Not sure which URL to use for 301 redirect
-
A client has new website design completed by another developer, was launched in April of this year. No 301 redirect was set up so duplicate content is an issue.
Client has had a website with same domain name for about 10 years, but has not had any SEO work completed before or since his new site design.
For non-www there are 6 referring links - 1 considered to have authority, for www there are also 6 but 3 considered to have authority.
More links seem to coming from www than non-www.
But for one of the clients keywords they are ranked #1 for their area and that links to their non-www address.
And even though no redirects set up by developer, non-www has had far more visits according to Google Analytics.
So many basics that still need to be done for site: no meta-descriptions on any page, H1 and page titles could use keywords, call to action moved above fold, etc.
Considering this is a new site, and new SEO work and many more inbound links needed, does it matter which address I redirect to?
_Cindy Barnard
-
Not this time, but will keep it in mind.
Thanks again.
_Cindy
-
If you have a windows server i have a tutorial on how to do this.
http://perthseocompany.com.au/seo/tutorials/how-to-fix-canonical-domain-name-issues
-
Thank you!
_Cindy
-
Yes it would not be a concern. i would personaly like to ban www to save the internet billions of 301's
Sincerly yours
www.alan -
So at this point, without a lot of established inbound links, either URL would be OK?
I have heard arguments for using www and non-www. But no matter which one, having the redirect will change their rankings a bit?
_Cindy
-
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
-
How to Choose destination page for a 301 redirect?
I am doing some SEO for a wedding chapel in Vegas. There are some old packages that no longer exist and the bounce rate for the page is high so I am planning to 301 the page. How to best determine the best 301 destination? I have a few options. As an example the page was optimized for garden weddings. The page itself does not place well in the SERPS for garden weddings in Las Vegas, but our outdoor wedding packages in Las Vegas page places in the top 10. So that page is in an option. However, there is a different location that has a garden setting. Is that a better choice? Some content might match better than others, but any page I choose would be relevant content. Thank you so much 🙂
Technical SEO | | leslieevarts0 -
Using one domain for email and another domain for your website, but redirects...
Hello - We are rebranding and our new name is fairly lengthy. We own all main domain versions of our brand name - .com, .new and .org - There is a very high search volume for the new brand name as it is a merger of 2 popular existing brands so want to take advantage of that and use our full name within our website domain name. However, since the name is a little long as mentioned - 25 characters - we also own the 3 character acronym of the new brand so we are debating on using the acronym for our new email addresses. ie name@abc.com so it is user friendly. We would obviously redirect the acronym email domain to point to the longer website domain. Are there any negative SEO effects if we do that? Use the longer domain for the website and shorter acronym for our email? Thank you
Technical SEO | | KRBishopBh1 -
Which url should i use? Thanks!
I have a question regarding how to use my url, we are a Swedish-based website which have the url, http://interimslösning.se/ (that contains the Swedish letter “ö”) so the url can also be written as http://xn--interimslsning-3pb.se/. Which of the following url should I use for my backlinks, http://interimslösning.se/ or http://xn--interimslsning-3pb.se/ ? What is the difference between them regarding SEO? And is it good or bad to use letter like "ö" or other characters like that in your url? I was thinking that maybe it is good to use the letter "ö" for local search optimization in sweden, but i don't know.. Thanks in advance! Greetings,
Technical SEO | | Kiwibananlime
Paul Linderoth0 -
How best to fix 301 redirect problems
Hi all Wondering if anyone could help out with this one. Roger Bot crawler has just performed it's weekly error crawl on my site and I appear to have 18,613 temp redirect problems!! Rather, the same 1 problem 18,613 times. My site is a magento store and the errors it is giving me is due to the wishlist feature on the site. For example, it is trying to crawl links such as index.php/wishlist/index/add/product/29416/form_key/DBDSNAJOfP2YGgfW (which would normally add the item to one's wishlist). However, because Roger isn't logged into the website it means that all these requests are being sent to the login url with the page title of Please Enable Cookies. Would the best way to fix this be to enable wishlists for guests? I would rather not do that but cannot think of another way of fixing it. Any other Magento people come across this issue? Thanks, Carl
Technical SEO | | daedriccarl0 -
.htaccess Redirect 301 issues
I have completely rewritten my web site, adding structure to the file directories. Subsequently added was Redirect information within the .htaccess file. The following example ...
Technical SEO | | Cyberace
Redirect 301 /armaflex.html http://www.just-insulation.com/002-brands/armaflex.html
Returns this response in the URL bar of ...
http://www.just-insulation.com/002-brands/armaflex.html?file=armaflex
I am at a loss to understand why the suffix "?file=armaflex" is added The following code is inserted at the top of the file ...
RewriteEngine On redirect html pages to the root domain RewriteRule ^index.html$ / [NC,R,L] Force www. prefix in URLs and redirect non-www to www RewriteCond %{http_host} ^just-insulation.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.just-insulation.com/ [R=301,NC] Any advice would be most welcome.0 -
My Alexa ranking dropped after a 301 redirect is that bad?
I had all of my non www pages redirect to the www versions. My alexa ranking dropped and keeps dropping after I did this. I'm guessing its because its tracking the non www version. Does anyone know if this is correct and should I worry?
Technical SEO | | CandleCam0 -
Should I rename URLs to use hyphens instead of underscores?
Hello. We are about to launch a redesigned and significantly expanded site that has traditionally used underscores as separators between words in its URLs. Would you recommend replacing all the underscores with hyphens? That would then require many 301 redirects to maintain any links that might be out there. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | nyc-seo0 -
Help needed please with 301 redirects in htaccess file.
In summary, we're currently having issues with our htaccess file. 301 redirects are going through to the new described URL but in addition the new URL is followed by a ? and the old URL. How can we get rid of the ? and previous URL so they don't appear as an ending. None of the examples we've found re this issue online appear to work. Can anyone please offer some advice? Can we use a RewriteRule to stop this happening? Here's a summary of the htaccess file REDIRECT CODE BEGINS HERE LONG LIST OF REDIRECTS, which appear to be set up perfectly fine. REDIRECT CODE ENDS DirectoryIndex index.php <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On Options +FollowSymLinks
Technical SEO | | petersommertravels
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond $1 !^(images|system|themes|pdf|favicon.ico|robots.txt|index.php) [NC]
RewriteRule ^.htaccess$ - [F]
RewriteRule ^favicon.ico - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L]</ifmodule> DirectoryIndex index.php0