Orphan My Home Page
-
I want to orphan a home page on a site that I own so that the start page becomes site.com/home (or whatever) as opposed to site.com/. I need to accomplish this without associating the former with the latter...meaning no 301. Since this will not be a temporary move, 302 does not seem to work either. And even if I could use it, I don't want to credit / with anything from /home. Is there any way to default the Apache handler to /home without rewriting the URL? Or is there any other solution? The bottom line is, at the end of the day, I need Google to forget about / and anything associated with it, without interrupting the user experience when they request /. Thanks in advance.
-
no. just seems like keyword level penguin "penalty" on home page. i came up with something a little different we're going to try. we created a page /home and put the rel canonical there, and we're using a 302 to redirect /home to /. i'm hoping google will index the homepage as /home while it "temporarily" goes to get the content from /.
-
Do you still have a manual Penalty?
-
that would be cool...ive done two rounds of deep disavow and it hasn't lifted a thing. whoever was doing this before really screwed up. big time penguin but only home page.
-
Agreed, its a common problem when you are playing in the unknown.
So many people have been hit by link penalties because most link building was done to their homepage. If they are unable to clean up the problem it would be ideal for them have a solution to suggest a new homepage address in Webmaster Tools.
Many would argue that the disavow tool should be the solution to that. I do not think it is having the same effect by nofollowing those links right now.
I will ask John Mueller at Google the question on Friday and see what he comes back with
-
this thread is helpful. i guess my biggest concern is doing something wrong and having the whole site drop out of index due to something i'm overlooking
-
I was just looking at the same thing for myself yesterday.
I found this thread very interesting and think it might be what you are looking for.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4606464.htm
Basically you 301 to a page that is blocked by robots.txt and that page redirects to your new homepage. So when users come to your homepage they will land on the correct page.
As always be very careful when trying anything like this. Google is unpredictable when it comes to things like this and their robots are getting smarter by the minute.
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
-
Would You Redirect a Page if the Parent Page was Redirected?
Hi everyone! Let's use this as an example URL: https://www.example.com/marvel/avengers/hulk/ We have done a 301 redirect for the "Avengers" page to another page on the site. Sibling pages of the "Hulk" page live off "marvel" now (ex: /marvel/thor/ and /marvel/iron-man/). Is there any benefit in doing a 301 for the "Hulk" page to live at /marvel/hulk/ like it's sibling pages? Is there any harm long-term in leaving the "Hulk" page under a permanently redirected page? Thank you! Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amag0 -
Dynamic pages
Hello Team, How can we create dynamic pages or more pages on website but maintaining SEO standards.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Obbserv0 -
Any downsides of (permanent)redirecting 404 pages to more generic pages(category page)
Hi, We have a site which is somewhat like e-bay, they have several categories and advertisements posted by customers/ client. These advertisements disappear over time and turn into 404 pages. We have the option to redirect the user to the corresponding category page, but we're afraid of any negative impact of this change. Are there any downsides, and is this really the best option we have? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vhendriks0 -
Getting a Home Page to Rank
Hi Mozzers, My question specifically has to do with optimizing a home page for specific keywords, but still keeping the design clean and not cluttered.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
How do you guys prefer to go about it? Currently our home page only really gets traffic for branded keywords (though we do have some rankings for real keywords showing in GWT which I can't really explain). I know how to write content for specific long-tail keywords, but we want to keep our homepage very clean, not filled with gobs of text. Right now my main plan is to display content under a "Read More.." button.
What do you pros suggest? Thanks!0 -
Does an H1 have to be at the top of a page?
Because H1 "may" carry some weight with Google does it have to be placed at the top of the page? Can I place it towards the bottom of the page instead in normal body size? My goal is to keep the main keywords in the H1 but create a much friendlier title for the customer to read at the top of the page.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PottyScotty0 -
Home page mysteriously not ranking at all
Hey everyone, I'm baffled by a situation. I started working on www.hushabyephotography.com almost 3 months ago. The first thing I did was changed the address (was previously blog.hushabyephotography.com) and updated all of the links pointing from the old name to the new "www" and used 301 redirects for canonicalization. Have also built some additional links, added content to the site, and performed on-page optimization to rank for the primary key phrase "san diego newborn photography". But ranking is no where to be found, I searched for the key phrase, and at rank 190 is a random subpage, not even the home page. The listing had also disappeared from Google Places a few weeks ago after the client updated their listing (which I believe was the result of the known Places bug (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-you-may-need-to-hide-your-google-places-address-asap). I'm at a loss here for ideas, as I've never failed to at least have a site on the radar. There aren't any spam links so I don't think any penalties are the result. One last thing, it ranks on page 2 in both Bing and Yahoo... Please help me out Mozzers!!! 😕
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Joes_Ideas0 -
List of Off page techniques
Hello Everyone, Please share the list of off page techniques to improve ranking and which techniques completely avoided?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alick3000 -
High number of items per page or low number with more category pages?
In SEO terms, what would be the best method: High number of items per page or low number with more pages? For example, this category listing here: http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/90/fsx-civil-aircraft/ It has 10 items per page. Would there be any benefit of changing a listing like that to 20 items in order to decrease the number of pages in the category? Also, what other ways could you increase the SEO of category listings like that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640