What is the best practice for redirecting a lower authority TLD to a high authority TLD?
-
Hi there moz community! My organization is blessed with an extremely high authority TLD (91). Powers-that-be want to start using a lesser authority (though still a respectable 62) TLD in marketing materials because they think it's more memorable/less confusing for users.
We currently have a 302 redirect in place from score-62 to score-91, and our situation relative to the engines is strong. However, if they ramp-up a branding campaign using the 62-score TLD, should we change the 302 to a 301? I don't want to risk infecting that 91 score with any juice relative to the score-62 TLD.
There isn't a lot written for the best practice in redirecting a lower-authority TLD to a high authority TLD - almost all the literature is about preserving your score/juice when redirecting an old TLD to a new TLD.
Thanks for anyone/everyone's help!
Brian Alpert; Smithsonian Institution
-
Actually, the 62 domain has no content directly associated with it, it has only ever been used to redirect to the 91-score (it's actually 92, I see now) domain. It's function is purely marketing, as it is a more momorable word than the 92 domain. Thanks for your answer!
-
If the 62 domain has valuable content, move it to the 91 and do 301 redirects page-by-page. That will keep the search traffic for those pages flowing. And, since those page will be on a more powerful domain, the rankings might go up.
The 62 domain should be left on hosting with the 301 redirects permanently in place. Let everyone know that that hosting and the redirects should always be left live. If you don't do that then the flow of clickthrough traffic will be lost and the ranking value will be cut off.
Don't expect the 91 to get a big rankings boost. Since the metrics are logarithmic it is small in comparison (about 1/1000th).
-
Always glad to help!
-
Thanks Logan; much appreciated!
-
Hi Brian,
If this change is going to be permanent, I would recommend using a 301 redirect. You'll find information on the web elsewhere (even quotes from Google employees) saying that either will pass the same authority, but you should still stick with the best-practices of using a permanent (301) redirect anytime you know the redirect is going to be long-term.
I wouldn't worry too much about losing authority from your TLD, you're clearly not using this redirect for malicious or deceptive reasons. Plus, the brand power of the Smithsonian is such that it would take a LOT of really bad content and/or links to bring that down.
Hope that helps answer your question!
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
-
Redirect 410
I used http status code as 410 for some low quality pages in my site to Redirect to homepage. is this useful to improve my homepage authority?
Technical SEO | | ghorbanimahan
my website is: Nitamoshaver.com0 -
Redirect non slash to slash
Hello SEO gurus We have an issue here ( www.xyz.com.au) is having 200 responses www.xyz.com.au and www.xyz.com.au/ ( when i ran the crawl test i found this ) We have been advised to do a 301 from non slash to slash ( as our other pages are showing up with slash ) for the consistency we decided to go with this but our devs just couldnt do it. Error is - redirect loop and this site is a wordpress one Can anyone help us with this issue? Help is much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Pack0 -
The best way to do Interstitial (ads)
Hello, I want to ask you guys what's the best way do to Interstitial without penalty?
Technical SEO | | JohnPalmer
and feel free to give me samples from another major websites. Thanks!0 -
301 redirect .htaccess
Hi guys I am working on some 301 redirects on an apache webserver and I'd like a bit of assistance in trying to get a specific type result: I want all addresses from domaina.com to be redirected to domainb.com in the same structure so domaina.com/folder/file will go to domainb.com/folder/file expect for 2 folders.
Technical SEO | | seobackbone
ie: DomainA.com --> DomainB.com
except domainA.com/folder1
and domainB.com/folder2 Can someone let me know how I can pull this off?0 -
301 redirect or 302
A client of mine has an international company named www.taxglobalizers.com if you come from Holland they 302 redirect you to the www.taxglobalizers.com/en version of the site and if you come from Holland they redirect with a 302 to www.taxglobalizers.com/nl version. I think it is best to change this in a 301 redirect. Am i correct in this? Kind Regards, Ruud
Technical SEO | | RuudHeijnen0 -
Code for redirect
What is the code to redirect www.xyz.com/abc where abc is a folder to www.xyz.com/abc.html
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Redirecting According to the occasion
We have loads of different departments that relate to specific occasions (e.g. Christmas, mothers day, father day etc), they all have good PR and inbound links etc and most of them rank well for the specific occasion. What I was thinking is that I could redirect all of the occasions that aren’t in use and send the traffic to the valid occasion live at the moment. So I would 301 all the Christmas pages to our valentine’s day main page. Then once valentines is gone I will redirect Christmas and valentines to the mothers day main page and so on. So this would be constantly switching as different occasions come along. Can you see any possible negative problems? Is there any chance that if I redirect Christmas for example, and then when Christmas comes we remove the redirect, could it harm the Christmas page?
Technical SEO | | steliosp210 -
Is this a safe 301 redirect?
We are moving our site from one platform to another. Currently on our site we have two homepages. "www.homepage.com" and "www.homepage.com/Index" Both pages have some high quality links pointing in on them. The problem: We are going to be doing a 301 redirect from "www.homepage.com/Index" page to "www.homepage.com" as we are moving platforms at this time we weren't going to create a "www.homepage.com/Index" page all. This leaves this page as an empty URL. With this webpage disappearing all together will we lose traction as we are redirecting an empty URL? Or is it better to recreate this "www.homepage.com/Index" on our new platform redirect it and wait for google to deIndex this page for us? As well is there a tutorial for how to implement 301 redirects or is this something worth looking for a developer and pay someone to do?
Technical SEO | | HCGDiet0