Redirecting Powerful Domains
-
What do you do if you have a client that never implemented a 301 redirect on their domain? For example here are the OSE stats for the URLs;
PA: 48 DA: 50 LRD: 65 TL: 1,084 FB: 178 FB: 14 T:5
PA: 51 DA: 50 LRD: 165 TL: 2,271 FB: 178 FB: 14 T:5 G+1:3
My first instincts are to redirect the first one to the second one, but is it too late for that? Will that screw up all of their established stats? Any input or examples of past experiences with this would be great.
-
A lot of information outside of SEO should be considered before redirecting a domain.
-
I agree with Daniel. It is never too late to fix this issue.
My suggestion would be to fix the root cause of this issue. Go into the web server and perform the URL redirect at that level. This way no one will ever be able to see the non-www version of your site. If you try to access http://google.com you will notice the "www." is automatically added. This method should stop any future non-www linking.
Once the redirect is in place, TEST IT. Don't just test the root domain but also just a couple pages as well.
Once the change is made, determine if any of the non-www links are internal. If so, fix them immediately. Next determine if any of the non-www links are under the site's control. Your social network links, signature links, other sites you own, etc. should all be updated to use the "www" link.
-
Not that I know of. Maybe someone else can chime in with their experience.
I could possibly see an issue with Analytics if you're running an AdWords campaign for the old site version. But that would be a simple fix, if it's even an issue.
SEOmoz's section on redirects is comprehensive:
-
That's what I thought. Could there be some negative impact that I'm not thinking of? Besides that small percentage of link juice.
-
It would have been better to do it earlier.
But losing that small percentage of link juice (1-10%) is a small price to pay for canonicalizing (with a 301 re-direct) that website.
You have a lot of links to gain by doing this (1,084) and you prevent duplicate content issues.
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
-
Domain name in URL
Hi we are targeting local cities across the UK with landing pages for our website. We have built up a few links for https://www.caffeienmarketing.co.uk/bristol/ and recently advised that I should change the URL to https://www.caffeienmarketing.co.uk/marketing-agency-bristol/ and 301 directing the old one 2 questions really: 1. is there any benefit in doing this these days in that this is the main keyword target we have for this page? 2. Do I get 100% benefit for all the links built up on the old page
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
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 -
Sub-domain or not???
Hi, We're setting up a forum for our users (our target audience responds extremely well to forums). I was wondering if it should be set up on a sub-domain or not. I'm leaning towards sub-domain, but our devs say this will impact how they approach it so I'd like to give them an answer asap so we can proceed with planning it! Thanks, Amelia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommT0 -
Redirecting to a new domain... a second time
Hi all, I help run a website for a history-themed podcast and we just moved it to its second domain in 7 years. We've had very good SEO up until last week, and I'm wondering if I screwed up the way I redirected the domains. It's like this: Originally the site was hosted at "first.com", and it acquired inbound links. However, we then started to host the site on blogger, so we... Redirected the site to "second.blogspot.com". (Thus, 1 --> 2) It stayed here for about 7 years and got lots of traffic. Two weeks ago we moved it off of blogger and into Wordpress, so we 301 redirected everything to... third.com. (Thus, 1 --> 2 --> 3) The redirects worked, and when we Google individual posts, we are now seeing them in Google's index at the new URL. My question: What about the 1--> 2 redirect? There are still lots of links pointing to "first.com". Last week I went into my GoDaddy settings and changed the first redirect, so that first.com now points to third.com. (Thus 1 --> 3, and 2-->3) I was correct in doing that, right? The drop in Google traffic I've seen this past week makes me think that maybe I screwed something up. Should we have kept 1 --> 2 --> 3? (Again, now we have 1-->3 and 2-->3) Thanks for any insights on this! Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomNYC1 -
301 Redirection
Hi there guys, I have a question about redirection. My boss has just bought a new domain name and he wants it to redirect to our current site when looking for specific products. www.example.com is our current website www.productname.com is the new domain So the new domain would be redirected to example.com. Would that be considered against Google Policies? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
Domain Forwarding? Beneficial?
Good Morning! My father asked me about Domain Forwarding yesterday and it's impact on SEO. The example he gave was if he had website xyz.com and it was an educational website that sold anger management programs would purchasing the domain socialskills.com and pointing that domain at xyz.com help rank for social skills? My immediate answer was no it would not simply because Google doesn't associate any content with that domain, and Domain Forwarding is different that a redirect, which would apply if a website is already established. Am I correct in my thinking? Thanks guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
Merging domains into sudomains
I know that questions about this topic have been asked before, but I didn't really find an answer that I could apply to our situation. We have several websites that now exist on separate domains, even though their topics are closely related. We are moving each of these sites into a new CMS and are considering collapsing all of the domains into a sub-domain structure around the strongest domain. Important to note: All of the current domains have existed for many years and have strong site authority, and regardless of the domain decision, in this restructuring we will be bringing them all under a global header. I know that there are SEO risks to moving a site from an established domain to a new one, even with 301 redirects in place, but the team in charge of this move wants to know how much of a hit we would take and how quickly natural search traffic might recover. Maybe and mights aren't really satisfying their questions... Does anyone have experience with collapsing domains into a sub-domain structure and feel like sharing your results? Most importantly, was it worth it???? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JuliaG0 -
Duplicate content on sub-domains?
I have 2 subdamains intented for 2 different countries (Colombia and Venezuela) ve.domain.com and co.domain.com. The site it's an e-commerce with over a million products available so they have the same page with the same content on both sub-domains....the only differences are the prices a payment options. Does google take that as duplicate content? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0