Flip-Flopping domains - 301 redirect question
-
We have a client who has had the following domain setup for some time:
longdomain.com 301 -> shortdomain.com
Now, they would like to go back to the original longdomain.com, and will have the following setup:
shortdomain.com 301 -> longdomain.com
Obviously, I'm concerned about redirect loops cached in the browser. I plan to have the 301's from longdomain.com changed over to 302's for two weeks ahead of the change, so that hopefully when the change happens, browsers and search engines are more ready to respond. I also plan to establish rel=canonical on the longdomain.com pages after the switch.
Is there anything else you'd recommend to help with the changeover? Should we plan for an intermediary period were both domains are serving the content, so that the redirects can be purged, before being re-established the other direction?
Thanks in advance.
-
right on. Also be sure to submit the "Change of Address" request in GSC
-
Hey Oleg,
Thanks, I'll include this idea in the discussion!
-
Hey Thomas,
They are reverting to a longer domain name that they had used in the past. Its a sort of rebranding effort. They want to move traffic from the short, intermediate domain back to the original, long domain; the wrinkle being that the long domain is currently 301'd to the short one, and the opposite needs to be true after the changeover.
-
is your client doing this simply to use a short domain like bit.ly or awe.sm ?
if so they should use one of the tools listed above will
Try
-
Hmm, how about you remove the 301s from long domain and set canonicals from shortdomain to longdomain. Eventually, shortdomain will be deindexed (or at least mostly deindexed) and then you can 301 to longdomain.
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
-
301 Redirect Only Home Page/Root Domain via Domain Registrar Only
Hi All, I am really concerned about doing a 301 redirect. This is my situation: Both Current and New Domain is registered with a local domain registrar (similar to GoDaddy but a local version) Current Domain: Servers are pointing to Wix servers and the website is built and hosted with Wix I would like to do a 301 redirect but would like to do it in the following way with a couple of factors to keep in mind: 99% of my link are only pointed to the home page/root domain only. Not to subdirectories. New Domain: I will register this with wix with a new plan but keep the exact sitemap and composition of current website and launch with new domain. Current Domain: I want to change server pointing to wix to point to local domain registrar servers. Then do a 301 redirect for only the home page/root domain to point to the new domain listed with wix. So 301 is done via local registrar and not via Wix. Another point to mention is it will also change from Http to Https as well as a name change. Your comments on the above will be greatly appreciated and as to whether there is risk in trying to do a 301 redirect as above. Doing it as above it also cheaper if I do the 301 via the wix platform I will need to register a full new premium plan and run it concurrently to the old plan whereas if I do it as mentioned above will only have the additional domain annual fee. Look forward to your comments. Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeBlue10 -
Is a 301 Redirect and a Canonical Tag on Uppercase to Lowercase Pages Correct?
We have a medium size site that lost more than 50% of its traffic in July 2013 just before the Panda rollout. After working with a SEO agency, we were advised to clean up various items, one of them being that the 10k+ urls were all mixed case (i.e. www.example.com/Blue-Widget). A 301 redirect was set up thereafter forcing all these urls to go to a lowercase version (i.e. www.example.com/blue-widget). In addition, there was a canonical tag placed on all of these pages in case any parameters or other characters were incorporated into a url. I thought this was a good set up, but when running a SEO audit through a third party tool, it shows me the massive amount of 301 redirects. And, now I wonder if there should only be a canonical without the redirect or if its okay to have tens of thousands 301 redirects on the site. We have not recovered yet from the traffic loss yet and we are wondering if its really more of a technical problem than a Google penalty. Guidance and advise from those experienced in the industry is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ABK7170 -
Can an incorrect 301 redirect or .htaccess code cause 500 errors?
Google Webmaster Tools is showing the following message: _Googlebot couldn't access the contents of this URL because the server had an internal error when trying to process the request. These errors tend to be with the server itself, not with the request. _ Before I contact the person who manages the server and hosting (essentially asking if the error is on his end) is there a chance I could have created an issue with an incorrect 301 redirect or other code added to .htaccess incorrectly? Here is the 301 redirect code I am using in .htaccess: RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /([^/.]+/)*(index.html|default.asp)\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^(([^/.]+/)*)(index|default) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www.example.com)?$ [NC] RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L] Could adding the following code after that in the .htaccess potentially cause any issues? BEGIN EXPIRES <ifmodule mod_expires.c="">ExpiresActive On
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimmiedawn
ExpiresDefault "access plus 10 days"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType text/plain "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType application/x-icon "access plus 1 year"</ifmodule> END EXPIRES (Edit) I'd like to add that there is a Wordpress blog on the site too at www.example.com/blog with the following code in it's .htaccess: BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress Thanks0 -
Redirect 301
Hi, I `m redirecting some pages in htaccess The first 15 pages that i redirected it worked. But the last 3 dont work, and i cant figure it out why it is not working. Redirect 301 /analyseverktoy/ /webanalyse
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SGacic
Redirect 301 /index.php/ledige-stillinger/ /
Redirect 301 /?page_id=352/ / Anu suggestions?0 -
301 Redirecting an Entire Site
I have a question which has had me thinking for hours..... If SITE A is ranking well on a number of search phrases and you 301 that site to another (SITE B). The site will change on the Google SERPs to the site which you've re-directed to... In this case SITE B. But how do you maintain the rankings of SITE A?. Do you keep the rankings of SITE A forever? Or will your rankings of SITE A (now SITE B) gradually slip as other sites rank higher? As you can no longer edit SITE A does Google take into consideration the content on SITE B and no longer take anything that SITE A had to offer into consideration? SITE B has simply replaced it in the SERPs??...... Please can anybody help? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | karl620 -
301 redirect on Windows IIS. HELP!
Hi My six-year-old domain has always existed in four forms: http://www**.**mydomain.com/index.html http://mydomain.com/index.html http://mydomain.com/ http://www.mydomain.com My webmaster claims it’s “impossible” to do a 301 redirect from the first three to the fourth. I need simple instructions to guide him. The site’s hosted on Windows running IIS Here’s his rationale: These are all the same page, so they can’t redirect to themselves. Index.html is the default page that loads automatically if you don’t specify a page. If I put a redirect into index.html it would just run an infinite redirect loop. As you can see from the IIS set up, both www.mydomain and mydomain.com point to the same location ( VIEW IMAGE HERE ) _Both of these use index.html as the default document ( VIEW IMAGE 2 HERE ) _
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jeepster0 -
How long for a 301 redirect to pass PR?
Hi, How long does it take for a 301 redirect to pass PR/Juice to the new domain it's redirecting to? From what I understand you tell Google in Webmaster tools this domain is now going to this domain and then setup a file on the old domains hosting to redirect to the new. And that's it! If that is correct how long does it take? 2 days, 2 weeks, months, maybe never??? Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
301 Redirects After Company Acquisition
We recently acquired a company, and now we are going to redirect all of the pages on their site to their respective pages on our site. Do we need to keep the original pages on their site active? For how long? Ideally, we would like to redirect everything and remove the old site entirely so we don't have to pay to keep hosting it. Is this possible? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pbhatt1