: Would you recommend a 301, 302 or something else? Ok I have built a resort guide for a summer holiday destination. This is how I have structured the site. www.domain.co.uk/resort-name-a/guide www.domain.co.uk/resort-name-a/nigh

@Ann8826881

Before I have added any new resorts, what should I do with domain-name.co.uk/resort-name-a, 302 or 301...


This is a temporary situation so you should not be using a 301 "Permanent" redirect.

To be honest, I don't think you need (or should) do anything at all in this respect!

This is presumably a new site, so there might not be anything indexed yet. If you 302 (temporary) redirect from "resort-name-a" to your home page then the "resort" page will not get indexed, only your home page. It will be like the "resort" page does not exist, but presumably you have links pointing to this page. But the home page is going to change when you add more resorts, which is going to confuse users, so the "resort" page is really the canonical page (at this time).

You could redirect from the home page to to the "resort" page (the canonical page at this time) but then you're giving mixed signals. You do want the search engines to notice the home page. And users won't be able to easily bookmark your site URL. Maybe set a rel="canonical" to the "resort" page, but it's only temporary so it's a bit confusing.

Having two pages the same (duplicate content) isn't a "penalty", it will just mean the search engines will be pushed deciding which page to return in the SERPs - but it's only temporary. In bound links are going to be split, but so they should be, they are going to be two separate pages soon(?).

But there's still the question... even with just 1 "resort" why would the home page have exactly the same content? Be inventive, create some content.

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@Angela700

I'd recommend expanding on your tree.

So far, you're on a good start with the first resort:
domain.co.uk/resort-name-a/guide www.domain.co.uk/resort-name-a/nightlife
etc.


Now when you want to add another resort, use a similar structure:
domain.co.uk/resort-name-b/guide www.domain.co.uk/resort-name-b/nightlife
etc.


Every time you add a resort, you should update the contents at:
domain.co.uk
so that there are links to all the resorts, and if the list is going to be huge, consider divide your links across pages and then you could have URLs like the following:
domain.co.uk/all-resorts/page-1 www.domain.co.uk/all-resorts/page-2
.... domain.co.uk/all-resorts/page-n

The only time a 301 should be used is if you're making URL changes to pages after having the previous URLs accessible to the internet, which in that case, the old pages should redirect to the new pages.

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