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301 redirect question

by Dmreed4311
5 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I was told by an SEO guy that not having 301 redirect on my sites will cause google to give me a duplicate content penalty. any truth to this?
#301 #question #redirect
  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    If you've moved domains, it's in your best interested to 301 all pages to the new location. REGARDLESS.
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Originally Posted by John Romaine View Post

      If you've moved domains, it's in your best interested to 301 all pages to the new location. REGARDLESS.
      If you've moved domains, then I can only assume that you have kept the old ones, and
      pay hosting. Cuz you can't do a 301 without doing that. Complete waste
      of money. Why not either 301 the whole thing, still pay hosting fee, or, do
      a server side redirect for free.

      I never 301 anything unless I have to. It's not perfect and having indexed, old,
      content is a good thing. In 17 years, I can count on less than 2 hands the
      stuff I have 301'd.

      Duplicate content is a huge nonissue.

      Paul
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      • Profile picture of the author Kevin Maguire
        Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

        If you've moved domains, then I can only assume that you have kept the old ones, and
        pay hosting. Cuz you can't do a 301 without doing that. Complete waste
        of money. Why not either 301 the whole thing, still pay hosting fee, or, do
        a server side redirect for free.

        I never 301 anything unless I have to. It's not perfect and having indexed, old,
        content is a good thing. In 17 years, I can count on less than 2 hands the
        stuff I have 301'd.

        Duplicate content is a huge nonissue.

        Paul
        You'll need a plugin I suppose then. To get you started you got a lot of catching up to do.
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      • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        I think what this SEO person is referring to is that every site should have a 301 redirection of the non-WWW version of the site to the WWW version of the site or vice-versa.
        Ahh, you're probably right, Mike.

        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        Search engines, in all their infinite wisdom, see the WWW and non-WWW versions as two different sites. He is wrong though. You will not get a penalty for duplicate content for this, but it can cause another problem.

        If you attract a link to the WWW version, but most of your links are to the non-WWW version, the new link is kind of wasted when you mostly have non-WWW pages ranking. The 301 redirection will take care of this issue.
        He would be best to just set the preferred domain in WMT and set a redirect in his htaccess file to match that setting.

        Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

        If you've moved domains, then I can only assume that you have kept the old ones, and pay hosting. Cuz you can't do a 301 without doing that. Complete waste of money.
        I pay the same regardless of whether I have 1 site or 500. The costs are irrelevant.

        Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

        I never 301 anything unless I have to. It's not perfect and having indexed, old, content is a good thing. In 17 years, I can count on less than 2 hands the stuff I have 301'd.
        I 301 anything that needs to be - simple as that. I've just finished 301'ing a site from one domain to another due to branding issues. It had to be done. Once everything settles down I'll flush the old site completely.

        Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

        Duplicate content is a huge nonissue.
        I tend to agree. No idea why or how this rumour ever became so big.
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        BS free SEO services, training and advice - SEO Point

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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    I think what this SEO person is referring to is that every site should have a 301 redirection of the non-WWW version of the site to the WWW version of the site or vice-versa. Search engines, in all their infinite wisdom, see the WWW and non-WWW versions as two different sites. He is wrong though. You will not get a penalty for duplicate content for this, but it can cause another problem.

    If you attract a link to the WWW version, but most of your links are to the non-WWW version, the new link is kind of wasted when you mostly have non-WWW pages ranking. The 301 redirection will take care of this issue.
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