Do I need to do a 301, as well as adding re-write rules on Apache
-
I'm sure this has probably been asked somewhere before...
We're implementing a URL re-write rule to convert non dub pages to the www. subdomain and also removing all trailing slashes as part of a basic canonicalisation exercise.
The question is, as well as doing the URL rewrites within htaccess, should I also 301 those duplicate pages or does the URL rewrite do the job on it's own?
Thanks mozzers.
-
Eric's answer was perfect. After launch, I also do a site:nameofdomain.com and click on a random sampling of links to make sure the rules work perfectl (this is more useful if the page name changes). Good luck!
-
The URL rewrite "should" take care of it. So, when you enter www.domain.com/page.html it would 301 redirect to domain.com/page.html (or vice versa). Once you have the rewrites in place, then test them by going to a page and see if it redirects properly. Use a http server header checker to see if it's serving up a 301.
Even though the internal links may be using your preferred domain, then you'll want to make sure that anyone requesting (or linking to) the "wrong version" will be 301 redirected to the right version of the page.
Also, I would go into Google Search Console and make sure you tell Google which version is your preferred version: the www or non-www version of your site.
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
-
Need assistance in improving SEO of website
Dear SEO Expert, We run a website www.guitarmonk.com. Moz has told us of some errors at our website viz.: Especially duplicate content etc and whatever in addition you suggest should be good for the website for certain relative important keywords. Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Guitarmonk0 -
Is it possible to avoid redirect of penalties for 301 forwards?
We have been doing a good amount of competitive research lately and have noticed sites that have been changing their TTLD quite often to escape manual penalties / DCMA filings. An example evolution: brandterm.com -> brandterm.bz -> brandterm.me These competitors are able to quickly rank for money keywords in the top 3 soon after another domain switch. What we have noticed is that while its obvious they received Google penalties they continue to 301 redirect the old domains to the new ones. We have experienced first hand that penalties travel along domains with 301 redirects. Does anyone have an explanation how these companies are able to achieve quickly high volume of organic search while 301-redirecting from burnt domains? The only option I see is to disavow all previous domains in GWT to be able to employ 301 redirects without risking carrying over the penalty. Are there other theories ppl can think of? T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | petersocapro0 -
Url rewrite & 301 redirects
Hi all I am having some issues rearding url rewrites and 301 redirects with 1 and 1 hosting and am unsure of the best approach. The website is a custom made shopping cart system with categories and products. The current urls for categories are : index.php?l=product_list&c=1 The new url format required is : /banner-stands The current urls for products are : index.php?l=product_detail&c=1&p=1 The new url format required is : /banner-stands/banner-stand Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vividwebdesign0 -
301 canonical'd pages?
I have an ecommerce site with many different URLs with the same product. Let's say the product is a hat. It's in: a a) mysite.com/products/hat b) mysite.com/collections/head-ware/hat c) mysite.com/collections/stuff-to-wear-on-your-head/hat Right now, A is the canonical page for B and C. I want to clean up my site, so that every product only has ONE unique URL, which is linked to from all the collections. So B and C URL will be broken. Is it necessary that I 301 them if they were already canonical'd? Based on the number of products I have, I would have to 301 1000+ URLs. I'm just trying to figure out what I need to do to avoid getting penalized. thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | birchlore0 -
Do my redirects on my homepage need to be 301?
Our domain name is something like www.I-am-cool.com but most people just type in iamcool.com After doing some research I found that those are 302 redirects and I think they should be 301. If I am correct do I need to redirect www.iamcool.com and iamcool.com or just one or the other?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
301 redirects.
Hi everyone, I am having some issues with an a few dynamic URLs that are not redirecting; Example: http://www.example.com/shop-online?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage_images.tpl&product_id=69164&category_id=303 I first tried to carry out a standard 301 which looked like this; Redirect 301 /longurlwith&category_id=303 http://www.example.com/new-url Which didn't work. After a little bit of research I added the following into the htaccess file; RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com$ [NC]RewriteRule ^/shop-online$(.*)$ http://www.example.com/shop-online$ [NE,L,R=301] Which caused the website to error 500 (Not cool). So now I am stumped. Any help would be really appreciated as I'm sure it's an easy fix but I can't quite my finger on it. Thanks in advance :).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AduroLabs0 -
New web site - 404 and 301
Hello, I have spent a lot of times on the forum trying to make sure how to deal with my client situation. I will tell you my understanding of the strategy to apply and I would appreciate if you could tell me if the strategy will be okay. CONTEXT I am working on a project where our client wants to replace its current web site with a new one. The current web site has at least 100 000 pages. The new web site will replace all the existing pages of the current site. What I have heard for the strategy the client wants to adopt is to 404 each pages and to 301 redirect each page. Every page would be redirect to a page that make sense in the new web site. But after reading other answers and reading the following comment, I am starting to be concerned: '(4) Be careful with a massive number of 301s. I would not 301 100s of pages at once. There's some evidence Google may view this as aggressive PR sculpting and devalue those 301s. In that case, I'd 301 selectively (based on page authority and back-links) and 404 the rest.' I have also read about performance issue ... QUESTION So, if we suppose that we can manage to map each of the old site pages to a page in the new web site, is a problem to do it? Do you see a performance issue or devaluation potential issue? If it is a problem, please comment the strategy I might considere to suggest: Identify the pages for which I gain links From that group, identify the pages, that gives me most of my juice 301 redirect them and for the other, create a real great 404 ... Thanks ! Nancy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EnigmaSolution0 -
301 redirect from .html to non .html?
Previously our site was using this as our URL structure: www.site.com/page.html. A few months ago we updated our URL structure to this: www.site.com/page & we're not using the .html. I've read over this guide & don't see anywhere that discusses this: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection. I've currently got a programmer looking into, but am always a bit weary with their workarounds, as I'd previously had them cause more problems then fix it. Here is the solution he is looking to do: The way that I am doing the redirect is fine. The problem is of where to put the code. The issue is that the files are .html files that need to be redirected to the same url with out a .html on them. I can see if I can add that to the 404 redirect page if there is one inside of there and see if that does the trick. That way if there is no page that exists without the .html then it will still be a 404 page. However if it is there then it will work as normal. I will see what I can find and get back. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, BJ
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seointern0