Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi

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Google redirects and some acronynm busting

Do I need a 301 redirect and what does white hat mean?

         

Bluey

2:11 am on Jun 30, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hello,

My website was and still has only the homepage listed. I submit a sitemap and update the website daily with fresh content.

Last week googlebot crawled most of the site yet nothing new has turned up in the SERPS.

After reading some threads I'm wondering if I should have a 301 redirect from http://example.com/ to http://www.example.com/ - is this necessary? I tried doing a permanent redirect with my web host but when I typed in the URL nothing came up so I quickly removed it.

In addition - what do you mean when you say your site is white hat?

Many thanks...why don't we try and get a list of the acronyms for all the newbies...? I'm guessing that these two mean the following:

SERPS = search engine result pages
PR(and number) = page ranking and position

[edited by: ciml at 1:51 pm (utc) on June 30, 2005]
[edit reason] Examplified [/edit]

Clint

2:19 pm on Jun 30, 2005 (gmt 0)



Hello, "whitehat" just means legit, on the "up 'n up", as opposed to "blackhat" which means "questionable techniques".

I wouldn't do any 301 redirects at this time. Some regained their G SERP's WITHOUT doing it. So, I would give it some time to see what happens first. How long has it been for you? If it's been a couple of months or so, then I would consider doing some things.

(BTW, G = Google, Y = Yahoo, ......and BTW means "by the way"). ;)

theBear

3:17 pm on Jun 30, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Clint,

A 301 is second best and is a preventive measure.

You still have to clean up things and it isn't a fun job.

Bluey,

The best method is to starting out on day one with one and only one valid server alias.

Talk to your hosting provider a good one will know how to properly set up the system for you.

If you selfhost (that is you lease a server) then make sure that you understand what you are doing. Before you do it.

Once out of the box, it is like putting toothpaste back into the tube or pushing string pure frustration.

Good luck.

BTW Clint have you got your duplicate content issues cleaned up? Keep watching your back on those because they can come back.

Bluey

9:33 pm on Jun 30, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thank you both - I will get in touch with my server person...

reseller

10:01 pm on Jun 30, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Bluey

>....why don't we try and get a list of the acronyms for all the newbies...? <

I could find these for you, though no "whitehat" ;-)

WebmasterWorld Glossary
[webmasterworld.com...]

All those acronyms...
[webmasterworld.com...]

I hope this helps.

charlier

12:17 pm on Jul 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



PR(and number) = page ranking and position

Is "Page Rank"(TM) where Page is Larry Page. It is a system
of rating the overall importance of pages based on linkage patterns.

[google.com...]

Clint

1:19 pm on Jul 1, 2005 (gmt 0)



BTW Clint have you got your duplicate content issues cleaned up? Keep watching your back on those because they can come back.

I started on some, then most of my G SERP's came back then I wasn't about to mess with anything else. I don't technically think they were dupe content per say since the meta tags on the pages were different, and some of the page text was different. The only similarities was product description which is the case at numerous sites on the web.

link:MyDomain.com with and without www shows FEWER and FEWER hits each time I check it! I did have over 600, then it got down 20, now 19! I started dropping in G again several days ago, so I removed my 301 redirect to see what would happen. I'll be watching that. Some have told me this is because the 301 redirect caused me to lose all the non-www methods of those that linked to me, which was what the vast majority used. So, I removed the 301.

Bluey

8:51 pm on Jul 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks everyone,

Just thought I'd let you know what happened with my host - I have been very impressed with their service so far - still not entirely sure where he added the info - it's not a 301 redirect and it isn;t in my robots.txt so not sure where he has added the code...my site still comes up so its seems ok...

> > Hello,
> >
> > Below is some info about redirects that I posted on webmasterworld.
> Do I
> > have only one valid server alias? I am trying to make it so that
> only
> > pages with www.domain.com com up as opposed to pages such as
> > [domain.com...] as I have read that this can cause
> problems...

THEY RESPONDED:

> I have setup the redirect you would like. Give it a shot and let me
> know if that is what you wanted.

I RESPONDED:

> Thanks! Not sure what you have done but if you have sorted it out
> that's fantastic. I see it's not a redirect. So long as
> [domain.com...] pages don't come up in SERPS but
> [domain.com...] do and that spiders can still crawl my
> site I am a very happy man.
>
> Thanks for the super quick responses - very impressive.

THEY RESPONDED:

Just so you know what I did, I added the following to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ [mydomain.com...] [R,L]

Let me know if there is anything else I can help you with.

Robert Charlton

6:08 am on Jul 3, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



THEY RESPONDED:

Just so you know what I did, I added the following to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ [mydomain.com...] [R,L]

Let me know if there is anything else I can help you with.

Bluey - I'm not an Apache expert, but it looks like they added a 302. I believe that Apache defaults to a 302 redirect unless you specify a 301, which you should ask them to do.

They should change [R,L] to [R=301,L]

Others more qualified than I can comment on the rest of the code.

Bluey

2:56 pm on Jul 3, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks Robert and to TheBear (who stickied me) I hvae been in touch with my host to tell them - as indeed it does redirect to a 302 - temporarily moved.

Cheers.

Swebbie

6:02 am on Jul 4, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I'm wondering if this:

[R=permanent,L]

is the same thing as this:

[R=301,L]

as far as the SE's read it. Anyone know? Is one preferable to the other?