Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should I run 302 first before implementing 301?
-
I just want to ask if it is necessary to run 302 redirections first before redirecting old to new URLs permanently. I heard that we should run temporary redirects first so we can check after and to avoid passing the link juice but I want to hear thoughts from experts. Do i need to test 302s for old pages that are still live or should we redirect old URLs once these pages already removed from the site?
-
This is a friend's tool that has some more options.
http://incredibill.me/htaccess-rewrite-wizard -
We will remove a vertical/division from our current site and migrate the URLs (category and product-specific pages) to new URLs under a new domain. Let me know your thoughts Max!
By the way, thanks for sharing the redirect generator tool.
-
Thanks esiow2013 & others for discussing on 301 redirect, I also had same issue.
-
That's also a useful tool Ash, although it won't deal with URLs that that have parameters in such as question marks.
-
I have found that a 301 takes some time to take effect in the index, so I don't bother with a 302 first, There are many redirect tools on the web and I like this one: http://www.rapidtables.com/web/tools/redirect-generator.htm
-
What are you actually doing, redesigning a site and URLs have changed?
Although regardless, the process is normally the same. As soon as you have launched your new site, made live your new page or whatever is you are redirecting, set the redirects at the same time. There is no reason to delay them and again I really wouldn't bother with doing the redirects as 302's to start with. Just set the 301's, then check them all after, then double check. Even if some are incorrect after implementing, its no biggie. Simply edit it again so its correct .
The best thing to do is prepare all your redirects before I hand. I like to get organised and use a spread sheet with two columns, old URLs in one column, new URLs in the 2nd column. This way you can easily map them out.
Also to speed up the process of actually coding the redirects, I use this tool, it saves a huge amount of time: HtAccess 301 Redirect Generator Tool .
-
Thanks Max! Your answers are a big help. Last question, do I need to 301 redirect the old to new URLs within the day we will launch the new site after removing the old site? or should we prepare 302 redirects and check each URL that are still live(will be removed in site launch) if they land on the appropriate and new URLs and run 301 redirections after?
-
Like you mentioned, the reasoning behind doing 302 redirects initially is in case the redirect has been set incorrectly, giving you time to check them before Google re-crawls and updates the index. As 302 redirects are temporary, after setting the redirect the old page will usually stay in Google's index indefinitely.
However I do many 301 redirects every week and I have never taken this approach; I simply set the 301 redirect, then check everything is correct straight after. If you have hundreds of redirects to do you can check them more efficiently using the Screaming Frog web crawler. You can import your list of pages that should have been redirected in a txt file, then Screaming frog will crawl them telling you what response code they are sending and where they are redirecting too.
Even if you set an incorrect 301 redirect, it can takes weeks to months before Google updates the index, so you shouldn't really need to worry about sending the 'juice' to the incorrect page; although I suppose it depends on how long until you check if you have done those redirects correctly!
There could also be adverse issues. Say you were doing a site migration and you 302 redirected every URL on your site to other URLs, I don't know how Google would react to that, but it could be rather bad!
As the saying goes 'Measure Twice, Cut Once'!
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
-
302 > 302 > 301 Redirect Chain Issue & Advice
Hi everyone, I recently relaunched our website and everything went well. However, while checking site health, I found a new redirect chain issue (302 > 302 > 301 > 200) when the user requests the HTTP and non-www version of our URL. Here's what's happening: • 302 #1 -- http://domain.com/example/ 302 redirects to http://domain.com/PnVKV/example/ (the 5 characters in the appended "subfolder" are dynamic and change each time)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andrew_In_Search_of_Answers
• 302 #2 -- http://domain.com/PnVKV/example/ 302 redirects BACK to http://domain.com/example/
• 301 #1 -- http://domain.com/example/ 301 redirects to https://www.domain.com/example/ (as it should have done originally)
• 200 -- https://www.domain.com/example/ resolves properly We're hosted on AWS, and one of my cloud architects investigated and reported GoDaddy was causing the two 302s. That's backed up online by posts like https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46307518/random-5-alpha-character-path-appended-to-requests and https://www.godaddy.com/community/Managing-Domains/My-domain-name-not-resolving-correctly-6-random-characters-are/td-p/60782. I reached out to GoDaddy today, expecting them to say it wasn't a problem on their end, but they actually confirmed this was a known bug (as of September 2017) but there is no timeline for a fix. I asked the first rep I spoke with on the phone to send a summary, and here's what he provided in his own words: From the information gathered on my end and I was able to get from our advanced tech support team, the redirect issue is in a bug report and many examples have been logged with the help of customers, but no log will be made in this case due to the destination URL being met. Most issues being logged are site not resolving properly or resolving errors. I realize the redirect can cause SEO issues with the additional redirects occurring. Also no ETA has been logged for the issue being reported. I do feel for you since I now understand more the SEO issues it can cause. I myself will keep an eye out for the bug report and see if any progress is being made any info outside of this I will email you directly. Thanks. Issue being Experienced: Domains that are set to Go Daddy forwarding IPs may sometimes resolve to a url that has extra characters appended to the end of them. Example: domain1.com forwards to http://www.domain2.com/TLYEZ. However it should just forward to http://www.domain2.com. I think this answers what some Moz users may have been experiencing sporadically, especially this previous thread: https://moz.com/community/q/forwarded-vanity-domains-suddenly-resolving-to-404-with-appended-url-s-ending-in-random-5-characters. My question: Given everything stated above and what we know about the impact of redirect chains on SEO, how severe should I rate this? I told my Director that I would recommend we move away from GoDaddy (something I don't want to do, but feel we _**have **_to do), but she viewed it as just another technical SEO issue and one that didn't necessarily need to be prioritized over others related to the relaunch. How would you respond in my shoes? On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the biggest), how big of a technical SEO is this? Would you make it a priority? At the very least, I thought the Moz community would benefit from the GoDaddy confirmation of this issue and knowing about the lack of an ETA on a fix. Thanks!0 -
How To Implement Breadcrumbs
Hi, I'm looking to implement breadcrumbs for e-commerce store so they will appear in the SERP results like the attached image. In terms of implementing to a site, would you simply add HTML to each page like this Google example? Which looks like this: Books › Science Fiction Award Winners Then is there anything you need to do, to get this showing in the SERPs results e.g. doing something in search console. Or do you just wait into google has crawled and hopefully starts showing in the SERPs results? Cheers. wn3ybMMOQFW98fNQkxtJkA.png [SERP results with bread crumbs](SERP results with bread crumbs)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jaynamarino0 -
Should I run my Shopify store on a subdomain or buy a new domain for it?
I'm planning to set up a subdomain for my Shopify store but I'm not sure if this is the right approach. Should I purchase a separate domain for it? I'm running Wordpress on my website and want to keep it that way. I want to use Shopify for the ecommerce side. I want to link the store from the top nav and of course I'll use CTA's in a variety of ways to point to merchandise and other things on the store side. Thanks for any help you can offer.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ims20160 -
Can I dissavow links on a 301'd website?
So we are performing link removal for a client on his old website (A), which is being 301 redirected to his new website (B). We have identified toxic links on site A and are removing, once complete we will undo the current 301, confirm a new GWT account for website A, and then submit the disavow report. We would then like to reapply the 301 redirect to site B while we are waiting for Google to process the disavow report, the logic being we can retain some current rankings on site B while waiting for the disavow to process on site A. Has anyone had experience with this method? I foresee some potential issues here but am interested to here from others on this. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOdub1 -
Multiple 301 Redirects for the Same Page
Hi Mozzers, What happens if I have a trail of 301 redirects for the same page? For example,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
SiteA.com/10 --> SiteA.com/11 --> SiteA.com/13 --> SiteA.com/14 I know I lose a little bit of link juice by 301 redirecting.
The question is, would the link juice look like this for the example above? 100% --> 90% --> 81% -->72.9%
Or just 100% -----------------------------------------> 90% Does this link juice refer to juice from inbound links or links between internal pages on my site? Thanks!0 -
How do 302 redirects from Akamai content targeting impact SEO?
How do 302 redirects from Akamai content targeting impact SEO? I'm using Akamai content targeting to get people from countries and languages to the right place (eg www.abc.123 to redirect to www.abc.123/NL-nl/default.aspx where folks from the Netherlands get their localized site in dutch) and from the edge server closest to them. As far as I know Akamai doesn't allow me to use anything but a 302. Anyone run across this? is this 302 a problem? I did a fetch as googlebot on my main domain and all I see is the Akamai 302. I can't imagine this is the first time Akamai has run across this but I would like to know for sure.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Positec0 -
Reverse Proxy better than 301 redirect?
Are reverse proxies that much better than 301 redirects? Should I invest the time in doing this? I found out about reverse proxies here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-a-reverse-proxy-and-how-can-it-help-my-seo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianmcc0 -
301 Redirects After Company Acquisition
We recently acquired a company, and now we are going to redirect all of the pages on their site to their respective pages on our site. Do we need to keep the original pages on their site active? For how long? Ideally, we would like to redirect everything and remove the old site entirely so we don't have to pay to keep hosting it. Is this possible? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pbhatt1