200 Redirects for SEO instead of 301
-
We are working with a company on re-platforming our website. On a call yesterday they outlined a strategy to use 200 redirects for our top keywords instead of 301s. I am not familiar with this type of redirect and was wondering if anyone could provide some more insight.
-
Mag and Ryan, thanks for the replies. That is what I thought as well when they brought this all up. I did some research and didn't find anything. I thought maybe I missed something and there was some new, better way to keep rank when changing URLs.
-
Magento is correct.
200 is the normal response given for a web page. It is the equivalent of you dialing a phone number and the other person answering.
301 is the normal method to redirect a user to a different page. It is the equivalent of call forwarding. Basically you are saying "hey, I know which resource you are looking for, it has moved, let me take you to it."
-
This question is not clear. Are you saying http code 200 or quantity 200? There is nothing called a 200 redirect. A http code 200 is normal. 301s are an 'old' URL pointing to a new URL. A blog post beautifully demonstrated this yesterday. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-seos-guide-to-http-status-codes
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
-
Ranking for non-existing content which is 301 redirected
Hey there, In the beginning of this year I've made complete site migration from Dutch language to English. All the old Dutch URL's were 301 redirected to the English versions. I naturally lost rankings for all Dutch keywords during the next month. On the website there is no Dutch content anymore. But what happened now is that five months later the website started to rank for the Dutch keywords again. The page snippets in SERP are in English but the URL's shown are in Dutch (ending with .nl) and whenever a user clicks on the snippet he/she gets 301 to the correct English version. Any ideas what could be the reason for re-ranking of non-existing pages which gets 301 in SERP?
Technical SEO | | benesmartin0 -
Missing 301 redirects
I just had a developer friend call me in a panic, because they had gone live with a new site and found out (the hard way) that they had missed some pages on their 301 redirects. So the pages are appearing in Google but serving 404s. Ouch! So their question was: other than running a report for 404 errors in something like Screaming Frog, is there a way to hunt down ONLY pages serving 404s, then export to CSV so they can be redirected? Anyone got any tricks up their sleeve?
Technical SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
Migration to New Domain - 301 Redirect Questions
My client is migrating their site to a new domain. I just did a big redesign, including URL structure change, and 301s from old URLs to new URLs. Now they want a new name, so we're moving forward with a new domain name. However, we're going to keep the site on the current domain while we ease customers into the new name. During that time, I'm going to be building links to the new domain name and 301 Redirecting that new one to the current domain name. Then, once we migrate the site to the new domain name, I'm then going to redirect the current domain name to the new domain name. So, my question(s) is/are: Is the above process the best way to use 301 redirects to to build links to the new domain while we transition everything? Should I (or can I) do 3 redirects from the oldest URLs, to the current URLs then to the new URLs? General question... I can't seem to find this anywhere online, but what is the best practice for what order URLs should be in in the htaccess file? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Kenny-King0 -
CNAME vs 301 redirect
Hi all, Recently I created a website for a new client and my next job is trying to get them higher in Google. I added them in OSE and noticed some strange backlinks. To my surprise the client has about 20 domain names. All automatically poiting to (showing) the same new mainsite now. www.maindomain.nl www.maindomain.be
Technical SEO | | Houdoe
www.maindomain.eu
www.maindomain.com
www.otherdomain.nl
www.otherdomain.com
... Some of these domains have backlinks too (but not so much). I suggested to 301 redirect them all to the main site. Just to avoid duplicate content. But now the webhoster comes into play: "It's a problem, client has only 1 hosting account, blablabla...". They told me they could CNAME the 20 domains to the main domain. Or A-record them to an IP address. This is too technical stuff for me. So my concrete questions are: Is it smart to do anything at all or am I just harming my client? The main site is ranking pretty well now. And some backlinks are from their copy sites (probably because everywhere the logo links to the full mainsite url). Does the CNAME or A-record solution has the same effect as a 301 redirect, from SEO perspective? Many thanks,
Hans0 -
Best practice for eCommerce site migration, should I 301 redirect or match URLs on new site
Hi Guys, I have been struggling with this one for quite some time. I am no SEO expert like many of you, rather just a small business owner trying to do the right thing, so forgive me if I say something that makes no sense 🙂 I am moving our eCommerce store from one platform to another, in the process the store is getting a massive face lift. The part I am struggling with is whether I should keep my existing URL structure in place or use 301 redirects to create a cleaner looking URLs. Currently the URLs are a little long and I would love to move to a /category/product_name type format. Of course the goal is not to lose ranking in the process, I rank pretty well for several competitive phrases and do not want to create a negative impact. How would you guys handle this? Thanks, Dinesh
Technical SEO | | MyFairyTaleBooks0 -
260k 301 redirects
Hello, I just found that some of the urls on my site have both ugly characters and some other things I'd like to fix (such as ---- into a single - ) After some local tests i've seen that If i leave some imperfections there will be 48k different urls on the other hand if the renaming procedure is strict i'll have around 260k out of 2.3M urls to be renamed. If I'm going to do this I'll create new canonicals meta tag and redirect old urls with 301 headers to the new location. The content will not change. My big doubt is SEO wise, I know that I'll have better urls, but aren't those too much redirects on a single day? what would you do if you wish to have shipshape urls and know some of these are crap? thanks
Technical SEO | | mylittlepwny0 -
How to create a delayed 301 redirect that still passes juice?
My company is merging one of our sites into another site. At first I was just going to create a 301 redirect from domainA.com to domainB.com but we decided that would be too confusing for customers expecting to see domainA.com so we want to create a page that says something like "We've moved. please visit domainB.com or be redirected after 10 seconds". My question is, how do I create a redirect that has a delay and will this still pass the same amount of juice that a regular 301 redirect would? I've heard that meta refreshes are considered spammy by Google.
Technical SEO | | bewoldt0 -
Domain redirect seo
Hello, my domain www.pacomarca.com and when i start the new campaing i get this pronblem: We have detected that the domain www.pacomarca.com and the domain pacomarca.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 domain is in networksolutions.com. how can i resolve it? many thanks Gonzalo
Technical SEO | | Kuna0