301 Redirect Question

[ReunionMarketing]

I am working with a website and I ran a Screaming Frog and noticed there are 4,600 301's on the website (www.srishoes.com). It seems like the issue is between the www. and without it and they aren't working together. Is this something that the website provider should update and what type of impact might this have on the site?

Thanks!
Matt

[RobCairns]

Hi Matt,

To answer your question directly, the website provider may or may not handle 301 redirects themselves depending on your agreement with them. If they are responsible for website development and maintenance, then it would likely be their responsibility to ensure the website is running properly. However, the factors behind the use of a redirect mean they may not cover that aspect.

Typically, a redirect is used for re-branding purposes or to direct greater link juice throughout your website. In other words, it is an additional service that likely isn't covered in a contract unless that was the specific purpose of hiring them.

In terms of choosing between the www. and the naked URL version - anyone conducting a 301 redirect should have have been clear to redirect one way or the other as mixing them up creates separate URL link chains. That being said, authority and relevance can still run through your website since you have on-site factors like Title Tags to take care of this. From what you have provided I can agree with Mike in saying there doesn't seem to be much to worry about here with regards to the redirects set up on your website.

Some people like to have consistency across their domain - some like naked URLs and others don't. There are benefits to both decisions, but in terms of what you are asking - the impact will be very small and likely won't hurt you in terms of rankings.

Hope this helps and reach out to me if you have any further questions.

All the best,

Rob

[MikeRoberts]

I ran a crawl on screaming frog as well. I don't see a problem with the 301s. They mostly seem to be pointing the non-www page to the www version... assuming you want the WWW version ranking over the non, then everything is fine. As long as everything is pointing to the correct version of the page then you shouldn't have any issues.