Temporarily redirecting a small website to a specific url of another website
-
Hi,
I would like to redirect a small website that contains info about a specific project temporarily to a specific url about this project on my main website.
Reason for this is that the small website doesn't contain accurate info anymore. We will adapt the content in the next few weeks and then remove the redirect again.
Should I set up a 301 or a 302?
Thanks
-
This all comes down to the fact that, technically 302 has always been 'found', but there was no status code for a temporary redirect so Google advised people to use 302 (as no one really ever used it for its intended purpose)
Now you have 307. To this day, you can still use 302 or 307 (we're still in the transition period, where both still function identically)
A 301 will gradually transfer SEO authority from one page to another, over a few weeks / months - so that the old URL stops ranking and the new URL 'has a chance' of ranking in its place. If the new URL has highly dissimilar content (in machine-terms) then the 301 fails to transfer a portion of the authority and some is 'deleted' (vented into cyberspace)
A 302 retains the ranking benefit on the old page and nothing is transferred to the new page (period). Over time (a month or six) the 302 will decay. Slowly the authority (which has been kept on the old URL) will begin to 'die off' and you end up (in an extreme situation) with no authority left anywhere from that particular URL (it's just gone). 307s function the same way
As such, using a 302 or 307 is the correct measure, but remember - Google will be watching to check that the redirect really is temporary. If your whole company forgets about restoring the content to the original URL (for a significant period of time) then don't expect that there will be anything left when you come back
In an ideal world, you'd turn it all around inside of one month if you wanted some good juice left when you lifted the 302 / 307
-
Thanks for the answer.
I know the 302 is the standard for a temporary redirect, but the reason I ask this question is that I came across a lot of articles that mention that 302's shouldn't be used, unless for testing a page for example.
Since http 1.1, the 307 redirect is used and this could be another option for a temporary redirect.
Any thoughts on this?
-
Then when the small website has new information. Remove the 302 and resubmit your sitemap to search console and manually fetch and index the home page with all linked pages.
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 Juice?
Hello all! I have a partner site that is linking their product page (step 1) to our product page (step 2) and then we instantly forward them to our shopping cart page (step 3) with that product added. Will my product page (step 2) get the SEO juice from our partners link (step 1) even though we instantly forward to our shopping cart page (step 3)? Curious about ways to technically do this correctly. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jamesmcd030 -
Wrong redirect used
Hi Folks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Patrick_556
I have a query & looking for some opinions. Our site migrated to https://
Somewhere along the line between the developer & hosting provided 302 redirect was implemented instead of the recommended 301 (the 301 rule was not being honured in the htaccess file.)
1 week passed, I noticed some of our key phrases disappear from the serps 😞 When investigated, I noticed this the incorrect redirect was implemented. The correct 301 redirect has now been implemented & functioning correctly. I have created a new https property in webmaster tools, Submitted the sitemap, Provided link in the robots.txt file to the https sitemap Canonical tags set to correct https. My gut feeling is that Google will take some time to realise the problem & take some time to update the search results we lost. Has anyone experienced this before or have any further thoughts on how to rectify asap.0 -
Would you redirect Website A to Website B, when Website B is in the middle of a HTTP=>HTTPS migration?
Hey guys, I'm curious on your thoughts around this scenario... Website A: 35,000 monthly pageviews 1,000 pages 375 root linking domains currently HTTPS focused on one topic weak rankings for competitive keywords Website B: 3M monthly pageviews 32,500 pages 3,500 root linking domains started HTTP to HTTPS migration 1 week ago. 1/3 of pages indexed as HTTPS. focused on many topics strong rankings for competitive keywords Requirement: I want to have a reliable read on how Website A's keyword rankings change after redirecting it's pages to Website A. This post-migration analysis will be used as a basis to assess the risk of redirecting another website we own that is similar to Website A into Website B. My question: Would you wait until most of the pages on Website B are indexed as HTTPS before doing a 301 of Website A to Website B? Please back up your answer with reasons why or why not 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jeremycabral0 -
Redirecting M Dot Mobile Website to Responsive Design Website Questions
Hi amazing Moz community 🙂 Couldn't find this question anywhere, and knew this was the place to ask! We are helping a client redirect an M Dot website to a Responsive Design website. We want to retain our mobile rankings for keywords. Three questions - We should use 301 redirects from the M Dot website to the new website correct? (not 302s?) How long does it take for Google to understand that we have launched a responsive website? Can we remove the 301 redirects after a few days (if the M Dot website interferes/breaks the new Responsive website)? We have verified an account on Google Search Console for the M Dot website, along with a mobile sitemap that has been submitted and verified. What should we do with this M Dot GSC account? Just delete it? Or keep it and upload the NEW XML Sitemap with the new WWW links (because the website is responsive). THANK YOU!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | accpar0 -
Confused: Url Restructure
Hello, We're giving our website a bit of a spring clean in terms of SEO. The site is doing ok, but after the time invested in SEO, content and last year's migration of multiple sites into one, we're not seeing the increase in traffic we had hoped. Our current urls look something like this: /a-cake-company/cup-cakes/strawberry We have the company name as the first level as we with the migration we migrated many companies into one site. What we're considering is testing some pages with a structure like this: /cup-cakes/cup-cake-company-strawberry So we'll lose a level and we'll focus more on the category of the product rather than the brand. What's your thoughts on this? We weren't going to do a mass change yet, just a test, but is this something we should be focusing on? In terms of organisation our current url structure is perfect, but what about from an SEO point of view? In terms of keywords customers are looking for both options. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HB170 -
Fetch as Google - Redirected
Hi I have swaped from HTTP to HTTPS and put a redirect on for HTTP to redirect to HTTPS. I also put www.xyz.co.uk/index.html to redirect to www.xyz.co.uk When I fetch as Google it shows up redirect! Does this mean that I have too many 301 looping? Do I need the redirect on index.html to root domain if I have a rel conanical in place for index.html htaccess (Linix) - RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^xyz.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia
RewriteRule (.*) https://www.xyz.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^$ index.html [R=301,L]0 -
Canonical URL & sitemap URL mismatch
Hi We're running a Magento store which doesn't have too much stock rotation. We've implemented a plugin that will allow us to give products custom canonical URLs (basically including the category slug, which is not possible through vanilla Magento). The sitemap feature doesn't pick up on these URLs, so we're submitting URLs to Google that are available and will serve content, but actually point to a longer URL via a canonical meta tag. The content is available at each URL and is near identical (all apart from the breadcrumbs) All instances of the page point to the same canonical URL We are using the longer URL in our internal architecture/link building to show this preference My questions are; Will this harm our visibility? Aside from editing the sitemap, are there any other signals we could give Google? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomcraig860 -
Can anyone tell me if this website was built with Frontpage or another cookie cutter drag and drop website creator by looking at the source code?
Can anyone tell me if this website was built with Frontpage or another cookie cutter drag and drop website creator by looking at the source code? http://naturespremiumpestdefense.com/ Thanks, Russell
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ULTRASEM0