Worth Changing Redirect From 302 to 301?
-
Hi,
I'm doing an audit on a site that had a redesign in Dec 2009. For some reason I looked to see what kind of redirects were used from the old pages to the current ones, and it looks like they used 302s, which obviously isn't ideal. Given that it's been so long and those pages have looong since been de-indexed, is it worth me suggesting that they change those old redirects to 301s? My thinking is that if those old pages were linked to externally then I should recommend it, but I can't find any link info on Linkscape/OSE, Majestic SEO or YSE.
Any comments appreciated.
-
I'm ashamed to say that accidentally I had a large number of 302 redirects on pages on one of my sites for a while and inadvertently missed them. Once I spotted them I changed them to 301's and the impact was significant for rankings. From experience, I would definitely recommend them. It's best practice and if there is any link equity to be had, it's easy pickings for your client.
-
Thanks for your answers, I'll recommend to the client that we switch those old redirects to 301s.
-
Change them for sure, it is worth the effort.
302 is a temp redirect and will pass no juice.
301 is perm and it will be far more beneficial.
-
With 302 redirects, Google first sees the old URL and then moves one to the new one. The bot will always first go the the old page, since 302 means temporary redirect. If you, by any chance, decide to go back to the old URL, Google needs to be kept in the loop and that is why it always checks the old page for the redirect.
In fact, in the results you should see your old URL with the new content indexed. Is that the case? I'm also not quite sure if 302 will pass PageRank. I would say - switch to 301.
-
I would definitely recommend doing it. The value held by the old pages will help to make the new pages more powerful and improve rankings, making it a win-win situation.
302 redirects are designed for temporary situations, and they should not be used as a solution for permanent redirects.
-
I would do it.
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
-
302 redirects in Magento, trying to fix
Hi all, I'm assigned a site in Magento. After the first craw, we found almost 15k 302 redirects. A sample URL ends with this /stores/store/switch/?SID=qdq9mf1u6afgodo1vtvk0ucdpb&___from_store=default&___store=german&uenc=aHR0cHM6Ly9qdWljeWZsdXRlcy5jb20vP19fX3N0b3JlPWdlcm1hbg%2C%2C And they are currently 302 redirecting to the homepage as well as other main pages and also product pages it seems. Some of these point to account pages where customers log in. Probably best for me to de-index those so no issues there. But I'm worried about the 302 redirects to public pages. The extension we have installed is SEO Suite Ultimate by MageWorx. Does anyone here have experience here specifically and how did you fix it? Thanks, JC
Technical SEO | | LASClients0 -
Redirect 301 & Wild Cards
Afternoon All! Question, I am having trouble getting my head around redirects and I am wondering if someone could help me on this.... We recently changed our website and although were using the same database, were using a different URL structure. So for example... Old URL siteurl.com/products/product/moredetails/merlin.id1553.html
Technical SEO | | scottiedog
New URL siteurl.com//vertigo/dl/product.php?p=1553 As you can see the product has the same ID number, just in a different directory. What I'd like to happen is.... If you go too siteurl.com////.idXXXX.html then you are 301'd too siteurl.com//vertigo/do/product.php?p=XXXX Obviously XXXX is the ID number of the product in our database. Any thoughts? I need help! Thanks in advance.0 -
Which way round to 301 redirect?
Hi We have just added a new layered navigation menu to our website. so for example we had Before : www.tidy-books.co.uk/chidlrens-bookcases (this has the seo juice) And Now: http://www.tidy-books.co.uk/childrens-bookcases-book-storage/childrens-bookcases Might be a stupid question but do I redirect the 'now' url to the 'before' url or the the other way round I look forward to hearing your thoughts Thanks
Technical SEO | | tidybooks0 -
Why can't I redirect 302 errors to 301's?
I've been advised by IT that due to the structure of our website (they don't use sub-folders) it's not possible to change 302's to 301's. Is this correct, or am I being fobbed off?
Technical SEO | | lindsaytuerena0 -
Plenty of 302 Redirects, can they harm SERP?
Hi my client has recently relaunched the website and they use a lot of 302 redirects because they want Google to crawl the pages. They do not plan to add any content to those pages. I advised 301 instead but they do not want to do this. Can too many 302s harm their rankings?
Technical SEO | | GardenPet0 -
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 -
Can I Get Penalized for 301 Redirects (Too Many or In Any Scenario)?
A client of ours owns several domain names that are keyword similar to the domain they actually use to run their site. They are asking us if we should 301 redirect all of these websites to the domain they use. However, I don't want this to work against them and their site get penalized later for this. I have heard buying out competitors and redirecting their domain to yours is frowned upon and penalized when you get caught (they did not do this). We are also wondering if there is a limit as to how many domains you can 301 redirect and what type (keyword similar, misspellings, .net's, etc.) and if you are penalized after too many (i.e. >50). All of the domains in question are keyword/brand name similar only and do not exist as actual websites. We just want to do the right thing. Thank you for your help.
Technical SEO | | JCunningham0 -
What is the difference between 301 redirect to 404 vs just 404.
A bunch of pages on my site are set to 301 redirect to our 404 page. Intuitively, I feel like they should all just 404 from the page's url and not redirect to the 404 page. How do I explain to my developer that they should not redirects but should just 404? Is there much of a difference between the redirect first vs 404 first? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | gaytravel0