Glenn E. Fleming, MD, MPH, Contributor, MarketHive

(Reposted from Patrick Sexton, https://varvy.com)

There are four common types of redirects that affect how your users and Google see your mobile pages. Each of them is bad for performance (speed). They include:

       *    Initial redirect — canonical (www.example.com vs example.com)

• SSL — secure pages redirect
• Redirect to mobile version
• Content driven redirects

Content-Driven Redirects

1. Problem

          Content-driven redirects are not required to display a page. These redirects have been added because mobile and                   desktop versions of a given webpage may not display the same content.Thus, some mobile pages are redirected to                 other locations.

          Bottom-line: Content-driven redirects are more of a design issue rather than a technical issue.

       b. Solution

         The use of content-driven redirects should be avoided if possible.The solution here is to utilize responsive web design.            This will ensure that both website versions (mobile and desktop versions) display the same content with no need for a              content-driven redirect.

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Glenn E. Fleming, MD, MPH, Contributor, MarketHive

(Reposted from Patrick Sexton, https://varvy.com)

There are four common types of redirects that affect how your users and Google see your mobile pages. Each of them is bad for performance (speed). They include:

       *    Initial redirect — canonical (www.example.com vs example.com)

• SSL — secure pages redirect
• Redirect to mobile version
• Content driven redirects

Redirect to mobile version

1. Problem

            When you have a different web address (url) for your mobile pages than you do for your desktop pages, the mobile                 device must somehow get to the mobile version. The way it does so is through a redirect.

           In other words, the mobile redirect is the method in which your mobile page gets displayed.This redirect only occurs                when a different url is utilized for mobile devices versus the desktop version. This redirect does not happen when a                  responsive web design is employed.

 

       b. Solution

         As previously mentioned, a mobile redirect only occurs when a different url is utilized for mobile devices versus the                  desktop version.

         Using responsive web design or dynamic serving will remedy this issue by eliminating the need for separate urls for the          same website (i.e., mobile v. desktop version).

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Glenn E. Fleming, MD, MPH, Contributor, MarketHive

(Reposted from Patrick Sexton, https://varvy.com)

There are four common types of redirects that affect how your users and Google see your mobile pages. Each of them is bad for performance (speed). They include:

       *    Initial redirect — canonical (www.example.com vs example.com)

• SSL — secure pages redirect
• Redirect to mobile version
• Content driven redirects

SSL-Secure Pages Redirect

1. Problem

               Pages that use SSL will often be redirected from the url

              "http://www.example.com" to the secure version of that page at "https://www.example.com"

              This redirect usually occurs when a webmaster uses a site-wide 301 redirect as a simple step to forward all pages to               the secure versions of the page.

       b. Solution

              A redirect exists for SSL sites typically because the webmaster used an "easy fix" of doing a site-wide 301 redirect to               make all traffic forwarded to the secure version of their pages.

             A better option would be to use HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) which forces all traffic to use secure pages.                  This means your pages will be more secure and load faster by not using that 301 redirect.

 

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Glenn E. Fleming, MD, MPH, Contributor, MarketHive

(Reposted from Patrick Sexton, https://varvy.com)

There are four common types of redirects that affect how your users and Google see your mobile pages. Each of them is bad for performance (speed). They include:

       *    Initial redirect — canonical (www.example.com vs example.com)

• SSL — secure pages redirect
• Redirect to mobile version
• Content driven redirects

Initial Redirect (Canonical)

 

1. Problem

Example: The url "www.example.com" and the url "example.com" are actually two different urls even though they typically will have the same content.

One has the "www" and one does not. Oftentimes webmasters will choose one or the other throughout their site (www or no www).To ensure that pages are always using the same version of the url, a site-wide redirect is typically used.

Thus, when typing "google.com" into a browser, the end-result is "www.google.com".

1. Solution

This type of redirect was typically implemented for SEO purposes.The common logic was to obtain credit for each link given to a page because some people link to the "www" version and some link to the non-version of a page.

As a webmaster, one must decide if this value even still exists and if so, is it worth the redirect?

Google understands pages and sites much better now than it did when this redirect became a common practice and Google even offers you a way via Webmaster Tools to choose which version you prefer (without the redirect).

Take Home Points:

*Regardless, make sure your site-wide redirects are smartly working with other redirects like ssl.

*Do not redirect users to one version of page just to be redirected again to the secure (ssl) version.

*The way to actually review / update / remove it for most webmasters is to go to their htaccess file and find it:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,NC]

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member