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.
How to 301 redirect, without access to .htaccess and to a new domain
-
There are few ways to do this and I would like to ask other Mozzers if they have found the best way.
We have a site .co.uk and are moving it back to .com. However we do not have any access to the site folders for .co.uk. (We have to move it anyway as our provider is withdrawing their service).
We have built our URL 301 redirect file and it is ready to go, but how to impliment it?
We can repoint .co.uk to another site, and then redirect all traffic for each URL but this is quite messy, or just forget trying to 301 each page and just rediect the whole site.
the .com has more authority already, but we ready do not want to frustrate visitors who are using a link to reach a product, only to find they hit our homepage and not the product.Your thoughts would be very welcome or other ideas
Bruce
-
Hi Andy
No, it is a Webstore site. We have no access to code or to the site folders, so we cannot do anything at all with the current .co.uk site at all, but repoint it and then 301 the pages we had.
-
Quick question Bruce - is the site built in Wordpress? If so, there are 301 plugins that you can use that are very simple to use. If you have access to the domain control panel, you can setup forwarding through that as well, but that is just for the domain. You would need to check with your hosts though, and make sure it's a 301 - it should be.
As already mentioned by Hector, don't redirect all pages to just the root though. This is bad practice and would certainly land you in trouble.
-Andy
-
If you don't have access to .htacess, but you have access to your own code, you still can execute the redirection via PHP, with this code:
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); header("Location: http://www.yournewwebsite.com/yournewdocumenturl"); ?>
I would try whatever possible to redirect individual pages and not the whole site to the root domain, not just for the visitors but also for transfering your rankings to the new URLs for each page.
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
-
Solve Redirect Chains
I've gotten a few Redirect Issues that involve Redirect Chains, with the https:// version redirecting to the www. version and then redirecting to the right URL. Here is an example:
On-Page Optimization | | Billywig
Schermafbeelding 2021-12-07 om 11.04.32.png I've tried setting a direct redirect between the first and the last URL, but WordPress doesn't seem to allow that (it's overwritten). I've also tried checking the internal links to make sure that none of the links are the first one. They don't seem to be there. Does anyone have any tips on solving these Redirect Chains?0 -
Company acquired but keeping website for now. How to rebrand without losing traffic?
A client has been acquired by a larger company who will eventually absorb client's website but this could take some time (a year or more). We have posted notice of the acquisition on their current site now, but it's time to make the rebrand of current site a priority. Since this site could be functional for some time and still operates as a lead generator for the company, we don't want to negatively affect their web traffic. Curious if anyone has experienced similar or if there are best practices we should be following for this transition? Domain will stay the same for now.
On-Page Optimization | | KMofOutlier0 -
Why are http and https pages showing different domain/page authorities?
My website www.aquatell.com was recently moved to the Shopify platform. We chose to use the http domain, because we didn't want to change too much, too quickly by moving to https. Only our shopping cart is using https protocol. We noticed however, that https versions of our non-cart pages were being indexed, so we created canonical tags to point the https version of a page to the http version. What's got me puzzled though, is when I use open site explorer to look at domain/page authority values, I get different scores for the http vs. https version. And the https version is always better. Example: http://www.aquatell.com DA = 21 and https://www.aquatell.com DA = 27. Can somebody please help me make sense of this? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | Aquatell1 -
Using keywords in my URL: Doing a redirect to /keyword
My website in "On Page Grade" received an A.Anyway, I only have 1 thing to optimize:_"Use Keywords in your URL__Using your targeted keywords in the URL string adds relevancy to your page for search engine rankings, assists potential visitors identify the topic of your page from the URL, and provides SEO value when used as the anchor text of referring links."_My website is ranking in top10 for a super high competitive keyword and all my others competitors have the keyword on their domain, but not for my URL.Since I can't change my domain for fixing this suggestion, I would like to know what do you think about doing a 301 redirect from / to mydomainname.com/keyword/So the index of my website would be the /keyword.I don't know if this can make a damage to my SERP for the big change ir it would be a great choice.
On-Page Optimization | | estebanseo0 -
301 Redirect to external site
Hi guys, We have a client who is getting their website redesigned through us. They are discontinuing couple of their services which will not get featured in the new site. They are fairly well ranked for these services and my client wishes to 301 redirect these pages to an external site owned by his friend so that they benefit out of the ranking. The question is: Will my client's website's general ranking get affected due to 301 redirecting to an external site? The external site is not spammy or red-flagged by Google (at the moment, at least). Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | RameshNair
Ramesh Nair0 -
"translation" of code in htaccess file
Hi everyone! I am a newbie to the whole SEO and html thing and I am trying to get a better understanding of the "behind the scenes" part of my website. I hope I can find someone here who can translate a piece of code for me that I have in my htaccess file: Options -Multiviews
On-Page Optimization | | momof4
Options +FollowSymLinks
rewritecond $1 !^(index.php|public|tmp|robots.txt|template.html|favicon.ico|images|css|uploads)
rewritecond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
rewritecond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
rewriterule ^(.*)$ index.php?link=$1 [NC,L,QSA] I know that something is getting redirected to the index file, but what (or when) exactly? Does the word "robots"mean that search engine crawlers are getting redirected here? And is this good or bad (in terms of SEO)? Or is this redirecting people who try to get to my robots/ template or image files?? Thanks in advance for any answers!0 -
SEO without CMS: Impossible?
Is WordPress the ONLY way to go for an SEO friendly website? Any REAL reason for using anything but?
On-Page Optimization | | EliteErikSEO0 -
How long is too long for domain URL length?
I noticed one of the negatively correlated ranking factors was length of URL. I'm building a page from scratch, we are trying to rank for 'Minneapolis Fitness' and 'Minneapolis Massage'. Is www.minnnepolismassageandfitness.com just ridiculously long? Or does the exact match outweigh the penalty for URL length?
On-Page Optimization | | JesseCWalker2