301 redirects - an ongoing argument in our agency

[Stephan_Boehringer]

ok fellow marketers.  we have an on-going argument in our office regarding 301 redirects.  for seo best practices, should a 301 be done at the registrar level or in the htaccess file.  We have arguments going both ways and I'd love to hear what everyone has to say about it.

Thanks, Stephan

[Chris.Menke]

Redirecting at the registrar level doesn't allow you to redirect individual pages, only entire domains. In some cases, that's not an issue but if you're redirecting a site that has back links pointing at internal pages by redirecting the entire domain, then you are foregoing a lot of the value of those back links.  Redirects on the host can let you redirect one specific internal URL to another specific internal URL and keep much of the value of the links pointing at the old URL.

[billhartzer]

Stephan,

When it comes to redirects, as long as the server returns a 301 Permanent Redirect when a page is requested, it doesn't matter absolutely whatsoever when it comes to SEO and rankings.

There are other considerations, though. If it's done at the registrar level, then it will inevitably lighten the load on the server. But, you generally won't notice a difference unless there's a large amount of traffic and a LOT of redirects involved (thousands of redirects, not just a few).

[FedeEinhorn]

It's the same thing! Both result in a 301 redirect...

The only difference is probably a little faster at the registrar level (unnoticeable), and the need of a server for the htaccess option. Besides that, there are no SEO benefits on any.