301 vs 302
-
Hello everyone!
I'm working with a site right now that is currently formatted as subdomain.domain.net. The old version of the site was formatted as domain.net, with domain.com and several other variants redirecting to the current format, subdomain.domain.net.
All of these redirects are 302, and I'm wondering if I should have all these changed to 301. Many of our old backlinks go to the old format of domain.net and i know the juice isn't being passed through, but i was wondering if there is any reason why you may want a 302 over a 301 in this case?
Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks!
-
Hi Paul,
What Bernadette says has a lot of truth.
Even, there's been some recently changes in 3xx redirection rules. And a great professional (Cyrus Shepard) wrote a nice piece of text about that in the Moz Blog.Check it out! 301 Redirects Rules Change: What You Need to Know for SEO
In my opinion, historically 301 are better than 302, if you can set 301, do it.
Best Luck.
GR. -
Paul, that's a good question. Whenever you use a 302 redirect, that's actually a "temporary" redirect, and Google deals with those redirects differently than they do 301 Permanent Redirects.
302 Temporary Redirects should really only be used in cases when you're temporarily redirecting a URL to another one--and you then plan on un-redirecting it back. So, if a site is down for the weekend, you might 302 redirect certain pages elsewhere and then unredirect them.
If you're moving your site to another location, you're permanently moving it. So, you'd use a 301 redirect. Google typically passes the all or most of the "link juice" from one URL to another through the 301 redirect. So, you'll want to use a 301 redirect when you move to a new location.
For more details, see Google's help page here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93633?hl=en
And if you're moving from one domain to another, then you'll want to learn about the Google Change of Address Tool: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en
To answer your question, though, most likely you'll want to use a 301. There aren't really any reasons why you'd not want to use a 301 redirect.
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
-
How to change 302 redirect from http to https
Hi gang. Our site currently has a 302 redirect from the HTTP version of the homepage to the HTTPS version of the homepage. I understand this really should be changed to a 301 redirect but I'm having a little trouble figuring out exactly how this should be done. Some places on the internet are telling me I can edit our htaccess file to specify the type of redirect, however our htaccess file seems to be missing some of the information in theirs. Can anyone tell me what needs to be changed in the htaccess file - or if there's a simpler way to change the 302 to a 301? Many thanks 🙂 htaccess: BEGIN WordPress RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L] END WordPress EXPIRES CACHING ExpiresActive On ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 6 months" ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 6 months" ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 6 months" ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 6 months" ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 10 days" ExpiresByType application/pdf "access plus 10 days" ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access plus 10 days" ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 6 months" ExpiresDefault "access plus 2 days" EXPIRES CACHING
Technical SEO | | davedon0 -
301 or 404 old Event pages
I have a site that lists events and then removes them from the site once the date and event has passed. Is it best to let the old event page 404 or 301 back up to a subfolder that lists the current events?
Technical SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
301 Redirect Best Practices
Hi SEOs, Question about ranking/redirects. If I have a particular page that is already ranking for a couple KWs in top SERPs, but know there are higher volume KWs I can optimize for should I just leave it as is or change the URL key and redirect for the time being until Google re-indexes. Example:
Technical SEO | | IceIcebaby
current URL: www.example.com/action/best-movies
new URL: www.example.com/action/best-action-movies
(the current would be ranking for "best action moves" whereas the new would include the actual "best action movies" KW) Let me know if I can clarify, thank you!0 -
301 Redirects on Large Real Estate Website
Hi guys,We are about to move over to a new website and need advice on handling the 301 redirects.We have a large real estate website with around 12,000 pages, a lot of these are properties (about 10,000)On our old website, the url structure for each property is as follows -domainname.com/property/view?property=14863on our new site, the url structure isdomainname.com/properties/view/6137The property ID number is always different from old site to new. The way we see it, we have two options. a.) a manual redirect of each and every property url. A very very long jobb.) a folder level redirect, so redirect the 'property' folder on the old site into the 'properties' folder on new. The con with this one is we are not sure if this is the best route to take, if it is how we would go about it?Some advice would be really appreciated guys. I know there are some hyper intelligent SEO's in here and we need to make sure we handle this right!Many thanks in advance.Mark
Technical SEO | | Nextman0 -
301 or a 404
Just had a discussion with a collegue about a page on our own website. We have some cases which are outdated. These pages receive some visitors but they arrive there when they search for the clients brand name, so for us they are irelevant. What's the best way to handle these kind of pages? Is a 301-redirect to the showcase overview the way to go or do we make it a 404 and include the showcase overview in this 404?
Technical SEO | | nvs.nim0 -
301'ing googlebot
I have a client that has been 301’ing googlebot to the canonical page. This is because they have a cart_id and session parameters in urls. This is mainly from when googlebot comes in on a link that has these parameters in the URL, as they don’t serve these parameters up to googlebot at all once it starts to crawl the site.
Technical SEO | | AlanMosley
I am worried about cloaking; I wanted to know if anyone has any info on this.
I know that Google have said that doing anything where you detect goolgebots useragent and treat them different is a problem.
Anybody had any experience on this, I would be glad to hear.0 -
Www vs non-www
We just had our site redesigned. Previously, it was indexed under www.suss.net, but now the developer has it at suss.net with www.suss.net 301 redirecting to suss.net. Is this bad for SEO?
Technical SEO | | kylesuss0 -
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
Technical SEO | | danlae0