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.
Using a Reverse Proxy and 301 redirect to appear Sub Domain as Sub Directory - what are the SEO Risks?
-
We’re in process to move WordPress blog URLs from subdomains to sub-directory. We aren’t moving blog physically, but using reverse proxy and 301 redirection to do this.
- Blog subdomain URL is https://blog.example.com/ and
- destination sub-directory URL is https://www.example.com/blog/
Our main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL site. This is on Windows server. Due to technical reasons, we can’t physically move our WordPress blog to the main website.
Following is our Technical Setup
- Setup a reverse proxy at https://www.example.com/blog/ pointing to https://blog.example.com/
- Use a 301 redirection from https://blog.example.com/ to https://www.example.com/blog/ with an exception if a traffic is coming from main WWW domain then it won’t redirect. Thus, we can eliminate infinite loop.
- Change all absolute URLs to relative URLs on blog
- Change the sitemap URL from https://blog.example.com/sitemap.xml to https://www.example.com/blog/sitemap.xml and update all URLs mentioned within the sitemap.
SEO Risk Evaluation
We have individual GA Tracking ID and individual Google Search Console Properties for main website and blog. We will not merge them. Keep them separate as they are.
Keeping this in mind, I am evaluating SEO Risks factors
- Right now when we receive traffic from main website to blog (or vice versa) then it is considered as referral traffic and new cookies are set for Google Analytics. What’s going to happen when its on the same domain?
- Which type of settings change should I do in Blog’s Google Search Console? (A). Do I need to request “Change of Address” in the Blog’s search console property? (B). Should I re-submit the sitemap?
- Do I need to re-submit the blog sitemap from the https://www.example.com/ Google Search Console Property?
- Main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL website, and blog is all about content. So does that impact SEO?
- Will this dilute SEO link juice or impact on the main website ranking because following are the key SEO Metrices. (A). Main website’s Avg Session Duration is about 10 minutes and bounce rate is around 30% (B). Blog’s Avg Session Duration is 33 seconds and bounce rate is over 92%
-
I wrote this on my phone and I will update this in 2-3 hours
rewrite the URLs do not redirect
-
PS
tools like CloudFlare & Fastly don’t care what you’re server is .
https://blog.cloudflare.com/subdomains-vs-subdirectories-best-practices-workers-part-1/
https://blog.cloudflare.com/subdomains-vs-subdirectories-improved-seo-part-2/
https://moz.com/community/q/reverse-proxy-a-successful-blog-from-subdomain-to-subfolder
frontend ssl_in
bind :443 ssl crt /etc/haproxy/website.com.combined
acl root path /
acl blog path_beg /blog
acl sitedomain path_beg /leasopedia
acl glossary path_beg /glossary
acl wpadmin path_beg /wp-
acl blog_search query -m reg ^s=.$
acl blog_preview query -m reg ^p=.*$use_backend wpengine if blog OR sitedomain OR glossary OR wpadmin OR root blog_search OR root blog_preview
default_backend main-sitebackend wpengine
server wpengine examplecompany.wpengine.com:443 ssl ca-file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crtbackend main-site
server main-site example.examplecompany.com.:443 ssl ca-file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crthttps://blog.examplecompany.com or https://examplecompany.com/blog.
It’s worth noting that WPEngine does not recommend this practice.
For those that want to host at https://site.com/blog and do it with a managed WordPress hosting provider like WPEngine, this article is for you.
(Note, WPEngine will automatically block your reverse proxy, so you will need to contact customer support and ask them to whitelist its IP address in their firewall. I found this to be a painless process thanks to the friendly support staff at WPEngine.)
How?
The trick to getting the blog to look like it’s living on the main site (but actually living elsewhere) is to use a reverse proxy.
HAProxy is a powerful reverse proxy, though its configuration has a bit of a learning curve compared to Nginx or Apache.
We use HAProxy internally because it works well with AWS Elastic Load Balancers, which frequently change their IP address. Learn more
HAProxy config
| 1 | bind *:443ssl crt/etc/haproxy/website.com.combined |
You’ll need to use SSL, as all WPEngine installs redirect to SSL.
Of note is that HAProxy expects your certificate chain and your private key to be combined into one file
| 1 | acl |
These are the pattern matching lines that we’ll use to determine which traffic is forwarded to WPEngine
| 1 |
use_backend wpengine ifblog orsitename ORglossary ORwpadmin ORroot blog_search ORroot blog_preview
|
This directs /blog*, /sitename*, /glossary* and /wp-* to WPEngine.
You can replace these with your own blog and page paths configured in wordpress.
This line also directs /?s= and /?p= to wordpress using the combined root and blog_search and blog_preview lines.
These are necessary to making searching and page previews work in WordPress.
| 1 | default_backend main-site |
Everything that doesn’t match one of the above patterns will go to the main site.
| 1 | backend wpengine |
Directives in the frontend that resolve to this backed will route to the blog.
| 1 | backend main-site |
Directives in the frontend that resolve to this backed will route to your main site.
I would use Fastly
https://thoughtbot.com/blog/host-your-blog-under-blog-on-your-www-domain
https://blog.cloudflare.com/subdomains-vs-subdirectories-best-practices-workers-part-1/
-
Hi I have done this for 20+ websites.
Following is our Technical Setup
- Setup a reverse proxy at https://www.example.com/blog/ pointing to https://blog.example.com/
please remember that the hosting or reverse proxy on the server is so important. Some managed WordPress hosts do this better then others.
https://pressidium.com/ now offers reverse proxy's on all plans for free
if you want to do this with out having to worry about it any problem I cannot stress how easy it is done by hosting the blog on Pagely.com it’s now free!
(don’t worry about the $200 they don’t change it)
https://support.pagely.com/hc/en-us/articles/213148558-Reverse-Proxy-Setup
or kinsta for $50 more a month
https://kinsta.com/knowledgebase/reverse-proxy/
Pantheo.io (my go to host) now offers the “Advanced Global CDN” it lets you run a reverse proxy & much more via Fastly (my favorite CDN) the cost is very reasonable.
https://pantheon.io/product/advanced-global-cdn
Servebolt.com offers reverse proxy & hosts all PHP sites Wordpress too. They use CloudFlare & they will setup everything for you for free. They are also a full enterprise partner
https://servebolt.com/help/article/cloudflare-workers-reverse-proxy/
You can also use Fastly, CloudFlare business, Incapsula, Cloudfront
2. Use a 301 redirection from https://blog.example.com/ to https://www.example.com/blog/ with an exception if a traffic is coming from main WWW domain then it won’t redirect. Thus, we can eliminate infinite loop.
This is something that is very easy I would use Fastly
- Change all absolute URLs to relative URLs on blog
NO don’t do that it will hurt your site & will not help you change the URLs they need to be rewritten not made relative it’s a very bad way of trying to do this and will not help your site.
- Change the sitemap URL from https://blog.example.com/sitemap.xml to https://www.example.com/blog/sitemap.xml and update all URLs mentioned within the sitemap
Our main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL site. This is on Windows server. Due to technical reasons, we can’t physically move our WordPress blog to the main website.
If you’re website site is YMYL I would use Pagely but Linode , AWS can do this to with Fastly or Nginx
https://thoughtbot.com/blog/host-your-blog-under-blog-on-your-www-domain
<code>location /blog/ { proxy_pass https://blog.example.com; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme; }</code>
<code>please let me know if you need help
Tom</code>
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
-
If my website uses CDN does thousands of 301 redirect can harm the website performance?
Hi, If my website uses CDN does thousands of 301 redirect can harm the website performance? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
SEO impact of 301 redirects based on IP addresses from a specific state
Hello Moz Community! We are facing an issue that may or may not be unique, but need some advice and/or clarification on the best way to address the issue. We recently rebranded and launched a new site under a new domain and things have been progressing well. However, despite all the up front legwork on trademarks and licensing, we have recently encountered a hiccup that forces us to revert to the old URL/branding for one specific state. This may be a temporary issue that lasts a couple of months or it could potentially be in the court system for a couple of years. One potential solution we have discussed is to redirect the new site to the old site based on IP addresses for the state in question. Looking for any guidance on what type of impact this may have on SEO. Also open to any other suggestions or guidance on dealing with this situation. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VeteransFirstMarketing0 -
For URLs that require login, should our redirect be 301 or 302?
We have a login required section of our website that is being crawled and reporting as potential issues in Webmaster Tools. I'm not sure what the best solution to this is - is it to make URLs requiring a login noindex/nocrawl? Right now, we have them 302 redirecting to the login page, since it's a temporary redirect, it seems like it isn't the right solution. Is a 301 better?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alecfwilson0 -
How do you 301 redirect URLs with a hashbang (#!) format? We just lost a ton of pagerank because we thought javascript redirect was the only way! But other sites have been able to do this – examples and details inside
Hi Moz, Here's more info on our problem, and thanks for reading! We’re trying to Create 301 redirects for 44 pages on site.com. We’re having trouble 301 redirecting these pages, possibly because they are AJAX and have hashbangs in the URLs. These are locations pages. The old locations URLs are in the following format: www.site.com/locations/#!new-york and the new URLs that we want to redirect to are in this format: www.site.com/locations/new-york We have not been able to create these redirects using Yoast WordPress SEO plugin v.1.5.3.2. The CMS is WordPress version 3.9.1 The reason we want to 301 redirect these pages is because we have created new pages to replace them, and we want to pass pagerank from the old pages to the new. A 301 redirect is the ideal way to pass pagerank. Examples of pages that are able to 301 redirect hashbang URLs include http://www.sherrilltree.com/Saddles#!Saddles and https://twitter.com/#!RobOusbey.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Domain Forwarding - SEO Impacts?
I have a site that has been active for years - thinkbiglearnsmart.com. Awhile ago I had purchased about 50 domain names that were relevant to my company. I still have those urls and would like to use them to point to different pages on my site - just because they have good key words in the URLs. For example - one is dreamweavertrainingclassesonlinelive.com. Currently they are all redirecting to my homepage. A. is that hurting me? B. I would like to redirect to the more relevant page. ie the page dedicated to Dreamweaver training (http://thinkbiglearnsmart.com/dreamweaver-creative-cloud-training-course/ ) Will this hurt my Dreamweaver keyword for example because there is already a 301 redirect on that page from a very old Dreamweaver link which was something like thinkbiglearnsmart.com/dreamweaver C. On my hosting account where I can select where the URL forwards to - it has an option for "Location forwarding" and "Frame forwarding" - currently they are set to Frame forwarding - which one is best? Any help is much appreciated!!! Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webbmason0 -
.htaccess 301 Redirect Help! Specific Redirects and Blanket Rule
Hi there, I have the following domains: OLD DOMAIN: domain1.co.uk NEW DOMAIN: domain2.co.uk I need to create a .htaccess file that 301 redirects specific, individual pages on domain1.co.uk to domain2.co.uk I've searched for hours to try and find a solution, but I can't find anything that will do what I need. The pages on domain1.co.uk are all kinds of filenames and extensions, but they will be redirected to a Wordpress website that has a clean folder structure. Some example URL's to be redirected from the old website: http://www.domain1.co.uk/charitypage.php?charity=357 http://www.domain1.co.uk/adopt.php http://www.domain1.co.uk/register/?type=2 These will need to be redirected to the following URL types on the new domain: http://www.domain2.co.uk/charities/ http://www.domain2.co.uk/adopt/ http://www.domain2.co.uk/register/ I would also like a blanket/catch-all redirect from anything else on www.domain1.co.uk to the homepage of www.domain2.co.uk if there isn't a specific individual redirect in place. I'm literally tearing my hair out with this, so any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Townpages0 -
How to 301 redirect old wordpress category?
Hi All, In order to avoid duplication errors we've decided to redirect old categories (merge some categories).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
In the past we have been very generous with the number of categories we assigned each post. One category needs to be redirected back to blog home (removed completely) while a couple others should be merged. Afterwords we will re-categorize some of the old posts. What is the proper way to do so?
We are not technical, Is there a plugin that can assist? Thanks0 -
New Site: Use Aged Domain Name or Buy New Domain Name?
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peterwhitewebdesign
I have the opportunity to build a new website and use a domain name that is older than 5 years or buy a new domain name. The aged domain name is a .net and includes a keyword.
The new domain would include the same keyword as well as the U.S. state abbreviation. Which one would you use and why? Thanks for your help!0