Considering redirecting or canonicalization - Best Practice
-
Hi,
I'm having a techinical problem and I would like advise on the effects this is having on my SEO efforts.
My old site www.oldsiteexample.com (live for about 8 years)
Directs to my new site www.example.com which is fine BUT
When I type me new website into the tool bar both sides are found & do not direct to one domain;
www.example.com & example.com (both the same site)
What is the best practice here? Direct my new non www to my new www site considering my old website directs to the www.
Advise & the SEO affects this is having my website would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
-
MJ, the challenge with that suggestion is it sounds like you are maintaining two websites. That solution would not work for any situation with UGC or any data which changes over time.
Even in cases where the pages were purely static content, a canonical tag would notify search engines of the page you wish to be indexed but not users.
-
A 301 will pass over the link equity also!
-
Also, Ryan is of course correct to say you can use the www. or non www. version - I just have a preference for www. because I think it looks neater!
-
I agree that a 301 is most certainly the best long term solution; however the canonical also provides an opportunity to send over some of the value to the new page/domain before you do that. Hence I usually implement the canonical for a month or two, then redirect. Especially when you're moving to a new domain, it's a good way to faze in the move over rather than going cold turkey, as it were.
If the site has over 600 pages, I'd pick the 50-100 most common landing pages (see Google Analytics) and transfer them. If 10 of the pages get 10000 visits each and the other 590 get 2 visits each, maybe just do the top ten. Hope that makes sense!
-
You can use the www or non-www version of your site. The important thing is to choose one version and remain consistent. It sounds like you prefer the "www" version which is a perfectly fine choice.
When given a choice between canonical or 301, the best practice is 301. Both work, but a 301 is preferred.
Two additional best practices:
1. I know it can be a lot of work but you really should redirect each page of the old site to the corresponding page on the new site. If you simply changed domains the 301 can be written with a single regex statement to replace "oldsiteexample.com" with "example.com"
2. Check your existing 301s on the old site and adjust them to directly point to the new site. You want to avoid any instances where a user has to hop through multiple 301s to arrive at a target page.
-
cheers for the advise. a) I'm looking to transfer the value from my old domain to my new one.
The site has over 600 pages, It wouldn't really be ideal for me to put canonical tags on each of the old pages to the relevant new pages. (can this be done automatically?)
B) Yes I was looking for advise on the new site and which domain should be the main ie: the www (I'll go with the www considering my old site directs to the www)
-
P.S. for got b) !! If it's b), I always redirect to the www. page. You can set that in webmaster tools and also do server side redirects.
-
Not 100% sure what you're asking - do you want to a) transfer value from an old domain to a new domain? Or b) do you want to know whether you should redirect non-www. URLs to the www. equivalent?
If it's a), I'd keep the old site live for a couple of months and set up canonical tags on each page and point them towards the most relevant page on the new site. Leave that to sink in for a couple of months, then I'd 301 pages on the old site to the new site (to the same pages you'd pointed them at with the canonical tag). Leave the 301s in place for at least 180 days, after that you can kill the old site altogether.
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 Redirect Question
I am working with a website and I ran a Screaming Frog and noticed there are 4,600 301's on the website (www.srishoes.com). It seems like the issue is between the www. and without it and they aren't working together. Is this something that the website provider should update and what type of impact might this have on the site? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | ReunionMarketing
Matt0 -
What is the best way to redirect visitors to certain pages of your site based on their location?
One website I manage wants to redirect users to state specific pages based on their location. What is the best way to accomplish this? For example a user enters the through site.com but they are in Colorado so we want to direct them to site.com/colorado.
Technical SEO | | Firestarter-SEO0 -
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 -
Are these redirects damaging my rankings
Hi, just been going through my google webmaster tools and i have found a number of soft 404 errors and was shocked to see these redirects going to my home page. | URL | Response Code | Detected |
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
| --- | --- | --- |<colgroup><col style="width: 45px;"><col style="width: 80px;"><col><col style="width: 120px;"><col style="width: 90px;"></colgroup>
| | 1 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/475-gastric-band-hypnotherapy-expert-says-government-are-not-doing-enough-to-fight-obesity | | 7/25/13 |
| | 2 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1068-coronation-street-nick-proposes-to-leanne | | 7/28/13 |
| | 3 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1086-coronation-street-fiz-nearly-gets-tyrone-in-trouble-with-kirsty | | 7/28/13 |
| | 4 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1155-coronation-street-kylie-considers-telling-david-about-her-affair | | 7/28/13 |
| | 5 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1157-coronation-street-fiz-is-worried-when-kirsty-pays-her-a-visit | | 7/28/13 |
| | 6 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/750-actress-hilary-duff-is-sued-over-car-accident | | 7/25/13 |
| | 7 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/843-what-your-dogs-bottom-scooting-behaviour%E2%80%99-really-meansI would have thought that the developer who upgraded my site would have either had these blocked or directed them to the correct page. i am now guessing that there are going to be hundreds of these appearing and would like some serious advice.normally with old pages i would have them going to the relevant articles or pages but it seems the developer has redirected hundreds of these to my home page, which i guess is going to confuse google. i would like to know if this will confuse google have all these pages going to my home page.i have tried to find out where the developer in my site has redirected the pages as they are not in my htaccess file, i use joomla.can anyone let me know what i should be doing with these to solve the problemmany thanks |0 -
301 redirect of a subdirectory
Hello! I am working on a website with the following structure: example.com/sub1/sub2/sub3. The page "example.com/sub1" does not exist (I know this is not the optimal architecture to have this be a nonexistent page). But someone might type that address, so I would like it to redirect it to example.com/sub1/sub2/sub3. I tried the following redirect: redirect 301 /sub1 http://example.com/sub1/sub2/sub3. But with this redirect in place, if I go to example.com/sub1, I get redirected to example.com/sub1/sub2/sub3/sub2/sub3 (the redirect just inserts extra subdirectories). If someone types "example.com/sub1" into a browser, I would "example.com/sub1/sub2/sub3" to come up. Is this possible? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | nyc-seo0 -
301 redirects and seo..
I bought a domain and it has nice traffic. It only has about 5 main pages in php When i got the site i switched to html because php was overkill. I did the 301 and google deleted the php files and replaced with html version when i check site:domain.com It has been about 7 days. I DID NOT use 301 for each of the 5 pages to go php to html instead is used this code RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | samerk
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com
RewriteRule (.) http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RedirectMatch 301 (.).php$ http://www.mydomain.com$1.html So basically if you load php it will load the html version. dog.php > dog.html Is this OKAY? or should it be done differently.... worried! Thanks !0 -
301 redirect
Hi All, I have just completed a 301 redirect on my site http://www.klinehimalaya.com and I was just starting a new campaign on SEOmoz and I got this message: Roger has detected a problem:
Technical SEO | | gorillakid
We have detected that the domain www.klinehimalaya.com and the domain klinehimalaya.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here. My only other question, is my .htaccess codeing correct and how long will it take to show it is correct in SEOmoz and online? All ".htaccess" code: AddHandler php-stable .php
**_Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] RewriteRule (.*).html$ /$1.php [R=301,L]_** Lastly, I have recently changed all of my files from .html to .php is this going to hurt my SEO and is the code "RewriteRule (.*).html$ /$1.php [R=301,L]" going to fix the issue by redirecting the .html links to the .php pages? Any suggestions or help appreciated. Paul.0 -
What is the best practice to handle duplicate content?
I have several large sections that SEOMOZ is indicating has duplicate content, even though the content is not identical. For example: Leather Passport Section - Leather Passports - Black - Leather Passposts - Blue - Leather Passports - Tan - Etc. Each of the items has good content, but it is identical, since they are the same products. What is the best practice here: 1. Have only one product with a drop down (fear is that this is not best for the customer) 2. Make up content to have them sound different? 3. Put a do-no-follow on the passport section? 4. Use a rel canonical even though the sections are technically not identical? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0