linking to your own links that are 301'ed to other links

[darkage]

I'm linking from a number of places to my doman name which is short and concise, eg : subdomain.domain.com/

However this shortlink is 301'ed (moved permanently) via mod_rewrite to subdomain.domain.com/folder/ as this is my (root) in the context of the running application

Moving my root is not an option.

My question is, is it considered a bad practice to link to a URL that you have setup as a 301 ?

Thanks in advance

[darkage]

Since my post was moved, maybe I should say that this is related to SEO. Is it considered a bad practice in SEO to link (from my own pages) to URLs which I then 301 to other URLs ?

[Receptional Andy]

I wouldn't necessarily say it's a bad practice, although you are increasing workload for spiders (which is to be avoided if possible) and it could lessen the benefit from linking to the pages if it's on a large scale (e.g. affecting a large number of URLs). Most sites with redirection systems link to 301s eventually.

Chained redirects are definitely one to avoid (i.e. redirecting to a URL that then redirects again).

Moving my root is not an option

Remember that you don't need to physically move a folder to hide it from URL requests. If the subfolder is superfluous to requirements (for instance if it's more about the underlying technology than a useful path for visitors, like subdomain.domain.com/cms/) then you could use mod_rewrite to serve content from subdomain.domain.com/ without the extra directory.

If that's sounds useful, you could have a go at the rewriting and then post over in the Apache forum if you run into problems.

[darkage]

Andy, thanks fro your answer. Im pretty "comfortable" with mod_rewrite and could do that (actually im already using mod_rewrite to from root to /folder), however the issue is that the root contains a number of folders I access from my root.

Here is an example of my root:
/folder (this is my main application which I redirect root to)
/folder2
/folder3
/folder4

folder2-4 are my assets folders that contain a lot of other stuff that the main application needs/refers to. Therefore moving my root logically or physically to folder is not possible. Or let me rephrase that, everything is possible, I just dont think that it would be justifiable with the amount of work needed...

[g1smd]

*** im already using mod_rewrite to from root to /folder ***

But... are you doing that as a rewrite [L], or as a redirect [R=301,L]?

[darkage]

a 301 (moved permanently)

[g1smd]

Bad move. I would have used a rewrite to connect the short URL to the longer filepath.

[darkage]

g1smd ? Im confused.

Im using mod rewrite to redirect (301) subdomain.domain.com -> subdomain.domain.com/folder

How is that a bad move ?

[g1smd]

I'd never let the root URL for a domain or a sub-domain redirect to a folder within the same domain or subdomain.

The root URL is the most important one of a site.

[darkage]

g1smd, I understand what you're saying, so I looked into this:

ibm.com does a 301 to a folder
microsoft.com does a 301 to a folder
godaddy.com does a 302 to a folder (and the new url has no pagerank - maybe due to the 302 or because its a new page)
forums.bimmerforums.com does a 301 to a folder (no pagerank for new url)
www.accenture.com does a 301 to a folder
www.cocacola.com does a 301 to a folder
www.elsevier.com does a 200 to a folder (using meta tag) and has PR9 (this is how i previously did my redirect)
[answers.google.com...] does a 301 to a folder
www.blogger.com does a 302 to a folder

I'd say if so many large companies is doing a 301 from root to a folder, little me should be ok :-)