Robots.txt and 301

[Bush_JSM]

Hi Mozzers,

Can you answer something for me please.

I have a client and they have 301 re-directed the homepage '/' to '/home.aspx'.

Therefore all or most of the linkjuice is being passed which is great. They have also marked the '/' as nofollow / noindex in the Robots.txt file so its not being crawled.

My question is if the '/' is being denied access to the robots is it still passing on the authority for the links that go into this page? It is a 301 and not 302 so it would work under normal circumstances but as the page is not being crawled do I need to change the Robots.txt to crawl the '/'?

Thanks

Bush

[YannickVeys]

I would suggest not excluding the / in the robots.txt.

First you redirect the / to home.aspx but then you tell SE's to exclude the home page which you are redirecting anyway. Makes no sense to me, so I would remove it in the robots.txt. No use anyway, because the url is being redirected.

I wouldn't use the 301 redirect to home.aspx. Why not make some (technical?) modifications so that the home page is available on the root of the domain? It's much more beneficial to you site's SEO. Or the other way around, redirect home.aspx to /. Because way more ppl will be linking to the root and not the home.aspx page.

[Bush_JSM]

Hi Yannick.

Thanks for your reply. The / redirect to /home redirect has been done and the / is excluded.

I'm limited as to what changes I can make. I can amend the robots.txt to crawl / which is 301's to /home and that way the links will be attributed and the 301 remains.

Will that be beneficial do you think?

Bush

[YannickVeys]

Yes. Remove the noindex nofollow for / from the robots.txt. It doesn't add anything. It can only confuse SE's and lose you rankings.

[Bush_JSM]

Thanks Yannick - really helpful

cheers and have a good weekend

Bush