I have a question about the impact of a root domain redirect on site-wide redirects and slugs.
-
I have a question about the impact (if any) of site-wide redirects for DNS/hosting change purposes.
I am preparing to redirect the domain for a site I manage from https://siteImanage.com to https://www.siteImanage.com. Traffic to the site currently redirects in reverse, from https://www.siteImanage.com to https://siteImanage.com.
Based on my research, I understand that making this change should not affect the site’s excellent SEO as long as my canonical tags are updated and a 301 redirect is in place. But I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a potential consequence of this switch I’m not considering. Because this redirect lives at the root of all the site’s slugs and existing redirects, will it technically produce a redirect chain or a redirect loop? If it does, is that problematic?
Thanks for your input!
-
@mollykathariner_ms said in I have a question about the impact of a root domain redirect on site-wide redirects and slugs.:
I have a question about the impact (if any) of site-wide redirects for DNS/hosting change purposes.
I am preparing to redirect the domain for a site I manage from https://siteImanage.com to https://www.siteImanage.com. Traffic to the site currently redirects in reverse, from https://www.siteImanage.com to https://siteImanage.com.
Based on my research, I understand that making this change should not affect the site’s excellent SEO as long as my canonical tags are updated and a 301 redirect is in place. But I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a potential consequence of this switch I’m not considering. Because this redirect lives at the root of all the site’s slugs and existing redirects, will it technically produce a redirect chain or a redirect loop? If it does, is that problematic?
Thanks for your input!When implementing site-wide redirects for DNS/hosting change purposes, it's essential to consider the potential impact on SEO and any potential issues that may arise. In your specific case of redirecting from https://siteImanage.com to https://www.siteImanage.com, there are a few things to keep in mind.
Firstly, updating your canonical tags and implementing a 301 redirect is indeed the recommended approach to maintain SEO value during the domain redirection process. These measures ensure that search engines understand the change and transfer the ranking signals appropriately.
Regarding your concern about redirect chains or loops, it's important to handle the redirects correctly to avoid any negative consequences. If the current redirect from https://www.siteImanage.com to https://siteImanage.com exists, and you add a new redirect from https://siteImanage.com to https://www.siteImanage.com, it could potentially create a redirect chain or loop.
To prevent this issue, you should ensure that the old redirect from https://www.siteImanage.com to https://siteImanage.com is removed once the new redirect is in place. This way, you have a single 301 redirect directly from the non-www version to the www version of the site, without creating a redirect chain.
By implementing the redirect correctly and ensuring there are no redirect chains or loops, you can minimize any potential negative impact on SEO. It's always a good practice to carefully monitor your website's performance after making such changes to address any unforeseen issues promptly.
If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to ask.
-
@mollykathariner_ms Redirecting a domain from https://siteImanage.com to https://www.siteImanage.com should not have a significant impact on the site's SEO as long as you handle the redirect properly. However, you are correct in considering the possibility of redirect chains or loops, which can have negative consequences if not handled correctly.
A redirect chain occurs when there are multiple redirects in a sequence before reaching the final destination. For example:
https://siteImanage.com redirects to https://www.siteImanage.com
https://www.siteImanage.com redirects to https://www.siteImanage.com/page1
https://www.siteImanage.com/page1 redirects to https://www.siteImanage.com/page2
If you have a redirect chain like this, it can impact performance and user experience, as each redirect adds an additional request and increases the page load time.On the other hand, a redirect loop occurs when two or more pages continuously redirect to each other. For example:
https://siteImanage.com redirects to https://www.siteImanage.com
https://www.siteImanage.com redirects back to https://siteImanage.com
A redirect loop can prevent users from accessing your site and negatively affect search engine crawling and indexing.To avoid these issues, it's important to set up a proper redirect from https://siteImanage.com to https://www.siteImanage.com. You should implement a single 301 redirect from the non-www version to the www version of the site. This ensures that all traffic, including search engines and users, is directed to the correct URL in a single step.
Once you have implemented the 301 redirect, it's a good practice to update the canonical tags on your web pages to reflect the preferred URL (https://www.siteImanage.com). This helps search engines understand the preferred version of your site and consolidate ranking signals.
By implementing the redirect correctly and updating the canonical tags, you should be able to make the domain change without significant negative consequences for SEO. However, it's always a good idea to monitor your site's performance and rankings after the switch to ensure everything is functioning as expected.
-
Depending upon how you've set up your previous redirects, it could be a problem, but I suspect you'll be fine.
In my experience, a small redirect chain won't cause a massive issue and unless you already have some multi-step redirects going on, your new plan won't put you at risk of more than two steps anyway. Obviously, a loop would cause serious issues, but I don't think you are at risk of this.
Your redirects should be relative to absolute, i.e. /oldpage to https://siteImanage.com/newpage. In this case, you would just need to update your absolute paths to the new url. If you ensure these are matched first, then you would only have one redirect regardless of whether the client hits the www or non-www domain. If the full domain redirect is matched first, you'll end up for two steps for those people hitting only pages on the old domain
If your redirects are matching based on relative links and redirecting to relative urls (as some plugins do), i.e. /oldpage redirects to /newpage, then you'll end up with a two-step process if someone follows an old link; First, the site will redirect from non-www to www, and then it will redirect to the correct page.
If you have redirects such as "https://siteImanage.com/oldpage" redirecting to "https://siteImanage.com/newpage" then you would create a two-step process again, first to the new page and then to the new domain. Of course, your redirects wouldn't work on the new domain as they wouldn't match, which may or may not be a problem for you.
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
-
Google displaying root domain instead of country locale
Hi, For many months now, Google refuses to display the relevant locale in many markets, and instead shows the root domain as number 1 result. The country locale isn't even in the SERP in some countries(!). This only applies for branded searches. It appears Google is treating the root domain as an international landing page or something, while this isn't the case - visitors get redirected automatically based on their Geo-IP to the relevant country locale if they enter the root domain, there is no "flag selector" that people or bots can choose. Site: example.com If someone searches for "example" from Google Canada, they should be met with example.com/en-ca/ as the first result for branded searches. Instead, example.com is ranking, and example.com/en-ca/ is nowhere to be found. This problem is in all our English markets; Canada, India and UK. For non-english countries, branded searches return the relevant locale, but the root domain is often the 2nd result as well. This isn't as bad as the case with the English markets, but still. Any help whatsoever would be greatly appreciated, or if you can recommend great reading assets. I have researched this thoroughly and tried different technical solutions, but nothing has worked so far. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | LeoVegas0 -
Sub domain? Micro site? What's the best solution?
My client currently has two websites to promote their art galleries in different parts of the country. They have bought a new domain (let's call it buyart.com) which they would eventually like to use as an e-commerce platform. They are wondering whether they keep their existing two gallery websites (non e-commerce) separate as they always have been, or somehow combine these into the new domain and have one overarching brand (buyart.com). I've read a bit on subdomains and microsites but am unsure at this stage what the best option would be, and what the pros and cons are. My feeling is to bring it all together under buyart.com so everything is in one place and creates a better user journey for anyone who would like to visit. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | WhitewallGlasgow0 -
Can an AJAX framework (using HTML5 + pushstate) on your site impact your ranking?
Hello everybody, I am currently investigating a website which is rendered by an AJAX Framework (Angularjs) using the HTML5 +API history - Pushstate methods.
Technical SEO | | Netsociety
Recently Google announced that they are able to execute Javascript and can therefore see the content and links to discover all pages in the structure. However it seems that it doesn't run the Javascript at ALL times. (after some internal testing) So technically it is possible it arrives on a page without seeing any content and links, while another time he can arrive, run Javascript and read/discover the content and links generated by AJAX.
The fact that Google can't always interpret or read the website correctly can therefore have negative SEO impact? (not the indexation process but ranking) We are aware that is better to create a snapshot of the page but in the announcement of Google they state that the method that is currently used, should be sufficient. Does anybody have any experience with this AND what is the impact on the ranking process? Thanks!0 -
Site-wide Links
Hey y'all, I know this question has been asked many times before but I wanted to see what your stance was on this particular case. The organisation I work for is a group of 12 companies - each with its own website. On some of the sites we have a link to the other sites within the group on every single page of that site. Our organic search traffic has dropped a bit but not significantly and we haven't received any manual penalties from Google. It's also worth mentioning that the referral traffic for these sites from the other sites I control is quite good and the bounce rate is extremely low. If you were in my shoes would you remove the links, put a nofollow tag on the links or leave the links as they are? Thanks guys 🙂
Technical SEO | | AAttias0 -
Redirecting domain to the main domain (hosting cost?)
Hello Everyone, I have the following situation. There is main domain and a secondary domain that is related to the page on the main domain. I want to integrate the content of the secondary domain into the page on the main domain and redirect the secondary domain via 301 to that specific page. As i understand I can do it via .htaccess using rewrite mechanism. http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection But the question is does it mean I have to keep paying for the hosting for the secondary domain? Because htaccess has to be located on the web server so I would need a hosting plan for it? Is that true? Is there any way around it? P.S. to avoid any confusion - I am talking about hosting plan - not domain registration fees
Technical SEO | | SirMax0 -
Pros & Cons of deindexing a site prior to launch of a new site on the same domain.
If you were launching a new website to completely replace an older existing site on the same domain, would there be any value in temporarily deindexing the old site prior to launching the new site? Both have roughly 3000 pages, will launch on the same domain but have a completely new url structure and much better optimized for the web. Many high ranking pages will be redirected with 301 to the corresponding new page. I believe the hypothesis is this would eliminate a mix of old & new pages from sharing space in the serps and the crawlers are more likely to index more of the new site initially. I don't believe this is a great strategy, on the other hand I see some merit to the arguments for it.
Technical SEO | | medtouch0 -
Redirect or not to redirect
We are rebuilding a website and try to get rid of errors. The content remains exactly the same but we correct the code and make it load faster. The site has quite many backlinks and I can't decide whether to remove .html endings from the urls and 301 redirect to the new ones or leave them with the older ending. If I remove the endings how much of the link juice will be passed? Anyone any idea?
Technical SEO | | sesertin0 -
301 redirect on the root of the site
Due to some historic difficulties with our URL Rewriter, we are in the position of having the root of our site 301 redirected to another page. So the root of our site: http://www.propertylive.co.uk/ has a 301 redirect to: http://www.propertylive.co.uk/home.aspx We're aware that this isn't great and we're working to fix this completely, but what impact will this have on our SEO?
Technical SEO | | LianWard860