Managing redirects ? 301s, 302s and canonicals

[djbaxter]

Managing redirects ? 301s, 302s and canonicals
by Duane-Forrester, Bing
10/6/2011

Almost every website will reach a point when they need to implement redirects. Whether it?s because you moved content around, or you?re moving to a new domain, redirects can help you keep the traffic flowing, pass the value URLs have been assigned by the engines and help keep bookmarks working for your loyal visitors...

The 301 redirect defines a redirect which tells the search engine the content has moved permanently to a new location. This is preferred as it clearly states the intent to move and instructs the engine to transfer any value the URL has accrued from the old URL to the new location. It?s important to know that the 301 redirect does not pass all of the value from an old URL to a new one. The new URL does need to build its own level of trust with the engines, which is why we won?t simply transfer full value to new URLs.

The 302 redirect defines a redirect which states the content has moved temporarily and will return to its original URL shortly. This redirect will still move people to your content, but the engines are essentially being told to hold their assigned values on the original URLs and wait for the content to return to the original URL. This is not what you want. Be careful when requesting redirects be implemented, and clearly define that you need to have a 301 in place. Otherwise, you can lose value from your original URLs, leaving your new ones to struggle on their own.

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Next up, let?s take a look at the rel=canonical element, what it does and how to use it properly.... The purpose of the rel=canonical is to help the engines understand when an individual URL is essentially a duplicate of another...

Something else you need to keep in mind when using the rel=canonical is that it was never intended to appear across large numbers of pages. We?re already seeing a lot of implementations where the command is being used incorrectly. To be clear, using the rel=canonical doesn?t really hurt you. But, it doesn?t help us trust the signal when you use it incorrectly across thousands of pages, yet correctly across a few others on your website.

A lot of websites have rel=canonicals in place as placeholders within their page code. Its best to leave them blank rather than point them at themselves. Pointing a rel=canonical at the page it is installed in essentially tells us ?this page is a copy of itself. Please pass any value from itself to itself.? No need for that.