301 v/s 302 Redirection on Homepage (Multilingual)

[luxresorts]

Hello,

Our website: http://www.luxresorts.com currently has a default 302 redirection to http://www.luxresorts.com/en.

We would like to do a 301 redirection instead of a 302 to http://www.luxresorts.com.

Our concern is that the site is multilingual and we wonder what effect would the 301 redirection have on search engine crawlers and how would this appear on SERP.

When a search is done on Google.com, the English version of our website appears and when on Google.FR, the French version appears. Would the 301 redirection change the way our website appear on Google?

Grateful if you could help us out in understanding the pros and cons/best practices for our concern.

Thanks in advance.

Tej Luchmun.

[luxresorts]

Thanks.

Done since a while and already live

Tej Luchmun

[gfiorelli1]

Yes.

[luxresorts]

Thanks a lot for your reply gfiorelli1.

We currently have no redirection based on IP detection nor user agent.

Taking into account the two options you mentioned, the best option would definitely be to make luxresorts.com the main page for the targeted country (while we would make the current default page http://www.luxresorts.com/en 301 to http://www.luxresorts.com) and then having a browser language detection then serve the language accordingly.

Do you think this would be the best thing to do?

Thanks again.

-Tej Luchmun

[luxresorts]

Thanks a lot Andy, we definitely want to preserve the Link Juice, since http://www.luxresorts.com has a higher SEO value, but currently having a 302 to /en.

I guess we would go for the 301 soon.

[gfiorelli1]

One fundamental question: is the redirection based on IP detection or user agent?

Because if it is over IP detection, then that's something Google deprecates.

Instead, if it based over User Agent, then 302 and 301 are substantially the same for Google in this case, even though with a 301 you are sure to pass link equity.

On the other hand, why have not you considered these two options:

1. Making the root domain luxury.com the country selector page, so people land there then choose the country they want;
2. Dedicating the luxury.com root to the main country target, not using redirections at all and adding a over alert to all the people entering in the root that exist a version targeting their country (alert based on IP Detection, this time correctly).

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Tej,

Moz have a best practice guide on redirects here, but the general rule of thumb is that a 301 is used for most scenarios where a permanent redirect is required. This also passes more link juice than a 302, which is generally used for temporary redirects, and passes no link juice.

In terms of SEO, a 301 is almost always the preferred option because of the benefits in helping a site retain a more natural flow of link juice.

-Andy