Making a decision on permanent custom URL redirects for TeamRaiser

Kim Ethridge

I'm wondering what the cons would be for making custom URL redirects permanent in TeamRaiser. Thoughts?


Kim

Brian Mucha

> "making custom URL redirects permanent in TeamRaiser"


Not sure I understand, can you elaborate? 

Kim Ethridge

Brian Mucha:

> "making custom URL redirects permanent in TeamRaiser"


Not sure I understand, can you elaborate? 

Brian -

Referencing second paragraph here https://search.blackbaud.com/#q=custom%20URL%20redirects%20permanent%20in%20TeamRaiser&t=All&f:@hproduct=[Luminate%7CLuminate%20Online,Luminate%7CLuminate%20BETA,Luminate%7CLuminate%20CRM,Luminate%7CDatabase%20Connector%20RE,Luminate%7CLuminate%20Common%20Ground,Luminate]


Kim

Brian Mucha

Ah, I see.


So I did a quick Google search to add some links and it changed my mind about my answer.


The difference here is between a 301 and 302 redirect. The difference is where the page rank credit goes with Google when people follow that shortcut, and therefore which URL shows up in search results. Do we want our SEO juice to build the shortcut http://mydomain.org/CoolEvent (302) or to build http://mydomain.org/site/TR?fr_id=1234&pg=entry (301)


I think we want to use a 302 in this case, since user's would prefer the shorter, cleaner link. 

You read a ton of warnings about not using 302, but the assumption is that you are redirecting to a whole new place. (http://myOldDomain.org -> http://MyCoolNewDomain.org) In that case you want traffic to the old link to build up your new location. That's a permanent 301.


So for us, say you changed the event name. I think you would want to use a 301 like this, so credit would go to http://mydomain.org/CoolEvent


http://mydomain.org/OldEventName -> (301) -> http://mydomain.org/CoolEvent -> (302) -> http://mydomain.org/site/TR?fr_id=1234&pg=entry


Or if this was a cross domain redirect... say you changed domain names and the old one is not preferred. In that case you again want a 301, so the credit builds on your new domain.


http://myolddomain.org/CoolEvent -> (301) -> http://mynewdomain.org/CoolEvent -> (302) -> http://mynewdomain.org/site/TR?fr_id=1234&pg=entry

Anyone have other takes?


BPM


https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-discussing-302-redirects/
https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/7430/what-is-a-301-redirect-and-why-should-you-care.aspx 

 

Jeremy Reynolds

 

Anyone have other takes?


BPM

Used to be a pretty big deal for SEO because temporary registration didn't pass "link juice" at all, but Google has adapted over time to make it less of a problem.


On the whole, I'd still advise using permanent, but it's kinda a drop in the bucket with this system. Luminate has a ton of hard-coded temporary redirects because of how it handles sessions and transfers between its various software systems. Used to be a pretty serious drawback, but again, Google has kinda adapted to make redirects (somewhat) less painful. The bigger problem these days is just how dynamic URLs can become, and avoiding delicate content issues.

Brian Mucha

That was exactly my first thought too, but why would you want to pass the link juice from http://mydomain.org/CoolEvent to the Luminate URL salad http://mydomain.org/site/TR?fr_id=1234&pg=entry rather than letting it build on the shorter url?


"Google has adapted..."


This is why I think about 70% of SEO is nonsense these days. At best you are organizing yourself for Google, which is pretty amazing at figuring all that out without help. At worst you are trying to game Google, which just isn't happening anymore.