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
-
Product page Canonicalization best practice
I'm getting duplicate content errors in GWT for product list pages that look like this: -www.example.com/category-page/product
Technical SEO | | IceIcebaby
-www.example.com/category-page/product/?p=2 The "p=2" example already has a rel=canonical in place, " Shouldn't the non-canonical pages be using the canonical attribute for the first page rather than the additional product pages? Thanks!0 -
301 redirects - one overall redirect or an individual one for each page url
Hi I am working on a site that is to relaunch later on this year - is best practise for the old urls (of which there are thousands) to write a piece of code that will cover all of the urls and redirect them to the new home page or to individually redirect each url to its new counterpart on the new site. I am naturally concerned about user experience on this plus losing our Google love we currently have but am aware of the time it would take to do this individually. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Pday1 -
301 redirect not working
Hi there! I have recently moved a domain that has been indexed by google and setup redirects so that it forwards to the new domain. It seems like the only redirect that actually is working is the canonical and main domain but every other page and or page nested within a folder are not working. Here is an example of some of the redirects. Am I doing this wrong? It seems to be going to the new domain but can't find the actual pages.... RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | twotd
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !agoodsweep.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://agoodsweep.com/$1 [L,R=301]
redirect 301 woodstoveservicerepair.html http://agoodsweep.com/woodstoveservicerepair/
redirect 301 /westchesterchimney.html http://agoodsweep.com/west-chester-chimney/ Thanks in advance for any help!!0 -
Best practice for rich snippet product data - which page shows up?
We have a website with thousands of pages that rank locally for a specific service we offer. What I'd like to do is add rich snippets to these pages. I'd like to setup the services we offer as 'products' in the rich snippets, so that our 2 services show up below the url as rich snippets. I guess I'm not sure if the markup is supposed to be on the product page itself, or if I should use the offerurl tag, to create a separate page on the site whose only purpose is to have a long list of the services we offer pointing to the local pages as the offer url's. What do I do with this page? what are best practices for this offer aggregator? Are there any resources I can look at? Am I even doing this right? I'm new to having markup pages, and I'm hoping that the markup code doesn't actually need to be on the product offer page itself, but that the product offer page is the one that shows up on the results - that is my last question actually - which page will show up? the offerurl link, or the actual markup page.
Technical SEO | | ilyaelbert0 -
How to write 301 redirects in WordPress
I've successfully migrated new site to new domain (www.cmsearchmarketing.com) But I cannot get 301 redirects for pages and blog posts to redirect from the old domain (www.creativemindsearchmarketing.com). And it's my understanding I need to do a 301 for each page to maintain SEO. Here's what I've tried: RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^p=975$RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.cmsearchmarketing.com/top-5-questions-to-ask-an-seo-firm-before-signing-up/? [R=301,L] BEGIN WordPress<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine OnRewriteBase /RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-fRewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-dRewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule># END WordPress #AND ALSO# Use PHP5 Single php.ini as defaultAddHandler application/x-httpd-php5s .php BEGIN WordPress<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine OnRewriteBase /RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-fRewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-dRewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule># END WordPress redirect 301 /top-5-questions-to-ask-an-seo-firm-before-signing-up http://www.cmsearchmarketing.com/top-5-questions-to-ask-an-seo-firm-before-signing-up/ Any suggestions would be appreciated. _Cindy P.S. Maybe some other issues are in the way: --Old site is WP-Remix theme no longer supported, and latest WP version is 2.9.1 -- Old domain (www.creativemindsearchmarketing.com) is the primary account on BlueHost …and the new domain (www.cmsearchmarketing.com) is an addon, so the new domain's directory is within root of old domain. -- in root domain of old site there are other "handler files" that also have base file rewrites, if this is an issue: name of this file in root directory is:
Technical SEO | | CeCeBar
.htaccess.addHandlerBak -FrontPage- <limit get="" post="">order deny,allowdeny from allallow from all</limit><limit put="" delete="">order deny,allowdeny from all</limit>AuthUserFile /home/creatjo7/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.pwdAuthGroupFile /home/creatjo7/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.grp# BEGIN WordPress<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine OnRewriteBase /RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-fRewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-dRewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPressAuthName creativemindsearchmarketing.comIndexIgnore .htaccess /.?? *~ *# /HEADER /README /_vti0 -
Domain authority and rankings?
I have a site that sits in #1 position for its keywords right now. But it only got there about 1mth ago. The site is only about 6mths old with lots of link building. I check the domain authority and its only 37/100 with the #2, #3 sites having domain authority of 57 and 82 respectively. This site has like 800+ backlinks. While the #2 and #3 sites have 20,000+ backlinks. Does it mean that my site will LIKELY drop in rankings very soon? I know there is no certainty but wld you say that it is highly probable my site will drop?
Technical SEO | | jl2550 -
302 Redirects for Minor Pages
301 redirects are clearly preferable to 302 redirects for pages that need to be indexed by search engines. If I have 302 redirects to minor pages not getting much traffic regardless of the code, how important (if at all) is changing the redirects to 301? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Removing 301 Redirects
Is it safe to remove old 301 Redirects from an SEO standpoint and can 301s dramatically affect seo? Prior to switching our old domain over to our new domain, we had (and currently still do) tons of 301 redirects, because of optimizing our file names and structure. Then our old domain was redirected to our new domain in the same redirect file. So that being said, now that our new domain has been up and running for about 3 months, would it be safe for me to get rid of the old 301 redirects and redirect anything that was on our old domain to our new domains home page? This would clean up our redirects tremendously and I hope would help with SEO.
Technical SEO | | hfranz0