301 Redirects and www/non-www Canonical Problems

There’s quite a bit of confusion over 301 redirects and how they effect SEO and a sites rankings. We’ve extensively used permanent 301 redirects on both our own and client sites and in this article I’ll explain how to use them and what you should expect SEO wise.

First some basic information for those new to permanent redirects.

What is a permanent 301 Redirect

A 301 or permanent redirect basically tells a browser (or search engine spider) that the site or page it is accessing has moved permanently. It then immediately redirects that page to the new one.

Search engines like Google will attempt to pass SEO benefit (PR and anchor text benefits) from the old page to the new page.

How to Setup a 301 Redirect Within your .htaccess File

There’s several ways to setup a 301 redirect, probably the easiest is via your .htaccess file since it doesn’t require access to the server, just FTP access. The .htaccess file is a text file that you add to your site to store site and even directory specific server information (you can have a .htaccess file for every directory or just one for the whole site). Basically it adds to or overrides the current server settings.

If you have trouble creating a .htaccess file (some text editors won’t create a file named .htaccess) download this example one below (or one of the others later) and edit to your needs.

Example .htaccess file (all the code mentioned in this article)

A Simple 301 Redirect

A simple 301 redirect that redirects an old page to a new page for example to redirect www.seo-consultant-services.co.uk/old-seo.htm to www.seo-consultant-services.co.uk/new-seo.php do the following.

Open your .htaccess file in a text editor (like Notepad) and add the following code:

RewriteEngine On Redirect 301 /old-seo.htm http://www.seo-consultant-services.co.uk/new-seo.php

Or download this .htaccess file and edit to your needs.

The first part (RewriteEngine On) might not be needed, but just in case it’s turned off on your server add it (only needs to be added once per .htaccess file).

Save the file and upload the .htaccess file to the root of the domain that hosts the old page: “root of domain” means if you wanted to load it with a browser it would be found at http://www.seo-consultant-services.co.uk/.htaccess

Now when accessing http://www.seo-consultant-services.co.uk/old-seo.htm it will immediately redirect to http://www.seo-consultant-services.co.uk/new-seo.php and Google etc… should pass any link benefit (PR and anchor text benefits) to the new page.

Be patient since it takes time for Google etc… to re-index the page and pass benefit to the new page, during this period (usually within 6 weeks) you may see a drop in SERPs, but it should be temporary.

You can use the same procedure above to redirect to another site, if we added the following to your .htaccess file on www.seo-consultant-services.co.uk

RewriteEngine On Redirect 301 /old-seo.htm http://www.seo-gold.com/new-seo.php

or the code below to use the same file name as the old site-

RewriteEngine On Redirect 301 /old-seo.htm http://www.seo-gold.com/old-seo.htm

When we load www.seo-consultant-services.co.uk/old-seo.htm it will redirect to www.seo-gold.com/new-seo.php or www.seo-gold.com/old-seo.htm respectively.

Download this .htaccess file and edit to your needs.

Now you know how to setup a simple 301 redirect one page at a time for varying effects.

301 Redirects and www/non-www Canonical Issues

There’s two ways to view most sites, that’s the www and non-www version. I won’t go into the full history of www (mainly because I don’t know it in detail), it’s enough to know when the first websites went online they were put in the folder www on the server (World Wide Web) and to access them you had to use the URL structure www.domain.com and it basically became the standard way to access a site via a browser. But, it’s not the only way, the true ‘location’ of the files are under domain.com (the www is in fact a sub-domain, you can have a completely separate site at www).

This has led to problems with search engines like Google indexing both versions resulting in duplicate content and sharing link benefit problems. Some webmasters link to the www version and others the non-www, search engine spiders follow the links and spider the site twice.

The major search engines have the ability to determine the www and non-www versions are the same and combine the results (passing all the benefit to just one version), but occasionally it fails and we see both versions indexed, we call this a www/non-www canonical issue. This is bad for the site owner since link benefit (PR/anchor text) is shared over two sites (making it harder to gain competitive SERPs).

To check if you have a www/non-www canonical issue perform a site: search in Google-

site:http://domain.tld

The above search will find all pages indexed under the domain including the www and non-www versions. If you have a small site look through what is indexed, if you find both www and non-www pages indexed you have a canonical problem.

For larger sites the next search will only find the www version-

site:http://www.domain.tld

If there’s differences you might have a canonical problem. To be safe use the .htaccess code listed below as then you’ll never have to worry about www and non-www canonical problems again.

301 Redirects Fixes the www/non-www Canonical Issue

Fortunately a small amount of code within your .htaccess file located at root can solve the canonical problem. What this code does is 301 redirect one form of the site to the other, it’s like you setup an unlimited number of the simple 301 redirects I listed earlier on the fly.

If you use the www version use this code

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.seo-consultant-services\.co.uk$ RewriteRule (.*) http://www.seo-consultant-services.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

The code above will 301 redirect the non-www version to the www version. Obviously replace seo-consultant-services and co.uk with your domain name/tld.

Download the 301 redirect code in a pre-made .htaccess file and edit to your needs.

If you use the non-www version use this code

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^seo-consultant-services\.co.uk$ RewriteRule (.*) http://seo-consultant-services.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

The code above will 301 redirect the www version to the non-www version. Obviously replace seo-consultant-services and co.uk with your domain name/tld.

Download the 301 redirect code in a pre-made .htaccess file and edit to your needs.

More Complex Permanent 301 Redirects

The above 301 permanent redirects cover most situations you’ll come across, below I’ll post a couple of detailed permanent redirects for when you want to change domain names for an existing site whilst avoiding any www and non-www canonical problems.

www version

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.seo-gold\.com$ RewriteRule (.*) http://www.seo-consultant-services.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^seo-gold\.com$ RewriteRule (.*) http://www.seo-consultant-services.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

The code above will 301 redirect both the www and non-www version of seo-gold.com (the old domain) to the WWW version of seo-consultant-services.co.uk (the new domain). Add this .htaccess file to the OLD site and upload the files from the old site to the new to see a seamless switch from an old domain to a new one.

Non-www version

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^seo-gold\.com$ RewriteRule (.*) http://seo-consultant-services.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.seo-gold\.com$ RewriteRule (.*) http://seo-consultant-services.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

The code above will 301 redirect both the www and non-www version of seo-gold.com (the old domain) to the non-www version of seo-consultant-services.co.uk (the new domain). Add this .htaccess file to the OLD site and upload the files from the old site to the new to see a seamless switch from an old domain to a new one.

Expect some temporary (under 6 weeks) SERPs drops as Google etc… take the new 301 redirects into account.

Download both versions of the code above in a pre-made .htaccess file and edit to your needs.

Don’t forget when moving domains you should also add a .htaccess file that deals with canonical problems to the new domain (the code under the heading “301 Redirects Fixes the www/non-www Canonical Issue”).

This article should cover the vast majority of scenarios requiring 301 redirects.