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.
Is domain forwarding the same as a 301 redirect?
-
Hi, I have an older domain with some SEO auth for varying pages and a newer domain that is for the brand. Right now there are some 301s for about 13 pages and we are currently moving servers. I was wondering if domain forwarding is the same as writing 301 redirects for each page or is it something different (302)?
-
Thanks,
I was hoping to find that a domain redirect/forwarding would be like a 301 and include the paths from the previous site to the new one instead of needing to create numerous 301s.
-
Sorry for the late reply.
From what I have been able to find, it is an either-or situation. Basically, I think that I am forced to write out all the 301 redirects for each of their paths to the new site to ensure they don't lose any of the SEO they may have gathered on the way.
-
Domain forwarding and 301 redirects are different. Forwarding involves moving an entire domain to a new one, while 301s are about individual pages. To maintain SEO authority:
- Use 301 redirects for specific pages.
- For general traffic forwarding, utilize domain forwarding.
- Always employ a 301 redirect for a permanent move, as it informs search engines to pass on SEO authority. A 302 redirect is for a temporary move.
-
This will ultimately depend on your provider, and they should have supporting documentation.
I think in most cases the redirect will be a 301, but it may not retain the path - in other words, all pages on the old site could redirect to the one new URL that you enter.
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
-
Redirection of 100 domain to Main domain affects SEO?
Hi guys, An email software vendor managed by a different area of my company redirected 100 domains used for unsolicited email campaigns to my main domain. These domains are very likely to get blacklisted at some point. My SEO tool now is showing me all those domains as "linking" to my main site as do-follow links. The vendor states that this will not affect my main domain/website in any way. I'm highly concerned. I would appreciate your professional opinion about this. Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anagentile0 -
Reusing an already 301 redirected URL for a very important keyword
I have a question about reusing an already 301 redirected URL Till now I never reused an URLs that has been already redirected with a 301 redirect. However, I just started working on a website where in past they created a lot of 301 redirects without thinking about the future, and now certain URLs, that are currently redirected with a 301, would be very useful (exact match) and needed (for some of the most important keywords for this specific business), to maintain an optimal, homogeneous and "beautiful" URL structure. Has any of you ever reused a URL that was previously redirected with a 301 redirect? If yes what are your experiences with it? Can content on the reused URL (that was previously 301 redirected and than the redirect removed) normally rank if the page is reestablished and the redirect is removed (and you do great content, on page, internal linking, backlinking, .... ) or is such an URL risky / not recommended / "burned" forever and not recommended to be reused again... especially for very important keywords since it present the exact match ?! Thank you very much for all your help! Regards
Technical SEO | | moz46y0 -
Premium domain name redirects
Hi, I run a tree surgery business - woodfeldertreecare.co.uk We're based in Manchester, UK. A few days ago I was called by Premium Domain Names who convinced me that buying treesurgeonsmanchester.com and treesurgerymanchester.com and redirecting them to our main site would be amazing for organic traffic. My designer and an SEO friend both reckon this was a waste of money and reckon I've been scammed. Any thoughts? Please help.
SEO Tactics | | LeoTrees0 -
Unsolved Term Brand Authority Assesses?
If your brand name (e.g., "Example Brand Name") is different from your brand's domain (e.g. "www.ebn.com"), does the Brand Authority tool measure authority for "Example Brand Name" or "EBN"? Thanks!
Product Support | | PRAComms1 -
Is it Ok to have multiple domains (separate website different content) rank for similar keywords?
Is it 'OK' to have multiple domains in the following instance? Does Google actively discourage multiple (but completely different sites) domains from the same company appearing in the search results for the same and or similar keywords if the content is slightly different? This is where the 'main site' has the details, and you can purchase product, and the second site is a blog site only. We are creating a separate content blogsite; which would be on a second domain that will be related to one portion of content on main site. They would be linking back and forth, or maybe the blog site would just link over to the main site so they can purchase said product. This would be a similar scenario to give you an idea of how it would be structured: MAIN SITE: describes a few products, and you can purchase from this site SECOND SITE, different domain: a blog site that contains personal experiences with one of the products. BOTH sites will be linked back and forth....or as mentioned maybe the blog site could just link over to the 'main site' Logo would be a modified version of the main logo and look and feel of the sight would be similar but not exactly the same. MORE INFO: the main site has existed for way over 10 years, starting to gain some traction in an extremely competitive market, but does not rank super high, is gaining traction due to improvements in speed, content, onpage SEO, etc... So in addition to my main question of is this 'ok' to have this second domain, also will it hurt the rankings or negatively affect the 'main' site? Wondering about duplicate content issues, except it will be slightly different...
SEO Tactics | | fourwhitesocks0 -
Domain migration goes wrong. I have a few quesitons.
So I did a domain migration 4-5 months ago, lost about 70-80% of the traffic and I still couldn't recover the traffic. Redirected everything 1:1 Updated internal links Triggered change of address in GSC Monitoring the server logs (everything is perfect) Uploaded the old sitemap with the old URLs What happened/ what have I noticed so far: Almost all URLs have been indexed on the new domain New content on the new domain is indexed in a matter of few hours There's only one particular page that still appears as "Crawled and indexed" on the old domain and still receives traffic. I tried to request the manual indexing so Google could figure out the page has been redirected but nothing has changed. I think this is a sign Google hasn't finished the domain migration process? Most WEBP images appear as "Crawled - currently not indexed" on the old domain. Shouldn't they appear as "Page with redirect"? The new domain is ranking pretty well on a bunch of keywords (they're like 2-3% of the total page count) while the rest of 97% of pages haven't appeared not even in the top 200 results (these pages don't receive a single impression) Google acts a bit strangely on crawling the old domain. He keeps crawling the category pages over and over again (sometimes I see 20-30 crawls on a single category page in a single day) while the inner pages and images are rarely crawled. Like I see 4-5 crawls on images per day maximum. The traffic and number of rankings keywords haven't changed a bit after the last Google updates. Does this indicate that we haven't been impacted by them? So any suggestions on what else can I do to find out the reason why the website hasn't recovered? My guesses are: The process is still not finished (unlikely since it already passed 4-5 months) There's a technical error that I can't find (again, unlikely since I see nothing strange in the logs that'd indicate Google has problems fetching the site) Someone did something nasty (like blasting the website with backlinks or copying the content) that hindered the process? I see a couple of sites made in a language I can't read that literally copy and translate the content from my website and publish on theirs with the canonical URL my website URL. Also, two sites cloned mine after the migration but I managed to eliminate them in time. I had a lot of spammy backlinks on the old domain that have been automatically generated on the ranking pages over a few years. I haven't disavowed them because Google claimed they can identify and eliminate them. Now all those backlinks have instantly moved to the new domain which could put Google in panic mode and lower its trust in our website. Should I disavow them? Please any help is highly appreciated.
SEO Tactics | | Anna332120 -
How effective are 301 redirects in passing page rank?
I have a blog which is ranking well for certain terms, and would like to repurpose it to better explain these terms it is ranking for, including updating the url to the new term the blog will be about. The plan being to 301 redirect the old url to new. In the past, I've done this with other pages, and have actually lost much of the rankings that I had earned on the original URL. What is your take on this? Maybe repurpose blog, but maintain original URL just to be on the safe side? Thanks
Technical SEO | | CitimarineMoz0 -
How .ae and .com domain in SEO performance for UAE region?
I have a domain for my UAE based project called https://mydubaiseo.com/ and however, one of my colleagues suggested going with .ae option.
Technical SEO | | 0eup.ombitao
Whether if we change the domain like as suggested get earlier results than .com domain or what?\Which domain .com or .ae ranks faster in UAE location if the SEO strategies followed in the same way?0