Hello, I need help of SEO people who had experience with redirect issues and google rankings. Situation is that our client has a website, eshop based on OSCommerce engine, i.e. online products catalogue, all site content is placed in the subfolder /catalogue and the base href is h t t p://w w w.domainname.com/catalogue Then, when you enter h t t p://w w w.domainname.com the site redirects to h t t p://w w w.domainname.com/catalogue/product-page.html That was made because this the main product the eshop sells. Why they just didn't copied all content from that page to index page I do not know index page of the site index.php has PHP redirect from both www and NONwww domain names of the site to the h t t p://w w w.domainname.com/catalogue/product-page.html Now when they need SEO and rankings for the site the problem is that promotion of deep link is more difficult than for domain name. Paradoxically that google has 3 type versions for the site indexed. Site:w w w.domainname.com returns 200+ results with the first one of the product pages, not that to which index is redirected. Page w w w.domainname.com is not in index as it actually doesn't exist. All the indexed pages are with WWW there. site:domainname.com (i.e. without www) returns 400+ results. the page domainname.com is the first in index, however it also exists only virtually, google cache for it shows content and metatags (actually no meta at all) of the h t t p://w w w.domainname.com/catalogue/product-page.html All the indexed pages are without WWW there. the website has some rankings for the low competitve product specific keywords (featured at the product page to which redirect is made) but it's just due to the natural on-site factors (keywords in the text and page name) and without any metatags, on-site SEO and inbound links. Now they want to target more competitive keywords but not happy to take off the redirect and lose rankings for the product specific keywords they currently have. I see the following solutions here: 1) copy all content of the h t t p://w w w.domainname.com/catalogue/product-page.html to index.php and take off the redirect, having h t t p://w w w.domainname.com/ as index page. To compensate rankings drop get links for these keywords. the bad thing I can't predict how much will rankings drop and how soon will recover. 2) if I don't touch the site and just focus SEO on the indexed domainname.com, optimize the page h t t p://w w w.domainname.com/catalogue/product-page.html for all other keywords as it will be treated as source for the domainname.com Work with the site as with normal domain. the bad thing here I am afraid that one day google may consider all these redirect things as duplicate content (remembering that also all pages have 2 versions - with www and without) and ban the site. Sorry for such long and complicated post. If you are still reading here thank you very much what can be the best solution here? I haven't had much experience with all the redirect issues, just know that 301 rules and always use it on my sites This situation brings more questions than answers...Can somebody help me? Thanks!
The first thing you need to do is decide whether you want the search engines to crawl just the http://sitename , http://www.sitename or both (I personally prefer one or the other, and my personal preference lies with the www. since I've found that people remember it better). Then you need to do a 301 redirect from catalogue to your root directory. Are you running an Apache server by any chance? Bear in mind that a 301 redirect CAN interrupt (note I said interrupt, not kill) the site's ranking in the search engines, but there won't be any real damage - the search engines will just have to adjust to the "new address" so to speak (it's a lot like forwarding mail to a new home when you think about it). So basically what I'm saying is I'd redirect your site from http://www.yoursite.com/catalogue and http://yoursite.com/catalogue to http://www.yoursite.com/ (you don't need to change the actual structure, just mask it). Also make sure you test all the pages and components to make sure they work properly (this is best done on a separate testing server) before you actually implement it on the main server. (I hope I understood your question, since if I didn't then obviously this is the wrong bit of advice.)
I agree with Dan it is so relevant that you modify and be very persistent in the domain fields alike.
i will suggest u to go for this solution 1) copy all content of the h t t p://w w w.domainname.com/catalogue/product-page.html to index.php and take off the redirect, having h t t p://w w w.domainname.com/ as index page. To compensate rankings drop get links for these keywords. than go for permanent redirection from h t t p://w w w.domainname.com/catalogue/product-page.html to index.php page. do google will consider it as a same page which is shifted to new one and u wont get penalties for duplicate content. i have read some thing related to it here on this link http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=182915 i hope u will find it useful.. al the best, PM me if u want any help regarding to this.
another question just come up Will 301 redirect from h t t p://w w w.domainname.com/catalogue/product-page.html to h t t p://w w w.domainname.com/ and from h t t p://domainname.com to h t t p://w w w.domainname.com also help to redirect all non-WWW internal pages to their www versions to avoid duplicate content?
with a redirect domain you can do so many things. know for one insted of leaving it parked you can link it to a really high ranking web site may be a freind of yours and such," this will build the domains PR and ad volume to it, is this what your trying to accomplish ?? I do this alot and all my redirected domains have a pr of 3 or 4
Yes. Google may not catch it at first, but eventually the "new" pages will be seen as the only ones and will treat them accordingly. As I said earlier, you may experience a hiccup or interruption, but if you're in this for the long haul (as I think you are), then it won't be much to worry about.
so the how about how google views redirected domains with high pr? does this do anything meaning when I decide to build a site with that high pr redirect domain! will the site be a very dominant Google site???