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
-
301 vs 302
Hello everyone! I'm working with a site right now that is currently formatted as subdomain.domain.net. The old version of the site was formatted as domain.net, with domain.com and several other variants redirecting to the current format, subdomain.domain.net. All of these redirects are 302, and I'm wondering if I should have all these changed to 301. Many of our old backlinks go to the old format of domain.net and i know the juice isn't being passed through, but i was wondering if there is any reason why you may want a 302 over a 301 in this case? Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | KathleenDC0 -
Canonical Expert question!
Hello, I am looking for some help here with an estate agent property web site. I recently finished the MoZ crawling report and noticed that MoZ sees some pages as duplicate, mainly from pages which list properties as page 1,2,3 etc. Here is an example: http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/property-for-rent/london/houses?page=2
Technical SEO | | artdivision
http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/property-for-rent/london/houses?page=3 etc etc Now I know that the best practise says I should set a canonical url to this page:
http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/property-for-rent/london/houses?page=all but here is where my problem is. http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/property-for-rent/london/houses?page=1 contains good written content (around 750 words) before the listed properties are displayed while the "page=all" page do not have that content, only the properties listed. Also http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/property-for-rent/london/houses?page=1 is similar with the originally designed landing page http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/property-for-rent/london/houses I would like yoru advise as to what is the best way to can url this and sort the problem. My original thoughts were to can=url to this page http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/property-for-rent/london/houses instead of the "page=all" version but your opinion will be highly appreciated.0 -
NGINX 301 configuration - it is correct?
I'm totally not an expert in Technical Seo... but i am worry that my server admin neither is. Below is his vhost configuration, anyone can check this? it's this correct and SEO friendly? server { listen *:80; server_name domainaddress.pl domainaddress.com.pl; root /home/www/domainaddress.pl/web; index index.html index.htm key-words.php index.php index.cgi index.pl index.xhtml; location /key {
Technical SEO | | Nemo85
rewrite ^/key-words/$ http://domainaddress.pl/ permanent;
rewrite ^/key-words.php$ http://domainaddress.pl/ break;
} location / {
if ($http_host ~ "^www.domainaddress.pl"){
rewrite ^(.*)$ http://domainaddress.pl/$1 permanent;
} rewrite ^/key-words.php$ http://domainaddress.pl/ permanent;
} }0 -
Duplication, pagination and the canonical
Hi all, and thank you in advance for your assistance. We have an issue of paginated pages being seen as duplicates by pro.moz crawlers. The paginated pages do have duplicated by content, but are not duplicates of each other. Rather they pull through a summary of the product descriptions from other landing pages on the site. I was planing to use rel=canonical to deal with them, however I am concerned as the paginated pages are not identical to each other, but do feature their own set of duplicate content! We have a similar issue with pages that are not paginated but feature tabs that alter the URL parameters like so: ?st=BlueWidgets ?st=RedSocks ?st=Offers These are being seen as duplicates of the main URL, and again all feature duplicate content pulled from elsewhere in the site, but are not duplicates of each other. Would a canonical tag be suitable here? Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | .egg0 -
Canonical tag problem
Hello I'm newbie here i dont know very well about seo but i would like to ask your help? I'm running report about my website and on report I dont have canonical tag on my products. But if i check from on page report link by link it shows that I have canonical tag. At the same time if i check my pages code i can see below canonical tag codes? Do we use canonical tags wrong? What can cause this different information? Could you please help me? Is it important to use canonical tag beginning or end? I'm using now trial version and trying to understand report is correct what is my mistakes. Thanks in advance My code is
Technical SEO | | FRUTIKO0 -
Correct Implementation Of Canonical Tags
Hopefully this is an easy one to answer. When canonical tags are added to web pages should there be a canonical tag on a page that canonicalizes(?) (new word!?) back to itself. i.e. four page all point back to page Z. On page Z there is a canonical tag that points to page Z? My feeling without any technical know how is that this is just creating an infinite loop i.e. go to this page for original content, (repeat) Or this could be completely correct! Don't want to go back to the developer and point out the error if I'm wrong!
Technical SEO | | ZaddleMarketing0 -
Sharepoint CMS and rel= cannonical
I have a client that uses Sharepoint as their CMS and they are having a tough time getting cannonical tags to work on the website without breaking other items. Has anyone had a similar experience? Do you have any resources that could help? Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | HughesDigital0 -
Canonical Link Quesiton
I wrote an article that is a page article, but would also be a very good blog post - So my question is two things: 1. If i post it as a static page and syndicate it as a blog post and have it as a canonical link to the page, google will read see the blog and read the page _url as the one with credit correct? In turn not dinging me for duplicate content. 2. Given if the above statement is correct, should I write the blog and put it on my static page referencing the blog or the way i have it as a static page with the blog using a canonical reference back to the page. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | tgr0ss0