Using a 301 vs. 302?

[JonClark15]

I'm running into a very confusing situation - and while I think I've worked through the answer, I'm hoping someone can help provide their insight.

I have a client who is in the process of rolling out a responsive site. Because we need to host both Responsive and legacy versions of product pages on the domain we are using the following URL pattern.

New Responsive Product Page

exampleurl.com/product  (existing URL structure)

Older Product Pages (redirected to)

exampleurl.com/legacy/product

The rollout will be approximately 2 months to complete. The question becomes - should a 302 redirect be applied from the existing URl to the /legacy/ URLs  until the new designs are launched? Given that the timing will be so short this seems reasonable.

Or should a 301 be applied until the new responsive designs are rolled out?

[mememax]

HI Jo I won't redirecting anything. You want the existing url to remain in rankings so:

1. duplicate your pages in legacy directory
2. put a canonical in domain.com/legacy/product page to domain.com/product so you'll be avoiding dupe issues
3. then rollout your new responsive design
4. then if the responsive design is the same content (and it should be the same) you can maintain the canonical or if you want to get rid of legacy pages 301 the legacy url to the existing one.

Hope that makes sense.

[MichaelYork]

302 would be perfect for this situation in my opinion.

[Perfect007]

Michael York is right. You should go with 302 redirection. Then after new design you can go with 301 redirection.

[Reinhart]

Hey Jonathan,

I think the above answers pretty much cover what I'd tell you on this one.  I hesitate to ever recommend 302 redirects but it does seem to communicate what is going on.  Hopefully by "short time" you mean days and not weeks.  Otherwise a 301 might be better if organic traffic is crucial to your business functioning for a month or two++.  They effectively do the same thing one just passes link juice more completely.

I'd agree with the idea of using rel=canonical to point at your responsive page from the legacy page to indicate the preferred URL and to avoid duplicate content.

Thanks for the help above all!

Hope that's clear Jonathan.