301 or Rel=canonical
-
Should I use a 301 redirect for redirect mywebsite.com to www.mywebsite.com or use a rel=canonical??
Thanks!
-
We use a rewrite rule to do this (301) because we want to keep our analytics easier to manage.
So for example if I have blog.example.com/, www.example.com/, and example.com/ all tracked under the same analytics setup, and I am not taking the hostname into account then all of my "/" pageviews are pooled together and I don't know if they are blog or www pageviews.
So once I tell analytics to add the hostname to pageviews they come across as blog.example.com/ and www.example.com/, but now I will see www.example.com/ and example.com/ as two different pages in my content reports.
So then I need to have the 301 so my data is consolidated correctly.
This is why I suggest using 301s where you can. This can get tricky if you have a ton of folders and index pages for those folders, but you should at least be doing this for your home page as it will make your reporting life MUCH easier in the long run.
Especially if you aren't tracking across subdomains now, but will want to in the future. If you set it up this way now it will save you some headaches.
Hope that helps!
-
If you can do a 301, go for the 301. As far as PageRank is concerned, there's not much of a difference. See Matt Cutts on exactly this topic.
cheers
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 301 to homepage
Hello there, I have some low quality pages in my site, can I redirect 301 them to my homepage? My website is: https://idanito.com idanito.com
Technical SEO | | dannybaldwin0 -
Should I keep writing about the same using rel canonical?
Hi, The service we provide has not so many searches per month. A long tail keyword that describes the service well has at the most 400 searches per month. We wrote a post for this keyword and we ranked number 1 for many months. Now we're on page 2 and I the truth is we stopped writing blog posts because we were raking well for our best keywords. I added a few new posts and lost ranking on my top keywords so I gave up, deleted them and recover the rankings for the keywords I wanted the most. The problem is that I have lost these positions and I know we're supposed to be updating the blog regularly. What would you suggest? Should we keep writing about the same thing and use rel canonical? There aren't that many keywords related to what we offer. I appreciate any ideas.
Technical SEO | | Naix0 -
301 redirect question
Hi Everyone When doing 301 redirects for a large site, if a page has 0 inbound links would you still redirect it or just leave it? Im just curious on the best practice for this Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | TheZenAgency0 -
Help with 301 redirect code
Hi, I can't work out how to make this one work and would apreciate if someone could help.
Technical SEO | | Paul_MC
i have a series of folders from a old site that are in the structure:
/c/123456/bags.html (the "123456" changes and is any series of 6 digit numbers), and the "bags.html" changes depending on the product.
I need that to be 301 redirected to the following format:
/default/bags/bags.html0 -
Should I do a 301 redirect
Hi Everyone, Hope you can help me out here. I have .co.uk & .ie website with similar content. On a particular section of the .co.uk website it is updated daily (Q&As, Blog posts etc) .ie does have this section but to a lesser degree, no daily updates etc, I was wondering if we should simply do a 301 redirect when someone is on the .ie website to .co.uk, it means the user is getting a much better experience however not entirely the consequences from search engines on this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Paul781 -
Canonical tags pointing at old URLs that have been 301'd
I have a site which has various white label sites with the same content on each. I have canonical tags on the white label sites pointing to the main site. I have changed some URLs on the main site and 301'd the previous URL to the new ones. Is it ok to have the canonicals pointing to the old URLs that now have a 301 redirect on them.
Technical SEO | | BeattieGroup0 -
301-redirect
Hi My website is fairly new and i wasnt aware of the difference btw 'website.com' and 'www.website.com' when i started up. It doesnt matter which one i use as long as i am consistent right ? Most of my ingoing links are to mainpage on 'website.com'. I have som ingoing links to 'www.website.com' but also some to 'www.website.com/brandname'. is it enough to 301-redir 'www.website.com' to 'website.com' or does it need to be done on several levels ? I need to have someone do the redirect for me - how can i check its working when its done ? Dan Lærum
Technical SEO | | danlae0 -
Is having "rel=canonical" on the same page it is pointing to going to hurt search?
i like the rel=canonical tag and i've seen matt cutts posts on google about this tag. for the site i'm working on, it's a great workaround because we often have two identical or nearly identical versions of pages: 1 for patients, 1 for doctors. the problem is this: the way our content management system is set up, certain pages are linked up in a number of places and when we publish, two different versions of the page are created, but same content. because they are both being made from the same content templates, if i put in the rel=canonical tag, both pages get it. so, if i have: http://www.myhospital.com/patient-condition.asp and http://www.myhospital.com/professional-condition.asp and they are both produced from the same template, and have the same content, and i'm trying to point search at http://www.myhospital.com/patient-condition.asp, but that tag appears on both pages similarly, we have various forms and we like to know where people are coming from on the site to use those forms. to the bots, it looks like there's 600 versions of particular pages, so again, rel=canonical is great. however, because it's actually all the same page, just a link with a variable tacked on (http://www.myhospital.com/makeanappointment.asp?id=211) the rel=canonical tag will appear on "all" of them. any insight is most appreciated! thanks! brett
Technical SEO | | brett_hss0