Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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 is still indexing the old domain a year after 301 redirects are put in place
Hi there, You might have experienced this before but for me this is the first. A client of mine moved from domain A (www.domainA.com) to domain B (www.domainB.com). 301 redirects are all in place for over a year. But the old domain is still showing in Google when you search for "site:domainA.com" The HTTP Header check shows this result for the URL https://www.domainA.com/company/cookie-policy.aspx HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently =>
Technical SEO | | iQi
Cache-Control => private
Content-Length => 174
Content-Type => text/html; charset=utf-8
Location => https://www.domain_B_.com/legal/cookie-policy
Server => Microsoft-IIS/10.0
X-AspNetMvc-Version => 5.2
X-AspNet-Version => 4.0.30319
X-Powered-By => ASP.NET
Date => Fri, 15 Mar 2019 12:01:33 GMT
Connection => close Does the redirect look wrong? The change of address request was made on Google Console when the website was moved over a year ago. Edit: Checked the domainA.com on bing and it seems that its not indexed, and replaced with domainB.com, which is the right. Just Google is indexing the old domain! Please let me know your thoughts on why this is happening. Best,0 -
Redirect multiple domains to 1 domain or not?
Hi there, I have client who has multiple domains that already have some PA and DA. Problem is that most websites have the same content and rank better on different keywords.
Technical SEO | | Leaf-a-mark
I want to redirect all the websites to 1 domain because it’s easier to manage and it removes any duplicate content. Question is if I redirect domain x to domain y do the rankings of domain x increase on domain y? Or is it better to keep domain x separately to generate more referral traffic to domain y? Thanks in advance! Cheers0 -
How to find temporary redirects of existing site you don't control?
I am getting ready to move a clients site from another company. They have like 35 tempory redirects according to MOZ. Question is, how can I find out then current redirects so I can update everything for the new site? Do I need access to the current htaccess file to do this?
Technical SEO | | scott3150 -
Redirecting root domain to a page based on user login
We have our main URL redirecting non-logged in users to a specific page and logged in users are directed to their dashboard when going to the main URL. We find this to be the most user-friendly, however, this is all being picked up as a 302 redirect. I am trying to advise on the ideal way to accomplish this, but I am not having much luck in my search for information. I believe we are going to put a true homepage at the root domain and simply redirect logged in users as usual when they hit the URL, but I'm still concerned this will cause issues with Google and other search engines. Anyone have experience with domains that need to work in this manner? Thank you! Anna
Technical SEO | | annalytical0 -
Htaccess redirect with question mark
Hi I have a problem setting up my htaccess for a specific page that has a question mark in the link, and one that has a space in the link and also a question mark. So I would like 2 redirects in my htaccess like that: www.olddomain.com/page.php?page=pagename1 to www.newdomain.com/newpage1.html www.olddomain.com/page.php?page=page name2 to www.newdomain.com/newpage2.html I have tried with something like this but doesn't work: RewriteEngine on RewriteRule ^page.php?page=pagename1 "http://www.newdomain.com/newpage1.html" [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^page.php?page=page name2 "http://www.newdomain.com/newpage2.html" [R=301,L] Could someone tell me what exactly I have to change? Thanks
Technical SEO | | darkanweb0 -
Multiple Domains, Same IP address, redirecting to preferred domain (301) -site is still indexed under wrong domains
Due to acquisitions over time and the merging of many microsites into one major site, we currently have 20+ TLD's pointing to the same IP address as our "preferred domain:" for our consolidated website http://goo.gl/gH33w. They are all set up as 301 redirects on apache - including both the www and non www versions. When we launched this consolidated website, (April 2010) we accidentally left the settings of our site open to accept any of our domains on the same IP. This was later fixed but unfortunately Google indexed our site under multiple of these URL's (ignoring the redirects) using the same content from our main website but swapping out the domain. We added some additional redirects on apache to redirect these individual pages pages indexed under the wrong domain to the same page under our main domain http://goo.gl/gH33w. This seemed to help resolve the issue and moved hundreds of pages off the index. However, in December of 2010 we made significant changes in our external dns for our ip addresses and now since December, we see pages indexed under these redirecting domains on the rise again. If you do a search query of : site:laboratoryid.com you will see a few hundred examples of pages indexed under the wrong domain. When you click on the link, it does redirect to the same page but under the preferred domain. So the redirect is working and has been confirmed as 301. But for some reason Google continues to crawl our site and index under this incorrect domains. Why is this? Is there a setting we are missing? These domain level and page level redirects should be decreasing the pages being indexed under the wrong domain but it appears it is doing the reverse. All of these old domains currently point to our production IP address where are preferred domain is also pointing. Could this be the issue? None of the pages indexed today are from the old version of these sites. They only seem to be the new content from the new site but not under the preferred domain. Any insight would be much appreciated because we have tried many things without success to get this resolved.
Technical SEO | | sboelter0 -
First click on SEO redirecting to a competitor site?
I just experienced something VERY odd and wondered if any of you had an idea of what it might be. When I did a search on Google and clicked the top SEO listing I was taken to a competitor of the number 1 listed site i.e. NOT the site I clicked on. When I clicked the back button and clicked it again, I was taken to the correct site. This happened with two different searches and I was taken to two different sites. Could this be a clever/sinister cookie implemented by the competitor; a site I frequent regularly? Could this be malware implemented by an affiliate? Could this be a Google glitch?
Technical SEO | | Red_Mud_Rookie0 -
301 Redirect vs Domain Alias
We have hundreds of domains which are either alternate spelling of our primary domain or close keyword names we didn't want our competitor to get before us. The primary domain is running on a dedicated Windows server running IIS6 and set to a static IP. Since it is a static IP and not using host headers any domain pointed to the static IP will immediately show the contents of the site, however the domain will be whatever was typed. Which could be the primary domain or an alias. Two concerns. First, is it possible that Google would penalize us for the alias domains or dilute our primary domain "juice"? Second, we need to properly track traffic from the alias domains. We could make unique content for those performing well and sell or let expire those that are sending no traffic. It's not my goal to use the alias domains to artificially pump up our primary domain. We have them for spelling errors and direct traffic. What is the best practice for handling one or both of these issues?
Technical SEO | | briankb0