Difference between URL Rewrites and 301 Redirects for Rankings
-
What is the difference between URL rewriting and 301 redirects? Specifically if my home page is rewriting the www. version and the /index.html version rather than 301 redirecting them is this equivalent? Does it still pass the link juice on those alternate variations the same way a 301 redirect will?
-
301 will pass link juice all day long my friend. URL rewrite... not so much.
-
Thanks Todd,
This doesn't quite answer my question though when it comes to passing the link juice from my alternate home pages to the version I would like to use
-
Hey Chris,
that is an excellent question. However, it is one with a lot of answers... in short:
1. A 301 should only be used when a page has been moved or deleted.
2. A url redirect should be used in the case of multiple instances, like your homepage. The only thing it does is rewrite your url to make it nice to read
And gives the search engines a nice hint that the version you are re-writing to is the one you want associated with your domain.
I know this answer is short, but I hope it suffices.
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
-
Maintaining Link Value Of Old URLS With 301 Redirects
Large ecommerce site that has been around for a long time (15+ years.) During that time technology has changed a lot and we are running into issues maintaining 301 redirects for very old urls. For example we have a good amount of links to product and category pages. Some of the old links are to products that still exist and will exist for many years to come.(of note little to no traffic comes via these links. Most of them are close to 9 years old so they are buried deep within articles, forums, or websites) However as we make changes to the site and URL structure these old urls are taking up more resources to continue to maintain 301 redirects. I am Leary of no longer supporting them because I do not want it to impact rankings however there is concern on how much development time and technology resources it takes to continue to support as time goes on. Does anyone have experience handling redirects 3 or 4 url structures old? Looking for insight from someone who has crossed this bridge before.
Technical SEO | | RMATVMC0 -
Can new content be added to a url which has a 301 redirect?
I am working on a site which is currently being redesigned. The home page currently ranks highly for relevant search terms, although on the new site the content on this page will be removed. The solution I was considering, to preserve rankings, was to move the content on the home page to a new url, and use a 301 redirect to help preserve rankings for that particular page. The question I have therefore, is am I able to add new content to the home page, and have this page freshly indexed accordingly? Any thoughts or suggestions would be most welcome. Thanks, Matt.
Technical SEO | | MatthewA0 -
301 redirects - one overall redirect or an individual one for each page url
Hi I am working on a site that is to relaunch later on this year - is best practise for the old urls (of which there are thousands) to write a piece of code that will cover all of the urls and redirect them to the new home page or to individually redirect each url to its new counterpart on the new site. I am naturally concerned about user experience on this plus losing our Google love we currently have but am aware of the time it would take to do this individually. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Pday1 -
301 redirect + new website copy
Hi There, We are currently redeveloping our website and we're rewriting and optimising our many of our service pages. I think I may already know the answer but should we apply 301 redirects from our old services pages to the new versions? The content subject matter will be the same on the new versions, they will just be completely reworded. I would be interested to hear your views. Thanks, Stu
Technical SEO | | Stuart260 -
301 redirects
Hello. Our site was recently rebuilt, and we switched from using index.php in all the urls to not using it at all. We also changed the names of many of our pages. So the urls have been renamed from "example.com/index.php/old_page_name/" to "example.com/new-page-name/". While we were at it, we changed from "_" to "-" as our word separators in the urls. In the .htaccess file, we have a small block of code that strips out "index.php/" from all requests. This code redirects a request for "example.com/index.php/old_page_name/" to "example.com/old_page_name/" For your information, the code that strips out "index.php/" is: RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET.index.php [NC]
Technical SEO | | nyc-seo
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} !/uSZWTLna/.
RewriteRule (.?)index.php/(.*) /$1$2 [R=301,L] Then we have 301 redirects from "example.com/old_page_name/" to "example.com/new-page-name/" QUESTION 1: Is this two-step redirect approach okay, or would it be better to skip the separate index.php stripping code and simply have 301 redirects that include "index.php" in the urls? QUESTION 2: Will we lose some of the benefit of the links that have to pass through a 301 redirect? QUESTION 3: We have 50 or so redirects. Will this affect performance of the site? How many redirects does it take to start affecting performance? Thank you!0 -
.EDU via a 301 Redirect?
I recently received a link to my website from an .edu. However, the way they configured it was they pointed the link to one of their internal pages and then made that page 301 to my website. Is there anyway to gain any link juice from that sort of link?
Technical SEO | | gundogs0 -
Someone is redirecting their url to mine
Hello, I have just discovered that a company in Poland www.realpilot.pl is directing their domain to ours www.transair.co.uk. We have not authorised this, neither do we want this. I have contacted the company and the webmaster to get it removed. If you search for the domain name www.realpilot.pl we (www.transair.co.uk) come up top. My biggest worry is that we will get penalised by Google for this re-direct as it appears to be done using some kind of frame. Does anyone know anything about this kind of thing? Many Thanks Rob Martin
Technical SEO | | brightonseorob0 -
301 Redirects - SEO Benefit?
Hello, Years ago, our company started out as a Yahoo store. We've since moved onto another website with its own shopping cart but since the Yahoo store is almost 10 years old, there's a lot of history there and it still exists with the occasional order. We currently use it for reputation management purposes with links to our real ecommerce site but we're thinking of just redirecting the Yahoo store to our ecommerce site. Is there any SEO benefit in doing this? We were also kind of penalized by Panda. Would this help us out at all (the descriptions on both sites could be considered duplicate content).
Technical SEO | | airnwater0