Set The Web Forwarding
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What Is Domain Redirecting And Why Should I Care
Domain redirecting is a feature that maps an individual domain to another one. Domain redirecting or domain forwarding may require basic knowledge about HTML if one plans on setting up the code in the pages source. Most domain registrars like GoDaddy and Namecheap offer free domain forwarding services. This article will discuss domain forwarding on Namecheap.
Most Common Reasons To Redirect A Domain
Having multiple domains can confirm that people search for your website. Weve listed nine reasons for redirecting a domain:
Rebranding Need
Your business is perhaps the most frequent reason you need a domain migration, which assumes a significant change. You should take extra steps to ensure a quality customer experience on your new site.
International Domain
Changing to an international domain is a reason why you would redirect the website to another URL. Typically, people change the generic domain to country-specific ccTLD domains to appeal to that countrys market.
From One Host Provider to Another
Some are unsatisfied with the quality of their current providerexperiencing slower speeds or low network distribution quality of their systems. Others find quality alternatives at a lower price or start on shared hosting services, and they need an upgrade to higher quality hosting services.
Redevelop Website
Redirecting a website might be done because of the need for website redevelopment. But redesigning your website or file transferring to a different domain is a considerable task. When you redesign your website, there may be problems for the users who want to use its content, and, consequently, there might be some glitches. So its best to migrate the domain.
Change URL Structure
A customary reason to change the URL structure is when a company does the redesigning, which occurs when some essential site elements no longer allow keeping the existing URLs.
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Redirect An Old Url To A New Url
Sometimes you have to change the URL of existing pages and posts. Maybe youre cleaning up your existing URL structure, or you moved some pages around and the old URL no longer makes sense.
In this case, youll want to implement a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. This is especially true if your older posts are already indexed in the search engines, or have links pointing to them anywhere online.
Avoid Making Redirect Mistakes
Avoid Redirect Chains and Loops
Redirection chains are harmful to the SEO ranking of your page because Google can delay their crawling of your website. As a result, you can lose some link equity, and the loading time of your loading page can increase.
The best way to bypass this is to avoid the connection to a URL that is already redirecting to another URL. And you should regularly audit your actual redirects.
Avoid Internal Redirects
Redirecting a website could hurt your SEO practice, with the internal links pointing to URLs that are redirected somewhere else.
While changing the URL of your page, you can forget to update the internal links to connect to the new location. But its crucial to have those URLsso make sure you enter your site and update the destination of the internal links. This is required to avoid the redirection of website visitors and search engines when there is no need.
Dont Use 302 Redirects Unless the Move of the Domain Is Temporary
You can redirect a domain with code 302 only if you plan to bring the old page back. But you can also use this code to test out a new page and collect customer feedback while the rankings of the original page are untouched.
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Option 2 Redirecting To The Secure Version Of The Same Site
It’s not possible to use the panel’s Redirect option to redirect to HTTPS as this removes hosting from the domain. For example:
http://example.com to https://example.com
This is also not necessary since after you have added an SSL certificate to your domain, DreamHost automatically redirects the URL visitors use to view your site from HTTP to HTTPS. The S ensures that your connection is encrypted. For example:
- https://example.com
There’s nothing on your end you must do in order to force your site to use the secure URL. However, in some special cases, it may be necessary for you to create your own custom configuration file to force the redirect from HTTP to HTTPS.
Adding custom code is only necessary if your website requires specific code to force the redirect. If so, you will need to first disable the automatic redirect in your panel.
Whats The Difference Between Domain Forwarding And Masking
When you forward your GoDaddy domain, you can choose to Forward only or Forward with masking.
So whats masking? When you choose the Forward with masking option, you hide the destination domain from online visitors. They only see the domain they type into their browser bar.
Lets say youre using a free version of a website builder that places weebly or godaddysites in your domain name and you want to use your own personal domain. You can forward visitors who type your personal domain name into their browser to your free website, but mask that process so the browser continues displaying your personal domain name vs. the free one.
Usually, you should forward without masking because search engines like Google dont like it when you try to fool your visitors. Moreover, your website content appears to live on both your personal domain and the domain where it actually resides. Google views this duplicate content as a negative in terms of how it ranks your site.
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What Is The Difference Between A 301 And 302 Redirect
To forward your domain name to a different website address, you can use 301/302 redirects. 301 Redirect Method A 301 redirect is the preferred method to redirect because it tells users and search engines that your page has been moved permanently. Your website visitors will be redirected to your new page, replacing the old page. With a 301 redirect, all the effort you have invested in building your web presence through Search Engine Optimization will be transferred to your new site. Below are some instances when it is best to use a 301 redirect:
- When transferring a domain
- When you are using different URLs for your site
- When you have changed the domain name of your website permanently
- When you are converting your website from http to https
302 Redirect Method When you use a 302 redirect, it will only redirect your users to the new address for a certain period until you remove the redirect. Using this method over 301 redirect can become a problem when the search engine tries to identify which page has higher value. Note that the search engine will select only one version, which means that the wrong page could end up as the one being listed.
Whats The Difference Between Permanently And Temporarily Forwarding A Domain
You can forward a domain either permanently or temporarily. While permanent forwarding isnt truly permanent because you can stop it or change it at any time, theres an important difference here.
When you permanently forward your domain, search engines like Google delete any page rankings and traffic associated with the original domain and transfer that information to the new domain. When you temporarily forward a domain, you dont lose that information for the original domain.
Why does this matter? Lets say youre redesigning an existing website and want to send visitors to a Coming Soon landing page during that process. If you use permanent forwarding, then search engines will erase all the traffic you built up on your old website and youll have to start over when your redesigned website goes live.
In this case, its best to use temporary forwarding because itll ensure all the domain authority and search rankings you built up on your website stay intact while you redesign your site.
Basically, its safe to permanently forward a domain if you never plan to use it again or dont want to use it anymore. But, you should temporarily forward your domain if you just want to send traffic to a new domain for a little while and plan to use your original domain again.
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Redirect Duplicate Content To The Original Page
Having duplicate content on your site is bad for SEO. If you have a large site, you may well have pages with duplicate content. When you have more than one version of the same page it makes it hard for Google to figure out which page to rank.
Avoid duplicate content issues by redirecting the duplicate piece of content to the original. This will both reduce confusion for your visitors and improve your search engine rankings.
Why Do I Need To Redirect My Website
There are plenty of situations where redirecting a domain or URL can be useful. The most common reasons are:
- Having duplicate content. Multiple posts that contain the same content can negatively impact SEO. Search engines cant decide which URL is the correct one and which one to rank on the SERP.
- Managing multiple domains. Instead of using multiple domains to display the same page, you can instead redirect them to the main one.
- Migrating to a new domain. Again, you can permanently redirect an old domain to a new one by using a 301 redirect type. This carries over Google PageRank and other SEO factors like page authority.
- Changing a posts URL. You can avoid the 404 error by redirecting any deleted page URLs to a new one.
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Setting Up Forwarding On A Domain Name
To forward a domain name which you have already registered with us, follow these steps:
Redirect An Ip Address
Occasionally, there will be a request to re-direct an IP address to a specific URL. The following code shows how this can be done in the .htaccess file.
# Redirect all IP address to same https://domain_name.comRewriteCond % ^##.##.##.##RewriteRule https://domain_name.com/$1
John-Paul is an Electronics Engineer that spent most of his career in IT. He has been a Technical Writer for InMotion since 2013.
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How To Execute Domain Forwarding Properly
For domain forwarding to work best on your behalf, make sure your sites have proper SSL certificates so visitors wont get a security message if they enter an HTTPS domain name.
Use a 301 redirect, or a permanent redirect, to send people who visit your vanity URL to your main website. If youre doing a temporary marketing campaign, a 302 redirect might be a better solution because 302 redirects tell Google not to update the URL in the search engine result pages because it is not a permanent page.
Domain forwarding can be a complicated process. Having a team at your side that understands all the pitfalls to watch out for can help you maximize the benefits. Get the help you need from EasyRedir with a free 14-day trial. Learn more now.
What Are The Different Ways To Forward A Domain Name
Now that weve gone over the benefits of domain forwarding, lets break down the different types of forwarding and how each one can affect what your customers see in their web browser.
When working with a domain name retailer, you will likely have two options:
- Forwarding Only: When a person types in your businesss custom .com domain name in a web browser, theyre automatically forwarded to a destination web address of your choice. For many businesses, this option meets their general forwarding needs.
- Forwarding with Masking: While this option is remarkably similar to the forwarding only option, there are few additional benefits. Unlike forwarding only, forwarding with masking helps ensure that your audience will continue to see the custom .com domain name in the address bar rather than another address from your social media or other platform. In addition, it lets you customize your businesss title and description to make it search engine friendly.
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How To Enable Https Forwarding In Your Webnames Account
HTTPS Forwarding on the root domain: If you have purchased Advanced DNS or Premium DNS for the domain name you wish to forward, all you need to do is to setup forwarding from the Domain Management > DNS Hosting as indicated in the below screenshot. It just works!
Once you enter the forwarding destination and apply changes, Webnames will automatically issue and install an SSL for this domain, and enable secure HTTPS forwarding for the root domain.
HTTPS URL redirection for specific pages under a domain: You still require Premium or Advanced DNS Hosting and can use the Root URL Forwarding section , your destination domain name must include a trailing / at the end. For example, the destination domain should be entered as and this will ensure that a specific sub-page URL on the forwarded domain will redirect to the respective sub-page on the destination, as described in the below table.
HTTPS URL forwarding for subdomains: You will need Webnames Premium DNS enabled on the domain name. To redirect a subdomain such as blog.yourbiz.ca using HTTPS, open Domain Management > DNS Hosting and scroll down to the Subdomain URL redirect section to create redirects.
If your website already has SSL configured and you wish to only redirect paths on one domain to another page on the same domain, you can modify .HTACCESS on your web hosting and configure the HTACCESS file for both URL redirection and to force HTTPS.
You Change Your Business Name
When your business name changes, your business web address usually changes as well. That means youll need to forward the old domain to the new domain.
For example, lets say you run a law firm called Allen, Brown, and Capps and you hire a fourth partner named Davis. When you update your website address to allenbrowncappsdavis.com, youll need to forward all the traffic going to the old domain to your firms new domain.
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What Is Web Forwarding
Included in the cost of the domain name, web forwarding allows you to point one or more domain names to an existing website.
Use additional domain names to drive traffic to your primary website by redirecting via web forwarding one or more domain names to a single web address. Misspellings, alternate extensions, abbreviations, or keywords are all popular examples of different domain names pointing to the same website.
You will have two options:
- Forwarding with masking allows the browser address bar to keep the domain name that was used.
- Forwarding as 301/redirect shows the change in the browser address bar with the forwarded-to site’s address. *most popular*
Especially with the introduction of hundreds of New Domain Names, web forwarding is a great tool to have.
Masked Forwarding allows the browser address bar to keep the domain name that was used, preventing visitors from seeing your forwarded-to domain name.
How To Forward Your Godaddy Domain To Another Web Address
If you registered your domain through GoDaddy, youll use GoDaddys website to forward your domain. Just follow these steps.
To forward a domain:
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