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.
If a redirecting URL has more value than the website should I move it?
-
Client has two website addresses:
- Website A is a redirect to Website B. It has one indexed page. But this is the URL being used in collateral. It has the majority of back links, and citations everywhere list Website A as the URL.
- Website B is where the actual website lives. Google recognizes and indexes the 80+ pages. This website has very few backlinks going to it.
This setup does not seem good for SEO. Moreover, the analytics data is completely messed up because Website B shows that the biggest referral source is... you guessed it Website A.
I'm thinking going forward, I should:
- Move all the content from Website B to Website A.
- Setup Website B to permanently 301 Redirect to Website A.
Is that the best course of action?
-
Hi Pashmina,
How does Website A is a redirect to Website B and can it has one page indexed?
If Website A has a 301 PERMANENT redirection to Website B, then I think it should stay permanent.
If Website A has a page indexed, then I presume it is not a 301 redirection. In that case, moving the content and making a 301 redirect from Website B to Website A would be a good idea in term of SEO.
But, you shouldn't only think in term of SEO, you should also think in term of branding and usability. What is the domain name that reflects your brand? relates to your products? is easier to remember?
Best regards,
Guillaume Voyer.
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
-
I want to move some pages of my website to a folder and nav menu in those pages should only show inner page links, will it hurt SEO?
Hi, My website has a few SaaS products, to make my website simple i want to move my website some pages to its specific folder structure , so eg website.com/product1/features
Technical SEO | | webbeemoz
website.com/product1/pricing
website.com/product1/information and same for product2 and so on, the website.com/product1/.. menu will only show the links of product1 and only one link to homepage (possibly in footer). Please share your opinion will it be a good idea, from UI perspective it will be simple , but i am not sure about SEO perspective, please help thanks1 -
Redirecting an Entire Website?
Is it best to redirect an old website to a new website page by page to like pages or just the entire site all at once to the home page of the new site? I do have about 10 good pages on the site that are worth directing to corresponding pages on the new site. Just trying to figure out what is going to preserve the most link juice. Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | photoseo10 -
301 redirect adding trailing slash to url
I am looking into a .htacess file for a site I look after and have noticed that the urls are all 301 redirecting from a none slash directory to a trailing slashed directory/folders. e.g. www.domain.com/folder gets 301 redirected to www.domain.com/folder/ Will this do much harm and reduce the effect on the page and any links pointing to the site be lessened? Secondly I am not sure what part of my htaccess is causing the redirect. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.co.uk [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$
Technical SEO | | TimHolmes
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.domain.co.uk/$1 [L,R,NE] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.php
RewriteRule ^(.)index.php$ /$1 [R=301,L] or could a wordpress ifmodule be causing the problem? Any info would be apreciated.0 -
Redirect URLS with 301 twice
Hello, I had asked my client to ask her web developer to move to a more simplified URL structure. There was a folder called "home" after the root which served no purpose. I asked for the URLs to be redirected using 301 to the new URLs which did not have this structure. However, the web developer didn't agree and decided to just rename the "home" folder "p". I don't know why he did this. We argued the case and he then created the URL structure we wanted. Initially he had 301 redirected the old URLS (the one with "Home") to his new version (the one with the "p"). When we asked for the more simplified URL after arguing, he just redirected all the "p" URLS to the PAGE NOT FOUND. However, remember, all the original URLs are now being redirected to the PAGE NOT FOUND as a result. The problems I see are these unless he redirects again: The new simplified URLS have to start from scratch to rank 2)We have duplicated content - two URLs with the same content Customers clicking products in the SERPs will currently find that they are being redirect to the 404 page. I understand that redirection has to occur but my questions are these: Is it ok to redirect twice with 301 - so old URL to the "p" version then to final simplified version. Will link juice be lost doing this twice? If he redirects from the original URLS to the final version missing out the "p" version, what should happen to the "p" version - they are currently indexed. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Fixing a website redirect situation that resulted in drop in traffic
Hi, I'm trying to help someone fix the following situation: they had a website, www.domain.com, that was generating a steady amount of traffic for three years. They then redesigned the website a couple of months ago, and the website developer redirected the site to domain.com but did not set up analytics on domain.com. We noticed that there was a drop in traffic to www.domain.com but have no idea if domain.com is generating any traffic since analytics wasn't installed. To fix this situation, I was going to find out from the developer if there was a good reason to redirect the site. What would have prompted the developer to do this if www.domain.com had been used already for three years? Then, unless there was a good reason, I would change the redirect back to what it was before - domain.com redirecting to www.domain.com. Presumably this would allow us to regain the traffic to the site www.domain.com that was lost when the redirect was put in place. Does this sound like a reasonable course of action? Is there anything that I'm missing, or anything else that I should do in this situation? Thanks in advance! Carolina
Technical SEO | | csmm0 -
Delete 301 redirected pages from server after redirect is in place?
Should I remove the redirected old pages from my site after the redirects are in place? Google is hating the redirects and we have tanked. I did over 50 redirects this week, consolidating content and making one great page our of 3-10 pages with very little content per page. But the old pages are still visible to google's bot. Also, I have not put a rel canonical to itself on the new pages. Is that necessary? Thanks! Jean
Technical SEO | | JeanYates0 -
Does it really matter to maintain 301 redirect after de-indexing of old URLs?
Today, I was reading latest blog post on SEOmoz blog about. Uncrawled 301s - A Quick Fix for When Relaunches Go Too Well This is very interesting study about 301 & How it useful to maintain traffic. I'm working on eCommerce website and I have done similar stuff on my website. I have big confusion to manage 301 redirect. My website generates new URLs due to following actions. Re-write dynamic URLs. Re-launch entire website on different eCommerce platform. [osCommerce to Magento Commerce] Re-name category. Trasfer one product from one category to another category. I'm managing my 301 redirect with old practice. Excel sheet data from Google webmaster tools and set specific new URLs for redirect. Hoooo... Now, I have 8.5K redirect in htaccess... And, I'm thinking it's too much. Can we remove old 301 redirect from htaccess or not? This is big question for me. Because, all pages are not hyperlink on external website. Google have just de-indexed old URLs and indexed new URLs. So, Is it require to maintain 301 redirect after Google process?
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Trailing Slashes In Url use Canonical Url or 301 Redirect?
I was thinking of using 301 redirects for trailing slahes to no trailing slashes for my urls. EG: www.url.com/page1/ 301 redirect to www.url.com/page1 Already got a redirect for non-www to www already. Just wondering in my case would it be best to continue using htacces for the trailing slash redirect or just go with Canonical URLs?
Technical SEO | | upick-1623910