301 Not Allowed...Other Solutions?
-
A client's site where both the www. and non-www. versions are both being indexed. The non-www. version have has roughly 1000 or so links where the www. version has over twice as much pointing back to the site. In addition, the www. version has higher domain authority.
Their programmer has suggested that they can't implement 301's permanent redirects across their site for a few reasons.
My question is, what would be the best alternative to block/redirect the non-www. version from being indexed yet still pass link-juice?
-
Hey James - I am curious as to why you think a 'canonical tag' wouldn't be a "long term fix"?
-
Thanks for the responses everyone. Everyone seems to be in agreement that a '301' is the proper course of action and should be explained that way.
I just have never run into a developer opposing the idea. So, thanks again for the feedback!
-
1st of all if the developer says he won't use the 301 then he's one very strange developer it's the basic of frontend development. But that being as it is, 301 is the best and most viable option but you do have a few other:
- tell GWT your prefered domain.
- have the devloper make a dynamic rel canonical, something like this (in php)
' ?>
in the above situation he of cause would have to make a function called checkURL to test for if the url begins with http://www and returns the right formatted version. and tell GWT what domain you prefer.
But again the only right way is a 301 and it's ridiculously simple to make.
-
If you properly communicate why 301 Redirects are the only proper solution, and you continue to run up against a dev who makes up pie in the sky technical "reasons" why they can't, then the question is whether they respect you enough, put enough value in your view, recommendation.
Setting that aside, the canonical tag, coupled with going into Google Webmaster Tools and setting the www version as the preferred version will help, but as has been pointed out, not in anything close to resembling an ideal way.
For long term sanity, I highly recommend you explore why you're getting the resistence. Is it because the dev feels threatened, or doesn't want to do the work? Setting up server-wide 301 Redirects is NOT that difficult or time consuming for anyone who knows what they're doing. So you may want to provide them links to the "how-to" for their particular server configuration.
If they are lazy, you'll need to find a way to show the decision maker(s) that failing to implement them is costing the company revenue.
-
My Advice is to make a deck/ business case for the programmer show him the problems with having two versions of the website indexed. I have encountered a few developers who are not really in tune with the whole issues around duplicate content and SEO. I think the best idea is to act on the same page, show the developer some respect, show him the design is good but then also educate him about SEO.
If you do a cononical tag, sorry to say but it is not going to be a long term fix, it will just be a short term fix.
Try and push for the 301's.
-
I have never encountered a developer who resisted using a redirect for the non-www URLs to the www form. If you have access to the server, the change should be able to be made.
If you decide not to use a 301,use a canonical tag to identify the correct version of the page. I would also use both Google and Bing Webmaster Tools to indicate which URL format you wish to use.
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
-
PDF ranking higher than HTML pages, solution?
Hello Moz community I know this question has been asked before but it seems there is no real answer other than putting a summary of the PDF on the HTML page. My problem is other websites are using my PDFs, I have some PDFs with very high authority links and I would like to either pass the link juice on to my product/category page or do rel=canonical somehow. I'm using bigcommerce as my platform. My website is cwwltd.com. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Neverstop1231 -
301 redirects Ruby on Rails
Can anyone point me to the best way to implement 301 redirects on a Ruby on Rails website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianvest0 -
Is it possible to avoid redirect of penalties for 301 forwards?
We have been doing a good amount of competitive research lately and have noticed sites that have been changing their TTLD quite often to escape manual penalties / DCMA filings. An example evolution: brandterm.com -> brandterm.bz -> brandterm.me These competitors are able to quickly rank for money keywords in the top 3 soon after another domain switch. What we have noticed is that while its obvious they received Google penalties they continue to 301 redirect the old domains to the new ones. We have experienced first hand that penalties travel along domains with 301 redirects. Does anyone have an explanation how these companies are able to achieve quickly high volume of organic search while 301-redirecting from burnt domains? The only option I see is to disavow all previous domains in GWT to be able to employ 301 redirects without risking carrying over the penalty. Are there other theories ppl can think of? T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | petersocapro0 -
301 from a defunct site due to great link profile
Hi there Would really appreciate your help in dealing with the following scenario: My client is an authority brand in their sector. They were bought end 2011, and a new website was launched under the new owner's brand. For whatever reason no 301 redirects were put in place from the old site to the new site. I am now auditing the new site and the traffic is pitifully low, way lower than they used to enjoy on the old site. The old site is defunct and Google is no longer indexing it. However OSE shows that the link profile of the old site was very good with thousands of good quality links, whilst it is non-existent for the new site. I am thinking that even though Google does not index the old site, we should try and get access and put 301s in place on the old pages to help transfer across all the link juice to boost the new site. Do you agree or am I missing something here? Will page rank be transferred across even though the old site is dead? What else could we do? Would change of domain in WMT help? Although how would that work for a defunct site? We should probably 301 anyway as it would be good to ensure that folk following all those links can find my client's new site, but it would be great if page rank flowed too! All ideas appreciated! Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chammy
Wendy0 -
Google Re-Index or multiple 301 Redirects on the server?
Over a year ago we moved a site from Blogspot that was adding dates in the URL's (i.e.. blog/2012/08/10/) Additionally we've removed category folders (/category, /tag, etc). Overall if I add all these redirects (from the multiple date options, etc) I'm concerned it might be an overload on the server? After talking with the server team they had suggested using something like 'BWP Google Sitemaps' on our Wordpress site, which would allow Google some time to re-index our site. What do you suggest we do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seointern0 -
Why isnt my crawl results showing a 301 redirect even though I have a 301 rewrite in my .htaccess file?
Ive searched the previous Q&A's & cant find an answer so I;ll ask it here 🙂 crawling my site shows isnt the 301 redirect that i have from my non www to my www domainIts only showing all the results for my www subdomain.As i'm new to SEO & SeoMoz I dont fully understand. Any help would be greatly appreciated because my site is like 2 & a half years old & i'm trying to learn seo so I can rank higher in the serp's. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PCTechGuy20120 -
What are the best strategies to organize a htaccess full of 301 re-directs
I have a client with a htaccess file that is a total mess! What are the best practices to organize all the re-directs, and make it more manageable in the future. Any resources would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anchorwave0 -
Filter after 301 and linked with high PR
Hi, I'd like to ask you what should I do in my situation. I've shorted my URLs from something like this: domain.com/module/action/type/id/keyword to this: domain.com/keyword After 301 SERP refreshed and position stayed the same (yea, lucky me :). After 2 days I got some hight PR links (4 and 5). After 8 days my new URL disapprear to one keyword. Now this take 6 days... I've removed these links and still no results. So the question is - what should I do? Remove new url and replace it with old one, get new links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sui0