Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Vanity / Short URLs 301?
-
Hi everyone,
I'm working on a website that uses a lot of short urls eg http://www.forest.com/oaktrees. A quick check reveals these are currently 302 status.
My question is should these be made 301s - a lot of them are in off-page content and looking at GA attract a lot of clicks.
I've not managed to see a definitive answer to this after several Google searches. All help and advice greatly appreciated.
Bw
Jon
-
Thanks Kristina,
Great - thanks for clarifying, that's the exact explanation I was looking for. Good news for a wide collection of URLs
Best ,
Jon
-
Hi Jon,
You should 301 redirect (you should rarely to never 302 redirect) all vanity URLs to the URL that you want to rank organically.
A 302 redirect is a temporary one, so it's telling search engines that the vanity URL is the real URL for the page, but it's under construction/temporarily broken/being revamped, so you have to send visitors to another page, just for now. A 301 redirect tells search engines that the vanity URL is just a vanity URL and that the search engine should index the URL that the vanity URL is leading to.
SEOmoz has a pretty good explanation of it all: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection.
Best,
Kristina
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
-
Sudden Indexation of "Index of /wp-content/uploads/"
Hi all, I have suddenly noticed a massive jump in indexed pages. After performing a "site:" search, it was revealed that the sudden jump was due to the indexation of many pages beginning with the serp title "Index of /wp-content/uploads/" for many uploaded pieces of content & plugins. This has appeared approximately one month after switching to https. I have also noticed a decline in Bing rankings. Does anyone know what is causing/how to fix this? To be clear, these pages are **not **normal /wp-content/uploads/ but rather "index of" pages, being included in Google. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
301 Redirects, Sitemaps and Indexing - How to hide redirected urls from search engines?
We have several pages in our site like this one, http://www.spectralink.com/solutions, which redirect to deeper page, http://www.spectralink.com/solutions/work-smarter-not-harder. Both urls are listed in the sitemap and both pages are being indexed. Should we remove those redirecting pages from the site map? Should we prevent the redirecting url from being indexed? If so, what's the best way to do that?
Technical SEO | | HeroDesignStudio0 -
Exact Match Domain & Title Tag / URL
I currently own an exact match domain for my keyword. I have it set up with multiple pages and also a blog. The home page essentially serves as a hub and contains links to all the pages and the blog. My targeted keyword is on its own page and I made the title tag the same as my keyword. As an example the URL for my targeted post looks like this: benefitsofrunningshoes.com/benefits-of-running-shoes I have solid, non-spammy content and clean whitehat earned backlinks directing to that specific page. My concern right now is that the URL looks kinda spammy. The website has been live for about a week and the home page ranks well enough but my targeted page is no where to be found. (it does show up if I manually search via search command "site:benefitsofrunningshoes.com"). I'm wondering if it is acceptable to use the exact keyword in title tag / page url if it is also in the domain as an EMD? Should I change the title tag and leave the URL in? Or should I completely change the title tag and URL and 301 redirect to the new page? I appreciate any help!
Technical SEO | | Kusanagi170 -
How do I deindex url parameters
Google indexed a bunch of our URL parameters. I'm worried about duplicate content. I used the URL parameter tool in webmaster to set it so future parameters don't get indexed. What can I do to remove the ones that have already been indexed? For example, Site.com/products and site.com/products?campaign=email have both been indexed as separate pages even though they are the same page. If I use a no index I'm worried about de indexing the product page. What can I do to just deindexed the URL parameter version? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | BT20090 -
How does Google find /feed/ at the end of all pages on my site?
Hi! In Google Webmaster Tools I find *.../feed/ as a 404 page in crawl errors. The problem is that none of these pages exist and they have no inbound links (except the start page). FYI, it´s a wordpress site. Example: www.mysite.com/subpage1/feed/ www.mysite.com/subpage2/feed/ www.mysite.com/subpage3/feed/ etc Does Google search for /feed/ by default or why do I keep getting these 404´s every day?
Technical SEO | | Vivamedia0 -
OK to block /js/ folder using robots.txt?
I know Matt Cutts suggestions we allow bots to crawl css and javascript folders (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNEipHjsEPU) But what if you have lots and lots of JS and you dont want to waste precious crawl resources? Also, as we update and improve the javascript on our site, we iterate the version number ?v=1.1... 1.2... 1.3... etc. And the legacy versions show up in Google Webmaster Tools as 404s. For example: http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/global_functions.js?v=1.1
Technical SEO | | AndreVanKets
http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/jquery.cookie.js?v=1.1
http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/global.js?v=1.2
http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/jquery.validate.min.js?v=1.1
http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/json2.js?v=1.1 Wouldn't it just be easier to prevent Googlebot from crawling the js folder altogether? Isn't that what robots.txt was made for? Just to be clear - we are NOT doing any sneaky redirects or other dodgy javascript hacks. We're just trying to power our content and UX elegantly with javascript. What do you guys say: Obey Matt? Or run the javascript gauntlet?0 -
Video Sitemaps <video:content_loc>and<video:player_loc></video:player_loc></video:content_loc>
Hi guys, If I'm creating a video sitemap do I need to use both: video:content_locandvideo:player_loc</video:player_loc></video:content_loc> Or could I just use video:content_loc?</video:content_loc> Thanks
Technical SEO | | Tug-Agency0 -
Redirecting blog.<mydomain>.com to www.<mydomain>.com\blog</mydomain></mydomain>
This is more of a technical question than pure SEO per se, but I am guessing that some folks here may have covered this and so I would appreciate any questions. I am moving from a WordPress.com-based blog (hosted on WordPress) to a WordPress installation on my own server (as suggested by folks in another thread here). As part of this I want to move from the format blog.<mydomain>.com to www.mydomain.com\blog. I have installed WordPress on my server and have imported posts from the hosted site to my own server. How should I manage the transition from first format to the second? I have a bunch of links on Facebook, etc that refer to URLs of the blog..com format so it's important that I redirect.</mydomain> I am running DotNetNuke/WordPress on my own IIS/ASP.Net servers. Thanks. Mark
Technical SEO | | MarkWill0
