Non-Standard Homepage URL

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Non-Standard Homepage URL

How an non-standard URL could prevent proper spidering &hompeage authority

shoffy

6:29 pm on Jun 28, 2010 (gmt 0)

A site built over 10 years ago was done in a less than preferred way. But, they didn't know any better.

The root domain is 302'd to a link like this:

http://www.domain.com/mainfolder/default.asp

Then links to products and such are like this:

http://www.domain.com/mainfolder/search.asp?sku=123&dept=xyz

My questions,

1. Should the 302 redirect be a 301 (I'm thinking that's a big YES)

2. Could a URL structure like this hurt affect search rankings negatively.

3. Could a URL structure like this hurt overall homepage authority (thereby hurting interior pages)?

Thanks in advance.

milosevic

1:41 pm on Jun 29, 2010 (gmt 0)

I believe this is one of the only instances where a 302 can be preferred.

Using a 302 here means that it's domain.com and not domain.com/mainfolder/default.asp that will be shown in search results.

Changing this to a 301 would not be a good move, either it should be left, or served either physically/via a URL rewrite at the site root.

There would be significant risks involved in making any change here with an established site.

The search.asp URLs are bad for SEO. It would be worth rewriting these to a friendly format without querystrings.

shoffy

1:52 pm on Jun 29, 2010 (gmt 0)

Thank Milo. Especially for your thoughts on the 302. Very interesting.