Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Will I lose Link Juice when implementing a Reverse Proxy?

    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.

    Will I lose Link Juice when implementing a Reverse Proxy?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    7
    2938
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • jacob.young.cricut
      jacob.young.cricut last edited by

      My company is looking at consolidating 5 websites that it has running on magento, wordpress, drupal and a few other platforms on to the same domain. Currently they're all on subdomains but we'd like to consolidate the subdomains to folders for UX and SEO potential.

      Currently they look like this:

      • shop.example.com
      • blog.example.com
      • uk.example.com
      • us.example.com

      After the reverse proxy they'll look like this:

      • example.com/uk/
      • example.com/us/
      • example.com/us/shop
      • example.com/us/blog

      I'm curious to know how much link juice will be lost in this switch. I've read a lot about site migration (especially the Moz example). A lot of these guides/case studies just mention using a bunch of 301's but it seems they'd probably be using reveres proxies as well.

      My questions are:

      1. Is a reverse proxy equal to or worse/better than a 301?
      2. Should I combine reverse proxy with a 301 or rel canonical tag?
      3. When implementing a reverse proxy will I lose link juice = ranking?

      Thanks so much!

      Jacob

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Everett
        Everett @jacob.young.cricut last edited by

        Two servers? The existing one to process the redirects and a new one to handle the reverse proxy. Or vice versa. So the DNS for the old domain would point to a server that does the redirects. However, the server that hosts the site will be set to reverse proxy.

        Another way of looking at this concept would be to take down and redirect the old site, and to start a new site, with the exact same files/database, that will be used to serve the content in the subdirectory/folder.

        Ask what they think of that idea. I certainly don't have all the answers to every situations, but will do my best to help you find a workable solution.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • jacob.young.cricut
          jacob.young.cricut @Everett last edited by

          Hey Everett,

          My dev team says it's extremely difficult to do a 301 with the reverse proxy because the reverse proxy needs the domain in order to create the reverse proxy. If we place a 301 redirect it won't be able to access the domain and will be broken.

          We're unable to do a server to server process because we're using load balance applications. Do you have any recommendations with this situation?

          Thanks,

          Jacob

          Everett 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • jacob.young.cricut
            jacob.young.cricut @Everett last edited by

            That's good to know. I'll follow that.

            Some of the articles I read made it sound like reverse proxy was another form of 301, but it didn't make sense. Now I know why.

            Cheers,

            Jacob

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • Everett
              Everett last edited by

              You need to do both.

              The reverse proxy isn't about SEO so much as the ability to use subdirectories instead of subdomains, even though the subdirectories are hosted on different servers. You have to use a reverse proxy for the technological requirements of using a subdirectory (folder) instead of a subdomain when you're hosting sites on different servers but want to combine them on the same domain.

              The 301 Redirects will ensure the users (including search engines) that visit the old URL on the subdomain get forwarded on to the new URL in the subdirectory. This is what preserves pagerank, and provides a good user experience. Do not keep the content available at the old URLs; Do not allow those URLs to return a 404 Status. 301 Redirect them.

              I hope that clarifies your situation.

              jacob.young.cricut 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 2
              • jacob.young.cricut
                jacob.young.cricut @ClaytonJ last edited by

                My dev team would prefer a reverse proxy. Is there a reason you'd rather do a 301 than a reverse proxy?

                When reading this article https://moz.com/blog/what-is-a-reverse-proxy-and-how-can-it-help-my-seo it seemed that doing a reverse proxy would be preferable to just a bunch of 301's. Is that not the case?

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • ClaytonJ
                  ClaytonJ last edited by

                  It is getting over complicated. First principal is do not harm.  I would not recommend a reverse proxy.  301'ing each page carry's the juice over.  A 301 does everything you need.

                  However prior to any 301's I would be auditing each sub domain for a penalty - ie you could be pushing a penalty to the main site. So i would suggest a very thorough audit. If in doubt rel canonical that page.

                  Hope that assists.

                  jacob.young.cricut 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • BeckyKey

                    Too many on page links

                    Hi I know previously it was recommended to stick to under 100 links on the page, but I've run a crawl and mine are over this now with 130+ How important is this now? I've read a few articles to say it's not as crucial as before. Thanks!

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey
                    1
                  • Rich_Coffman

                    If I nofollow outbound external links to minimize link juice loss > is it a good/bad thing?

                    OK, imagine you have a blog, and you want to make each blog post authoritative so you link out to authority relevant websites for reference. In this case it is two external links per blog post, one to an authority website for reference and one to flickr for photo credit. And one internal link to another part of the website like the buy-now page or a related internal blog post. Now tell me if this is a good or bad idea. What if you nofollow the external links and leave the internal link untouched so all internal links are dofollow. The thinking is this minimizes loss of link juice from external links and keeps it flowing through internal links to pages within the website. Would it be a good idea to lay off the nofollow tag and leave all as do follow? or would this be a good way to link out to authority sites but keep the link juice internal? Your thoughts are welcome. Thanks.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rich_Coffman
                    0
                  • Bee159

                    Pages with excessive number of links

                    Hi all, I work for a retailer and I've crawled our website with RankTracker for optimization suggestions. The main suggestion is "Pages with excessive number of links: 4178" The page with the largest amount of links has 634 links (627 internal, 7 external), the lowest 382 links (375 internal, 7 external). However, when I view the source on any one of the example pages, it becomes obvious that the site's main navigation header contains 358 links, so every new page starts with 358 links before any content. Our rivals and much larger sites like argos.co.uk appear to have just as many links in their main navigation menu. So my questions are: 1. Will these excessive links really be causing us a problem or is it just 'good practice' to have fewer links
                    2. Can I use 'no follow' to stop Google etc from counting the 358 main navigation links
                    3. Is have 4000+ pages of your website all dumbly pointing to other pages a help or hindrance?
                    4. Can we 'minify' this code so it's cached on first load and therefore loads faster? Thank you.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bee159
                    0
                  • Angelos_Savvaidis

                    Internal Links - Dofollow or Nofollow and why?

                    Hey there Mozzers, I am a question about internal links. If I am writing a article about something and want to link to another one of my articles inside my blog, do i have to make that link nofollow or dofollow? If possible tell me why also. Thanks in advance

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis
                    0
                  • netviper

                    Does Link Detox Boost Work?

                    That is a question I am sure many of your have been asking since they launched the product several weeks ago. Cemper claims they helped get a penalty removed in 3 days by using this product.  Sounds great doesn't it?  Maybe even sounds too good to be true.  Well, here is my experience with it. We have been working to get a site's rankings back up for several months now.  While it has no penalty, it clearly got hit by the algo change.  So we have been very busy creating new content and attempting to remove as much "keyword rich" links as possible. This really hasn't been working very well at all, so when I heard about link detox boost I thought this was the answer to our prayers.  The basic idea is link detox boost forces google to crawl your bad links so it know you no longer have links from those sites or have disavowed them. So we ran it and it was NOT cheap.  Roughly $300.  Now, 3 weeks after running it, the report only shows it has actually crawled 25% of our links, but they assure us it is a reporting issue and the full process has ran its course. The results.  No change at all.  Some of our rankings are worse, some are better, but nothing worth mentioning. Many products from Link Research Tools are very good, but i'm afraid this isn't one of them. Anyone else use this product?  What were your results?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netviper
                    2
                  • jasonwdexter

                    Redirect ruined domain to new domain without passing link juice

                    A new client has a domain which has been hammered by bad links, updates etc and it's basically on its arse because of previous SEO guys. They have various domains for their business (brand.com, brand.co.uk) and want to use a fresh domain and take it from there. Their current domain is brand.com (the ruined one). They're not bothered about the rankings for brand.com but they want to redirect brand.com to brand.co.uk so that previous clients can find them easily. Would a 302 redirect work for this? I don't want to set up a 301 redirect as I don't want any of the crappy links pointing across. Thanks!

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasonwdexter
                    0
                  • rayvensoft

                    Do links to PDF's on my site pass "link juice"?

                    Hi, I have recently started a project on one of my sites, working with a branch of the U.S. government, where I will be hosting and publishing some of their PDF documents for free for people to use.  The great SEO side of this is that they link to my site.  The thing is, they are linking directly to the PDF files themselves, not the page with the link to the PDF files.  So my question is, does that give me any SEO benefit? While the PDF is hosted on my site, there are no links in it that would allow a spider to start from the PDF and crawl the rest of my site.   So do I get any benefit from these great links?  If not, does anybody have any suggestions on how I could get credit for them.  Keep in mind that editing the PDF's are not allowed by the government. Thanks.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft
                    0
                  • VictorVC

                    Outbound Links to Authority sites

                    Will outbound links to a related topic on an authority site help, hurt or be irrelevanent for SEO purposes. And if beneficially, should it be Nofollow?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VictorVC
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.