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.
301 or 302 Redirects with locale URLs?
-
Hi Mozers,
I have a bit of a tricky question I need some help answering. My agency are building a brand new website for a client of ours which means changing the domain name (yay...). So! I have my 301's all ready to go for the UK locale, however, the issue I have is that the site will also eventually have French, German and Spanish locales - but these won't be ready to go until later this year. We will be launching in just English for September. The current site already has the French and German locales on it as well.
Just to make sure I'm being clear, the site will be www.example.com for launch, but by lets say November, we will also have a www.example.com/fr/ and www.example.com/de/ site launched too.
So what do I do with the locale URLs? As I said above, the exisitng site already has the French and German locales on it, so I don't particularly want to redirect the /fr/ and /de/ URLs to the English homepage, as I will want to redirect them to the new URLs in November, and redirecting more than once is bad for SEO right?
Any ideas? Would 302s maybe be the best suggestion?
Thanks!
Virginia
-
Thanks Greg. Yeah, I didn't really want to go down the 302 route, it makes everything so much more time sensitive!
-
Thanks Rob!
I'm trying to encourage my client as much as possible to start work on the translations of the sites ASAP so that we don't end up going down the Google Translate route. I've advised against this already.
Your advise has been really helpful!
Thanks
-
Hi Virginia,
In all honesty, it's probably not going to matter very much which kind of redirect you are using. If I understand you correctly, your current redirect chain will look like:
www.example.com --> www.example2.com
www.example.com/fr --> www.example2.com
www.example.com/de --> www.example2.comThe reason redirects won't matter is that in November your second French, Dutch, etc. sites are going live. The redirects will have to be changed in November to look more like this:
www.example.com --> www.example2.com
www.example.com/fr --> www.example2.com/fr
www.example.com/de --> www.example2.com/deGiven that there is a maximum of 6-8 weeks when these redirects will be active, Google will barely have time to index them before you are changing your redirect chain all over again. In my books, that makes these redirects somewhat redundant - either way you are going to have some SEO changes occurring during that time which will probably be in a downward direction. That being said, you will want to finish up with 301 redirects since that will be the permanent fix.
However, once the new redirects are placed and indexed, you should see things return to normal and even improve if the new sites are featuring good UX. Keep in mind that any redirect is going to hurt your link profile a little bit, so you can expect to lose some rankings once your redirects are indexed.
Bottom line:
- Focus on ensuring the new sites are well put-together with good content
- Make sure proper translations are taken care of (this is a HUGE problem with multi-lingual sites)
- Try to avoid Google Translate plugin for translation services (doesn't sound like this is what you're doing)
- More importance should be placed on the UX of the site and the link profile impacts of 301 redirects
- Make sure 301 redirects are what you finish up with after the new sites go live in November
Feel free to reach out if I can be of more assistance.
Cheers,
Rob
-
Also, I understand your confusion in 301 vs 302. I mean essentially, your redirect is temporary. But 302 redirects are meant more so for short time periods, probably with a month being the max amount of time you would want to do this. You'll want to use a 301 to maintain linking power. There's no harm in doing so and then replacing it later.
-
You would remove the old 301 redirect from www.example.com/fr/ to www.example.com and add a new one from www.example.com/fr/ to www.example2.com/fr/ , then force a recrawl on your site.
-
But what will happen when I have to 301 again? Currently, I will have to redirect from www.example.com/fr/ to my new English only site which is www.example.com. But then in 3 months time, I will have a www.example2.com/fr/. So I want my old www.example.com/fr/ to redirect to my new www.example2.com/fr/ website. So how would that work?
-
Personally I think a 301 redirect would be the best.
-
I reckon you must use 301 as it seems like you're moving your sites permanently so there is no point to have 302 at all.
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
-
Do old backlinks still help with new URL with 301 redirect? Also I added the www. How does this affect it all?
I changed my URL from exampledetailing. com to exampleautodetailing. com. It is redirected with a 301. Also, it is on Squarespace AND I opted to add the www. So will the old backlinks of exampledetailing. com still help the new URL exampleautodetailing. com or do I need to try and update all the links? Also, future links, do I need to include the www. or just the root domain of exampleautodetailing. com or even the whole https://wwwexampleautodetailing. com? I believe the www is considered a sub domain and a new entity on Google, so I am not sure how that works. Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | Rmarkjr810 -
Should I avoid duplicate url keywords?
I'm curious to know Can having a keyword repeat in the URL cause any penalties ? For example xyzroofing.com xyzroofing.com/commercial-roofing xyzroofing.com/roofing-repairs My competitors with the highest rankings seem to be doing it without any trouble but I'm wondering if there is a better way. Also One of the problems I've noticed is that my /commercial-roofing page outranks my homepage for both residential and commercial search inquiries. How can this be straightened out?
Local Website Optimization | | Lyontups0 -
I want to rank a national home page for a local keyword phrase
Hello - We are a nationally available brand based in Denver, CO. Our home page currently ranks #8 (used to be 5) for "real estate photography in Denver" -- I want to improve this ranking, but our home page is generalized and not geared toward Denver, CO but to all of our markets. I'm trying to troubleshoot this and have a few ideas.... I would love advice on the best route, or a different route altogether: Create a Denver-specific page -- _will that page compete with my home page that is already ranked in the top ten? _ Add the keyword phrase in the image alt attribute Add keyword phrase into the content - need to make sure that viewers realize we are national I already updated the meta description to say "real estate photography in Denver and beyond"
Local Website Optimization | | virtuance_photography1 -
Areaserved json-ld schema markup for a local business that targets national tourism
If there is a local business that thrives on ranking nationally for people searching for their services in that location, do you target the business's actual service areas or target nationally? For instance, a hotel in Denver, Colorado. Would the areaserved markup be: "areaServed":[{"@type":"State","name":"Colorado"},{"@type":"City","name":"Denver"}] Or "areaserved":"USA" The "geographic area where a service or offered item is provided" would be denver, colorado. But we would be looking to target all people nationally looking to travel to denver, colorado. Or would it be best to target it all, like: "areaServed":[{"@type":"State","name":"Colorado"},{"@type":"City","name":"Denver"},"USA"]
Local Website Optimization | | SEOdub0 -
Is CNAME / URL flattening a bad practice?
I recently have moved a number of websites top a new server and have made the use of CNAME / URL flattening (I believe these are the same?). A network admin had said this is an unrecommended practice. From what I have read it seems flattening can be beneficial for site speed and SEO even if very little.
Local Website Optimization | | Dissident_SLC0 -
Country/Language combination in subdirectory URL
Hello, We are a multi country/multi lingual (English, Arabic) website. We are following a subdirectory structure to separate and geotarget the country/language combinations. Currently our english and arabic urls are the same: For UAE: example.com/ae (English Site) For Saudi Arabic: example.com/sa (Saudi Arabia) We want to separate the English and Arabic language URLs and I wanted to know if there is any preference as to which kind of URL structure we should go with : example.com/ae-en (Country-Language) example.com/en-ae (Language-Country) example.com/ae/en (Country/Language) Is there any logic to deciding how to structure the language/country combinations or is is entirely a matter of personal preference. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | EcommRulz0 -
Local SEO - Adding the location to the URL
Hi there, My client has a product URL: www.company.com/product. They are only serving one state in the US. The existing URL is ranking in a position between 8-15 at the moment for local searches. Would it be interesting to add the location to the URL in order to get a higher position or is it dangerous as we have our rankings at the moment. Is it really giving you an advantage that is worth the risk? Thank you for your opinions!
Local Website Optimization | | WeAreDigital_BE
Sander0 -
Local SEO: City & County Pages
I'm working on developing some local pages for an HVAC company. They cover two counties, so I was planning on having two county pages, then linking them to individual city pages to keep the menu simpler and not cluttering it up with a couple dozen city pages for people to slog through. Has anybody ever done county pages before for local SEO? Or at least seen them? Just curious to see if there's any real benefit overall for have separate county pages, or if I should just stick to city pages.
Local Website Optimization | | ChaseMG0