To 301 Redirect or NOT?
-
Hi,
This site has been so helpful in receiving not only answers to my questions but explanations too. With so many opinions and motives on the internet explanations help one to decide in which way to go. Here is my dilimna, as always, all input is welcome and very appreciated!
I have a site that has more links to www.domain.com and less to http://domain.com , however, for our local search and I do not know why - our http://domain.com has better position in search engines and (www.domain.com has way more links) Is there any reason for this?
However, in generic term, (no locality mentined) our www.domain.com shows up in the results.
My site is hosted on Yahoo webhositng which does not allow for .htaccess 301 redirects, someone on this board was really nice and has alerted me to Godaddy (my domain is hosted there) and introduced me to a DNS 301. I called Godaddy and they said it would be possible, and also told me that I would lose all my email with Yahoo. I have managed to backup the email and am leaning towards the Godaddy- DNS redirect, just wanted to know if I would see a big difference in SEO.
Links (different root domains) currently - http://domain.com 55, www.domain.com 1000 plus.
Thanks for any input, if amnyone knows.
-
Thanks Zach, did it and it works!
-
Thanks for the insight Zach.
- Jimmy
-
I would probably 301 the non-www version of your domain to the www version. This is your best bet becasuse if you don't already, you may have duplicate content issues arise in the future. Godaddy's DNS 301 works fine, i've used it before with no adverse effect.
What I would then do in Google Webmaster Tools is verify both domains, and specify the www version of the domain as the preferred version. This should solve the issues your having.
If you have any more questions i'd be glad to help.
Zach Russell
President, ProTech Internet Group
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
-
Big drop in organic traffic after moving the website-should we still do 301 redirects?
Hi,
Reporting & Analytics | | martin1970
We have a website that got redesigned with new urls in Jan 31, 2018. Since then our SEO traffic has gone down big time and to never recover. We did not do any 301 redirects back then (very stupid I know but I was not in charge then). So my question is would it be beneficial to 301 redirect old urls that were once ranked but now have all 404 errors or is it too late to do these 301 to gain any benefits? If a page that was once ranked and then have a 404 error, how long does google keep that 404 page in their database? I have heard information saying that although the page is a 404 it may still be indexed in their backend for some time and then it completely drops off all together. If so do you know how long time they would keep those 404 in their database? The old urls may have had good backlinks pointed to them because the organic traffic was good back then. So I wonder if doing 301 right now would help send some link juice over to the new urls? Or would this be a complete waste of time? Cheers Martin1 -
Tracking 301 redirect traffic in Google Analytics
if I 301 redirect www.mywebsite.com to go to www.yourwebsite.com, how can I track the traffic in Google Analytics that is coming from mywebsite.com?? I don't think that's a referral traffic, is it?
Reporting & Analytics | | Armen-SEO0 -
Main Website Redirects to Mobile Website, Mobile Website counts this as direct traffic, is there a way to tell what the source/medium is?
Hello, The situation is that someone is arriving on my main website https://www.example.com and being redirected to http://m.example.com. When this happens my analytics says that the traffic is all direct coming to my mobile site. However, I know people clicking on my google cpc, and some google organic users are hitting the main website and being redirected. Before we didn't have as good of a redirect on our main website so I could tell organic and cpc traffic coming in, now my main website has a huge drop in these categories because they are redirecting to mobile but I can't tell on my mobile how much traffic from each is going to the mobile site. Is there a way to fix this? Is it because my main website is https:// and mobile is a http:// (as I know that sometimes makes traffic direct) or is it a bigger problem that can't be resolved? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | oxfordseminars0 -
How can I redirect incoming links from an old version of my site ending in .ctlg and .ivnu?
My original site was published in 2001 using "version 2" software from Ivenue, the hosting company that I signed up with at that time. The site's structure was built in such a way that the primary category pages ended in the extension .ivnu. Product or item pages on the shopping cart side ended in the extension .ctlg. My site's name was and is [Lamplight Feather, Inc.](<a class="webkit-html-attribute-value webkit-html-external-link" href="http://www.tonyhill.net/" target="_blank">http://www.tonyhill.net/</a>). We built our business between 2001 and 2011 and by the last three years (2009 - 2011) of using their version two were averaging a million dollars per year in gross sales. We decided to "upgrade" to Ivenue's "version 3" in 2011 to take advantage of some more modern options and because their newer software created web pages ending in .html which we thought more desirable. We made the switch in late 2011. But it was a disaster. Traffic and sales dropped precipitously. For the past two years (2012-2013) our annual gross sales average dropped to $400,000. (Two other factors were involved beside losing the many incoming links and link juice we had built up over the years: Panda came in that fall and my little niche market (decorative feathers) was flooded with competitors.) However as I try to rebuild our traffic and business little by little, I am stumped as to how to redirect the many incoming links that went to our first site's .ivnu and .ctlg pages. I have constructed redirects for some of our current but changed .html pages like this and put them in the file cabinet and they work: For (example): http://www.tonyhill.net/feathers_c384589.html then But trying the same thing for (example) http://www.tonyhill.net/craftfeathers.ivnu still returns a 404. Is there something I am missing. Ivenue is useless in this matter by the way. Their "technicians" are no help. I plan to be migrating my site once again to a new hosting company and hope to solve this problem before then. Thanks for the attention, Tony Hill This is an example from Google Webmaster of the type of links that show up as 404's that I would like to redirect: | URL: | http://www.tonyhill.net/productCat96521.ctlg | | | Error details | Linked from | | <colgroup><col></colgroup>
Reporting & Analytics | | featherman
| http://www.tonyhill.net/productCat43986.ctlg |
| http://forum.muppetcentral.com/showthread.php?t=21416&page=2 |
| http://www.cosplay.com/showthread.php?p=3832751 |
| http://forum.muppetcentral.com/showthread.php?t=21416&page=2&highlight=fur |
| http://www.muppetcentral.com/forum/threads/puppeteers-resources-links.19330/page-2 |
| http://www.muppetcentral.com/forum/threads/how-do-you-like-my-puppets.18549/page-2 | | | | |0 -
What type of links/redirect is Yahoo! using?
So I'm trying to figure out exactly what type redirect or hyperlinking Yahoo! is using on their article pages. For example:
Reporting & Analytics | | William.Lau
https://shopping.yahoo.com/blogs/fashionate/spring-clean-your-beauty-routine--10-tips-on-looking-fresh-this-season-000058218.html Hover over an external link, it shows you the ending URL. Right or left click it, it gives you a 302 redirect. When you actually left click it, it adds and "id" attribute, I assume for tracking. However, when you left click the the hyperlink, it no longer shows as a 302. I have limited working knowledge of web development techniques, so anyone with advance knowledge or have actually done this, it'd be helpful to understand this more.0 -
Domain redirect for direct mail (source) tracking in Analytics?
We have a client that would like to do some direct mail marketing and the plan is to use a short/simple domain in the marketing materials, which redirects to the main site domain. By default this would show as a referral traffic source in Analytics, right? So any traffic that came through that redirect would be attributed to "shortdomain.com / referral"? Meaning I wouldn't need to do any sort of customized, advanced tracking set up to track conversions that I've already set up (ecomm and goals) and attribute them to this new source? Just double checking that I'm not overlooking something. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | VTDesignWorks0 -
Godaddy 301 redirect
Hi, Happy Holidays to all! Although, this is not Thanksgiving, I am very thankful for becoming a member of this site. I ahve learned so much. Here is yet another question hping to have answered by the pundits of this SEOMOZ: I have a site built on site builder and hosted on Yahoo Hosting which does not allow 301 Redirects; I was fortunate enough to have someone help opn this site explain to me how to use Godaddy (they are my domain provide) to 301 through forwarding, work great! My http://domain.com now directs to www.domain.com , the only problem I am having now is, on :sitebuilder" the index page is classified as index.html, thus providing duplicate content again. Can you do two redirects through Godaddy? In othert words, my http://domain.com/ goes to www.domain.com/ eliminating duplicent content, but now I have another URL - http:..domain.com/index.html how do i get rid of that to prevent dup content. Any feed back would be great, Happy Holidays! Jimmy
Reporting & Analytics | | jimmy02250 -
Google Analytics: Do url redirects show up
Good Morning from 6 degrees c mostly cloudy wetherby UK 🙂 A redirect has been set up with the effect that when you key in www.hyload.co.uk it forwards to www.ikogroup.co.uk My question is please...within Google analytics will referall traffic from www.hyload.co.uk show up in referral traffic or because its a redirect will it be counted as direct traffic. Thanks in advance, David
Reporting & Analytics | | Nightwing0