe to delete all redirects with no traffic in last 2 months?
We have a huge httaccess file over several MB which seems to be the cause for slow server response time. There are lots of 301 redirects related to site migration from 9 months ago where all old URLs were redirected to new URL and also lots of 301 redirects from URL changes accumulated over the last 15 years. Is it safe to delete all 301 redirects which did not receive any traffic in last 2 months ? Or would you apply another criteria for identifying those 301 that can be safely deleted? Any way to get in google analytics or webmaster tools all 301 that received traffic in the last 2 months or any other easy way to identify those, apart from checking the apache log files ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse0 -
Circular Canonical/Redirect
My client's site has an issue (see below) and I'm wondering how much it could be affecting crawlability. Has anyone seen a major rankings bump after fixing something like this? 1. In each page the rel=canonical is pointing to the http version of the page while the http version is redirecting to the https version. Basically, a circular redirect-canonical loop is occurring.2. The sitemap.xml is also referring to the http version of the pages rather than the https.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | elenaroi0 -
Parked Vs Addon/Redirect Domain
We have an old site we are trying to figure out what to do with it. Right now, we have it as a parked domain, but were considering changing it to an addon domain with a redirect. I have no reason why I chose parked vs addon, other than I had to pick one. Is one superior than the other? What are the pro's and con's for these? Thanks, Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Our quilting site was hit by Panda/Penguin...should we start a second "traffic" site?
I built a website for my wife who is a quilter called LearnHowToMakeQuilts.com. However, it has been hit by Panda or Penguin (I’m not quite sure) and am scared to tell her to go ahead and keep building the site up. She really wants to post on her blog on Learnhowtomakequilts.com, but I’m afraid it will be in vain for Google’s search engine. Yahoo and Bing still rank well. I don’t want her to produce good content that will never rank well if the whole site is penalized in some way. I’ve overly optimized in linking strongly to the keywords “how to make a quilt” for our main keyword, mainly to the home page and I think that is one of the main reasons we are incurring some kind of penalty. First main question: From looking at the attached Google Analytics image, does anyone know if it was Panda or Penguin that we were “hit” by? And, what can be done about it? (We originally wanted to build a nice content website, but were lured in by a get rich quick personality to rather make a “squeeze page” for the Home page and force all your people through that page to get to the really good content. Thus, our avenge time on site per person is terrible and Pages per Visit is low at: 1.2. We really want to try to improve it some day. She has a local business website, Customcarequilts.com that did not get hit. Second question: Should we start a second site rather than invest the time in trying to repair the damage from my bad link building and article marketing? We do need to keep the site up and running because it has her online quilting course for beginner quilters to learn how to quilt their first quilt. We host the videos through Amazon S3 and were selling at least one course every other day. But now that the Google drop has hit, we are lucky to sell one quilting course per month. So, if we start a second site we can use that to build as a big content site that we can use to introduce people to learnhowtomakequilts.com that has Martha’s quilting course. So, should we go ahead and start a new fresh site rather than to repair the damage done by my bad over optimizing? (We’ve already picked out a great website name that would work really well with her personal facebook page.) Or, here’s a second option, which is to use her local business website: customcarequilts.com. She created it in 2003 and has had it ever since. It is only PR 1. Would this be an option? Anyway I’m looking for guidance on whether we should pursue repairing the damage and whether we should start a second fresh site or use an existing site to create new content (for getting new quilters to eventually purchase her course). Brad & Martha Novacek rnUXcWd
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BradNovi0 -
Can some brilliant mozzer out there teach a moron/newbie like me how to 301 redirect several URL's I have?
Okay - I am a supermodel. I look pretty. My legs are amazing. My cheekbones are high. But when it comes to 301 redirects I am the ugliest supermodel on the block. Crap, here is the truth: I am not even a supermodel. I am just a middle-aged, goofy looking dude who is a newbie to fixing websites. I have inherited several sites from a friend and I have been helping by creating solid contextual links internally and externally for a while. But, when Roger the wondrous SEOMoz robot talks to me, he says, "oops, it looks like your foolish freak self has a site that has both a www. and a non-www, which can create competition for yourself." What do I do when he says that? I just whisper a "thank-you" but gently press the skip this step button and go on with my life because I do not know how to make my non-www.'s redirect into the www. sites... Now, I have sort of asked this question on the site before, but I was answered by someone who does not understand my level of ignorance. any use of the word canonical or just put this lfwjkshj.htp/php inside the left ear of your mom, does not tell me anything so, is there any willing and kind soul who can walk me through redirecting several of my sites to their proper home - kind of like Carl Chubbs Weathers did for Happy Gilmore in that Academy Award winning classic? Thanks for the help in advance best, dumbhead
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | creativeguy0 -
/%category%/%postname%/ Permalink structure
Mostly everyone seems to agree that /%category%/%postname%/ is the best blog structure. I'm thinking of changing my structure to that because now it's structured by date which is bad. But almost all of my posts are assigned to more than one category. Won't this create duplicate pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Strategies to compete with a new domain/site
Hi all, What would be ( highlights ) your strategy in order to rank and compete with a new domain against competitors that have an average of 50% domain authority and around 2000 root domain linking to them, if you would start with a completely new website/domain? How long would you estimate the new site to be competitive? In the retail area. Working on it a month full time I would go with On page SEO off course, detailling each products and building the internal link structure Get back links, backlinks, backlinks and... backlinks... Build the social media network feed a blog Thanks for your input Considering working on the site for a month full time, I would estimate a ranking after a month or 2 although the competitions very high. Your thoughts ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Derek_A0