Is 301 redirecting your index page to the root '/' safe to do or do you end up in an endless loop?
-
Hi I need to tidy up my home page a little, I have some links to our index.html page but I just want them to go to the root '/' so I thought I could 301 redirect it. However is this safe to do? I'm getting duplicate page notifications in my analytic reportings tools about the home page and need a quick way to fix this issue.
Many thanks in advance
David
-
Correct, 301 redirects of duplicate homepages in order to consolidate them into one should not be an issue.
-
Thanks Mike,
Yes I've set my preference in GWMT as I know that is the best thing to do, the question was more to do with whether it could be a potential issue but I'm gathering from your reply it is likely not to be.
Cheers
David
-
Whenever you have multiple versions of your homepage like that (e.g. www.site.com, site.com, site.com/index, www.site.com/index, and so forth),it is considered best practices to choose one, set your preferred domain (www vs non-www) in Google Webmaster Tools, and 301 redirect the duplicate homepages to the primary one you chose.
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
-
Is there a difference between 'Mø' and 'Mo'?
The brand name is Mø but users are searching online for Mo. Should I changed all instances of Mø to be Mo on my clients website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ben_mozbot010 -
Indexing Dynamic Pages
http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/search/Wiper+Blade/03300/C0047.oap?make=Honda&model=Accord&year=2005&vi=1430764 How is O'Reilly getting this page indexed? It shows up in organic results for [2005 honda accord windshield wiper size].
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingof50 -
What are the effects of having Multiple Redirects for pages under the same domain
Dear Mozers, First of all let me wish you all a Very Happy, Prosperous, Healthy, Joyous & Successful New Year ! I'm trying to analyze one of the website's Web Hosting UK Com Ltd. and during this process I've had this question running through my mind. This project has been live since the year 2003 and since then there have be changes made to the website (obviously). There have also been new pages been added, the same way some new pages have even been over-written with changes in the url structures too. Now, coming back to the question, if I've have a particular url structure in the past when the site was debuted and until date the structure has been changes thrice (for example) with a 301 redirect to every back dated structure, WOULD it impact the sites performance SEOwise ? And let's say that there's hundreds of such redirections under the same domain, don't you think that after a period of time we should remove the past pages/urls from the server ? That'd certainly increase the 404 (page not found) errors, but that can be taken care of. How sensible would it be to keep redirecting the bots from one url to the other when they only visit a site for a short stipulated time? To make it simple let me explain it with a real life scenario. Say if I was staying a place A then switched to a different location in another county say B and then to C and so on, and finally got settled at a place G. When I move from one place to another, I place a note of the next destination I'm moving to so that any courier/mail etc. can be delivered to my current whereabouts. In such a case there's a less chance that the courier would travel all the destinations to deliver the package. Similarly, when a bot visits a domain and it finds multiple redirects, don't you think that it'd loose the efficiency in crawling the site? Ofcourse, imo. the redirects are important, BUT it should be there (in htaccess) for only a period of say 3-6 months. Once the search engine bots know about the latest pages, the past pages/redirects should be removed. What are your opinions about this ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eukmark0 -
301 Redirects?
We have an e-commerce website with about 4500 products for sale. About 1200 of these items were not showing up in the Google PLA ads because they were $0 dollar items, so we made those products invisible. Then Set 301 Redirects for each of the 1200 items. My question is this; we want to turn back on the 1200 items, should we delete the 301 redirects that are in place for them.? Will it hurt SEO performance by having them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Goriilla0 -
Are links to on-page content crawled / have any effect on page rank?
Lets say I have a really long article that begins with links to <a name="something">anchors on the same page.</a> <a name="something"></a> <a name="something">E.g.,</a> Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc, allowing the user to scroll down to different content. There are also other links on this page that link to other pages. A few questions: Googlebot arrives on the page. Does it crawl links that point to anchors on the same page? When link juice is divided among all the links on the page, do these links count and page rank is then lost? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anthematic0 -
301 or 302 - www.yoursite.com/uk/content
If your website CMS forces you to redirect from the homepage should it be a 301 or 302 Example includes www.direct.gov.uk which 302's it My view is that it should be a 302 in this instance and almost all others should be a 301 - the reason for this is that you want the www.direct.gov.uk to be the "primary" and one that is displayed in Google, whereas for anything else you want the URL of the location. Yes I know that ideally you don't have any redirection at all...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AxonnMedia0 -
How To 301 Redirect .html pages
I need to redirect a page/URL that is purely .html to a new location. I don't know how to do this. All the redirects I can find are for server side code pages .php/.aspx etc. From my understanding I can't put a server side redirect in a .html file. I am hosting on a microsoft server, however the new page I am redirecting to is .php. I am running some WordPress (.php) files on the server. I need to make it redirect before the old page loads so visitors don't start reading something that is about to get redirected Can someone please help me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyNet0 -
Redirect Chains - Accept the 301 chain or link from the original page??
Hi everyone, I have a client that re-launched his site and it's gone from 100 pages to 1000 (new languages/increased product pages etc) We've used 301's to map the old site to the new database driven site. BUT the new site is creating extremely long URL's: e.g. www.example.com/example_example_example/example_example_example_example Obviously I want to change these URL's: THE PROBLEM..... I am worried about the Chain Redirects. I know two 301 redirects is okay (although it's not great), but I wonder if there is an alternative: When I've implemented the new URL structure the chain will look like this: www.oldsite.com 301 redirects to www.newsitewithdodgyurls.com which then 301 redirects to www.mynewsitewithgreaturls.com Seeing as the new site has only been live for a month, and hasn't really gained many external links, should I: 301 from the original site (www.oldsite.com) straight to the new site (www.mynewsitewithgreaturls.com)? If so, what would I do with the pages that I have not redirected? Let them 404? OR Leave the 301 chain in place? Your advice, and any other suggestions would be much appreciated Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jamesjackson0