301-redirect
-
Hi
My website is fairly new and i wasnt aware of the difference btw 'website.com' and 'www.website.com' when i started up. It doesnt matter which one i use as long as i am consistent right ?
Most of my ingoing links are to mainpage on 'website.com'. I have som ingoing links to 'www.website.com' but also some to 'www.website.com/brandname'. is it enough to 301-redir 'www.website.com' to 'website.com' or does it need to be done on several levels ?
I need to have someone do the redirect for me - how can i check its working when its done ?
Dan Lærum
-
Use relative paths, and you lose all link juice when someone scrapes your content and reposts it.
-
On Google WMT, there's an option for preferred domain setting. You can use this. But I do agree with Ryan that it'll solve the issue only for Google not for other search engines.
-
There are other SE's out there then google and you don't want to loose that traffic, so as Ryan stated you can't fix it in GWT.
-
To be clear, you would use Google IN ADDITION TO the other changes, not instead of.
Google WMT will alter how your URL appears on their search pages. If you don't address the issue on your site you will still have the same negative effects.
-
2 things you should keep in mind about with and without www:
- how many pages does google have indexed with and without
- how many links do you have that points towards www vs non-www.. this one is important since not all of your PR will get passed on after a 301. Most but bot all of it
hope it helped
-
Didnt know i could do through google webmaster, thanks.
-
Does it really matter which direction i redirect ? Is it most common to redir to -->www. ?
-
Yes...it should be redirected to www. through .hactess or it can be done through Google webmaster tools.
-
Right back at you Ryan, good point
-
excellent point Rene
This works well for links you create but not for any UGC
-
Ryan is clearly less lazy then me
just a short remark to the internal linking:use relative paths and you will never have to worry about it.
meaning use: /images/someImg.jpg instead of www.yourdomain.com/images/someImg.jpg
-
Your host can create one entry to redirect all non-www traffic to it's www equivalent.
It's easy to confirm the change was made properly. Simply go to any page on your site and you should see it in the "www" form. Then, go to your address bar and remove the "www." portion of the URL, hit enter, then the "www." portion should be re-added and you should be on the same page.
Also, use your SEOmoz toolbar Analyze Page > Page Attributes and check the Status Code section at the bottom. When you try to access a "www." page the status code should show as 200. When you try to access a non-www page the status code should show a 301 redirect to the www page.
Lastly, check every internal link of your site to ensure you are using the www version, along with any signatures and company pages you may have on facebook or other locations.
-
short answer: yes
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
-
Can a page that's 301 redirected get indexed / show in search results?
Hey folks, have searched around and haven't been able to find an answer to this question. I've got a client who has very different search results when including his middle initial. His bio page on his company's website has the slug /people/john-smith; I'm wondering if we set up a duplicate bio page with his middle initial (e.g. /people/john-b-smith) and then 301 redirect it to the existent bio page, whether the latter page would get indexed by google and show in search results for queries that use the middle initial (e.g. "john b smith"). I've already got the metadata based on the middle initial version but I know the slug is a ranking signal and since it's a direct match to one of his higher volume branded queries I thought it might help to get his bio page ranking more highly. Would that work or does the 301'd page effectively cease to exist in Google's eyes?
Technical SEO | | Greentarget0 -
Is there anyway to automatically find complete urls for 301 redirects?
Hello all, I'm working on a large site that is being prepared for a migration. After scraping on screaming frog, WMT, and deepcrawl, and deduping I have a list of 404 pages that need redirected. Many of these URLs are just incomplete URLs. For example the incomplete URL would be: "https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to" when it should be "https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo" I have been finding the correct page manually searching google. With hundreds more to go, I am looking for a way the would be a little less laborious. Thanks! https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
Technical SEO | | AdamBohr0 -
Is 301 redirect replacing or adding PA on a page ?
Hello Moz community, I am re-structuring information architecture on a website. The homepage targets keyword A
Technical SEO | | Sindicic_Alexis
There is a page /page-on-B/ that targets keyword B
There is also an older page /page-on-kinda-B/ that targets a keyword which is really close to B ( i think they should have been worked on the same page...) I want to re-optimise the homepage on keyword B because i know it is worth the effort. If i re-write the homepage to talk about B and do a 301 redirect of : /page-on-B/
/page-on-kinda-B/ to the homepage is it going to add page authority to the homepage ? is it the right way to proceed ?
Thanks for your support !0 -
Advice on whether we 301 redirect a page or update existing page?
Hi guys, any advice would be really appreciated. We have an existing page that ranks well for 'red widgets'. The page isn't monetised right now, but we're bringing in a new product onto our site that we optimised for 'blue widgets'. Unfortunately, not enough research was done for this page and we've now realised that consumers actually search for 'red widgets' when looking for the product we're creating as 'blue widgets'. The problem with this is that the 'red widgets' page is in a completely different category of our site than what it needs to be (it needs to be with 'blue widgets'). So, my question is; Should we do a 301 redirect from our 'red-widgets' page to our 'blue-widgets' page which we want to update and optimise the content on there for 'red-widgets'. Or, should we update the existing red-widgets page to have the right products and content on there, even thought it is in the wrong place of our site and users could get confused as to why they are there. If we do a 301 redirect to our new page, will we lose our rankings and have to start again, or is there a better way around this? Thanks! Dave
Technical SEO | | davo230 -
Should you change Temporary redirects 302's to a 301 even if page is not important/intended for ranking ?
Hi Whilst i appreciate its best practice to 301 redirect permanently moved pages, what if the page is say a login page or other page you not really interested in ranking or transferring juice to ? is it still important/best practice to do so simply because the page has permanently moved hence should still be a 301 even though you don't really want it to rank ? cheers dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence1 -
Site blocked by robots.txt and 301 redirected still in SERPs
I have a vanity URL domain that 301 redirects to my main site. That domain does have a robots.txt to disallow the entire site as well. However, for a branded enough search that vanity domain still shows up in SERPs and has the new Google message of: A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt I get why the message is there - that's not my , my question is shouldn't a 301 redirect trump this domain showing in SERPs, ever? Client isn't happy about it showing at all. How can I get the vanity domain out of the SERPs? THANKS in advance!
Technical SEO | | VMLYRDiscoverability0 -
.EDU via a 301 Redirect?
I recently received a link to my website from an .edu. However, the way they configured it was they pointed the link to one of their internal pages and then made that page 301 to my website. Is there anyway to gain any link juice from that sort of link?
Technical SEO | | gundogs0 -
301 Redirect & Cloaking
HEllo~~~~ People. I have a question regarding on cloaking. I will be really greatful if you can help me with question. I have a site www.example.com and it is targeting for multi countries. So I use sub directories for targeting multi countries. e.g. www.example.com/us/ www.example.com/de/ www.example.com/hk/ ....... so on and on. Therefore, when people type www.example.com, I use IP delivery to send users to each coutries. Here is my question. I use 301 redirect for IP delivery, which means when user enter www.example.com, my site read user's IP and send them to right country site by 301 redirect. In this case, is there any possibility that Google considers it as cloaking? Please people.... share me some ideas and thoughs.
Technical SEO | | Artience0