Following are some of the best practices that should be followed while redirecting webpages:
* Do not redirect to the home page or root of a domain name as it doesn't make sense and is not useful. When people search for something, Google will point to a post in your website and when user clicks on this post it won't be nice to redirect URL to the root or the home page. Instead redirect to the exact post so that users get the right content.
* There is no limit set by Google for redirects, so you can have N number of redirects. This is helpful when you migrate from Blogger or Wordpress domains to your own domain and want to change or redirect permanently.
* See that you keep the number of redirects for the same URL to the minimum. Ideal number would be just one hop and a maximum of three. If you have more than two or three then Google Crawl may show No-Follow message under Google Web-masters.
* It's always better to use absolute links than relative links. Example: Use http://howtotechguru.com/newest-of-new-chrome-features/717 instead of just /newest-of-new-chrome-features/717
* Check all your redirects are pointing to the right pages or not. If not correct them to point to the page and then submit it for indexing.
* Avoid URLs pointing to the same post else Google Web-masters while crawling will throw "Loop error" message.
* Avoid using redirecting URLs in sitemaps.
* Keep your URL simple and short. See that the redirected URL doesn't contain information like session IDs etc. This will help search bots to crawl your website without session IDs.
* It's always better to minimize the number of redirects and try to make every page or post on your website reachable from atleast one static text link.
Hope this was useful. Leave a comment and share it will your friends if you like it.
This is a very useful information.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the migration from Blogger domain to a custom domain, isn't it enough if we just tell blogger to redirect all example.blogspot.com to example.com ? Then I guess all individual post URLs will also get redirected to the respective posts.
Yes. Blogger has that option to redirect. But I doubt if it's for individual posts. If it can redirect to individual post then it's perfect but if its redirecting to your new example.com root or home page then you need to correct the url.
ReplyDeleteI believe if you go for migration, then it will point to the post and not to the root.
Here is a simple test.
Just search in Google for a post of yours and check the search results for your post. click on your post. This should take (redirect) to your new example.com post and not to it's root or home page.
You can try Fetch as Google or Bing. Check this link for more details:
http://howtotechguru.com/fetch-website-as-google-bing/518
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ReplyDelete