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301 Redirect from Homepage To Subpage

by ryanoryan
3 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi,

Someone else set up a hosting package from a company I was left to develop a Wordpress Blog on a website. The site is on a Windows Hosting package, which doesn't allow me to install anything on the root.

So I installed Wordpress in a sub folder. e.g. www.mysite.com/wp
Wordpress is to be the main website, so the wordpress front page is to be the site front page. Usually with Linux hosting it's very straight forward to move the WP index page to root, but I can't do this with Windows, so instead a created a 301 redirect that diverts traffic from: www.mysite.com to www.mysite.com/wp

The problem is that site won't rank in Google. The pages are indexed ok, It's ranking fine in Bing, Yahoo, but won't appear in google SERP.

Is this because Google sees the homepage as "blank" or should it completely ignore the homepage because of the 301 redirect?

Any advice appreciated.

Thanks
#301 #homepage #redirect #subpage
  • Profile picture of the author paulgl
    What you are doing is just fine. Tons of big sites do the same thing.
    Just type in wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egypt
    or for good fun, type in espn.com

    Anyway, could take a while. Or there could be something else
    google does not like.

    Google should see the site just like any other person or search
    engine sees it.

    Paul
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    If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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  • Profile picture of the author TheContentAuthority
    Ryan,

    I agree with Paul, there really shouldn’t be any issue with the URL appearing in search. Are you saying you can’t get the home page to rank high in SERP’s? Perhaps there are some other factors that you haven’t considered? How is your on-page? Have you built any backlinks to the domain or inner pages? Sometimes some tactics that get a site to rank high in the other engines don’t work as well for Google and vis versa.

    Maybe you can find an answer in this thread,

    Google Groups

    I would look into what else you are doing to try and get it to rank higher. The redirect will not affect your ability to do that.

    Best,

    Shawn
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    We customize your Blog, eBook, Press Release and Sale Copy content with your message.

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    • Profile picture of the author ryanoryan
      Originally Posted by TheContentAuthority View Post

      Ryan,

      I agree with Paul, there really shouldn't be any issue with the URL appearing in search. Are you saying you can't get the home page to rank high in SERP's? Perhaps there are some other factors that you haven't considered? How is your on-page? Have you built any backlinks to the domain or inner pages? Sometimes some tactics that get a site to rank high in the other engines don't work as well for Google and vis versa.

      Maybe you can find an answer in this thread,

      Google Groups

      I would look into what else you are doing to try and get it to rank higher. The redirect will not affect your ability to do that.

      Best,

      Shawn
      Sorry for the late reply.
      Google doesn't seem to serve the site in ANY SERPS. It will only return it when I specifically search for site: mysitename.com

      My on page is fine, it's just a standard local business site, I have all the basic on page stuff and have previously ranked tons of pages in the No 1 spot for local search. I've run a few tests on the redirects, checked webmaster tools and everything seems fine.

      Could it be because I redirected the default hosting homepage (e.g. This domain has been reserved for our client etc)? When I view the cached version of the page on google it shows up as blank?
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