Too many 301s?
-
Hi there, If there is a website that has accidently generated say 1,000 pages of duplicate content, would the seo be hurt if all those pages were re-directed to the origional source of the content?
There are no plans to re-write the 1,000 duplicate pages, they are already cached and indexed by Google.
I thought about canonical tags but as they have some traffic and a little seo value i thought 301 re-direct would be more appropiate to the relevant pages?
I am also right in thinking you would be able to remove the 301 in the .htaccess file once the index has updated?
Also once removed the 301 - i could use those urls later from scratch if i wanted?
Any info much appreciated.
-
Great insight Highland!!!
-
If they had links, I would 301 the pages with links. Everything else I would 404
-
How are these pages generating traffic? Are they being found in the search engine?
The real question, do these pages have links to them?
There is little value to a 301 redirect if you are not moving link traffic in the direction you are pointing. If you are out ranking the original content, then perhaps a 301 could help. How well does the original content rank?
-
Ha, yes you can my friend.
-
But you can do it, yes?
-
Bringing back URL's that you didn't want and then decide that you do want is pretty annoying to Google...
-
I would see if they had links, and get rid of the rest, it may look to Bing that you are trying to be tricky. Its not natural
-
Ok, i probably wont but in what istance would you not recommend this?
I understand pa and pr etc will be back to nothing but its the keyword url i might want to use from scratch
-
Yes but I wouldn't really recommend this.
-
Also last one, if i wanted to revive the 301s say in a year i would be allowed to and the pages would index again?
-
Thanks highland.
-
I would 301 the pages and get them out of your site's index. Even if you canonical all of them Google will still have to index 1000 pages instead of 1. The 301 will transfer most of your rank to the new page and you'll improve your crawl budget.
Why take the 301s out? Just leave them in there in case there are links pointed to them.
-
Well they seem to be generating traffic.
In principal is what i intend on doing ok, will it hard the seo or be seen as ok do you know?
Many thanks,
-
That sounds weird! If you generated 1000s of pages automatically, and these are all duplicate content, why don't you remove them? Google will end up removing them from its cache as well after a short period!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
HTTPS & 301s
Hi We have like most set up a redirect from HTTP to HTTPS. We also changed our website and set up redirects from .ASP pages to PHP pages We are now seeing 2 redirects in place for the whole of the website.
Technical SEO | | Direct_Ram
http.www.domain.com > https.www.domain.com (1) >> oldwebpage.asp >> new webpage.php (2) The question is: Is there anyway of making the redirect 1 and not 2? thanks
Enver0 -
Mass 301s
Hi All, im trying to find a way to do a mass list of 301s instead of just doing them individually, does anyone have any ideas or tips into how i can do this?
Technical SEO | | Kennelstore0 -
Too Many Page Links
I have 8 niche websites for golf clubs. This was done to carve out tight niches for specific types of clubs then only broadens each club by type - i.e. better player, game improvement, max game improvement. So far, for fairly young sites, <1 year, they are doing fairly well as I build content. Running campaigns has alerted me to one problem - too many on-page links. And because I use Wordpress those links are on each page in the right sidebar and lead to the other sites. Even though visitors arrive via organic search in most cases they tend to eventually exit to one of the other sites or they click on a product (Ebay) and venture off to hopefully make a purchase. Ex: Drivers site will have a picture link for each of the other 7 sites. Question: If I have one stie (like a splash page) used as one link to that page listing all the sites with a brief explanation of each site will this cause visitors to bounce off because they will have one click, than the list and other clicks depending on what other club/site they would like to go to. The links all open in new windows. This would cut down on the number of links per page of each site but will it cause too much work for visitors and cause them to leave?
Technical SEO | | NicheGuy0 -
Why are the bots still picking up so many links on our page despite us adding nofollow?
We have been working to reduce our on-page links issue. On a particular type of page the problem arose because we automatically link out to relevant content. When we added nofollows to this content it resolved the issue for some but not all and we can't figure out why is was not successful for every one. Can you see any issues? Example of a page where nofollow did not work for... http://www.andor.com/learning-academy/4-5d-microscopy-an-overview-of-andor's-solutions-for-4-5d-microscopy
Technical SEO | | tonykelly0 -
301s vs. rel=canonical for duplicate content across domains
Howdy mozzers, I just took on a telecommunications client who has spent the last few years acquiring smaller communications companies. When they took over these companies, they simply duplicated their site at all the old domains, resulting in a bunch of sites across the web with the exact same content. Obviously I'd like them all 301'd to their main site, but I'm getting push back. Am I OK to simply plug in rel=canonical tags across the duplicate sites? All the content is literally exactly the same. Thanks as always
Technical SEO | | jamesm5i0 -
How many steps for a 301 redirect becomes a "bad thing"
OK, so I am not going to worry now about being a purist with the htaccess file, I can't seem to redirect the old pages without redirect errors (project is an old WordPress site to a redesigned WP site). And the new site has a new domain name; and none of the pages (except the blog posts) are the same. I installed the Simple 301 redirects plugin on old site and it's working (the Redirection plugin looks very promising too, but I got a warning it may not be compatible with the old non-supported theme and older v. of WP). Now my question using one of the redirect examples (and I need to know this for my client, who is an internet marketing consultant so this is going to be very important to them!): Using Redirect Checker, I see that http://creativemindsearchmarketing.com/blog --- 301 redirects to http://www.creativemindsearchmarketing.com/blog --- which then 301 redirects to final permanent location of http//www.cmsearchmarketing.com/blog How is Google going to perceive this 2-step process? And is there any way to get the "non-www-old-address" and also the "www-old-address" to both redirect to final permanent location without going through this 2-stepper? Any help is much appreciated. _Cindy
Technical SEO | | CeCeBar0 -
How many of these Meta values should be included in the Head tag?
| | Hi. We receive advice to include so many Meta values in the Head Tag on each page. Which ones are really needed and are really valuable in the SEO effort? |
Technical SEO | | theideapeople
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | | Thank you for your help and ideas! Jay0 -
Are 301s advisable for low-traffic URL's?
We are using some branded terms in URLs that we have been recently told we need to stop using. If the pages in question get little traffic, so we're not concerned about losing traffic from broken URLs, should we still do 301 redirects for those pages after they are renamed? In other words, are there other serious considerations besides any loss in traffic from direct clicks on those broken URLs that need to be considered? This comes up because we don't have anyone in-house that can do the redirects, so we need to pay our outside web development company. Is it worth it?
Technical SEO | | PGRob0