Redirect 1 specific link from a referrer, wise move?

[HarveyP]

This might be a bit of a complex question as it has many implications and I’d really appreciate some expert advice.

I have a client who has one specific .gov link which is absolutely amazing. It doesn’t have any anchor text and goes straight to the homepage. However it drives quite a lot of revenue! It’s lovely as SEO’s to think of links actually driving revenue rather than assisting rankings of course.

Over the last 30 days this single govt.  link has driven:

418 clicks, 61 conversions, $7,500 revenue

Not bad I hear you say! J

I really want to extract maximum value from this and I’ sure it would perform far better if it went to a really tightly focused landing page rather than the homepage. It really is hyper-targeted buyer traffic (as the stats show) but could perform even better in my opinion.

I can’t change the link, that’s not possible unfortunately. However I can do some server side stuff to redirect traffic from just this link to a desired new page.

However, what are the SEO implications of this in the opinion of some of the experts here?

Obviously the link itself is valuable from an SEO perspective and I don’t want to lose that. I’m not sure how Google would treat the link if this were to be done.

Also I really want to A/B test the homepage versus a landing page to ensure that it really does give an improvement. I’m not even sure how to achieve that given the difficulty in this situation.

Any advice would really be useful!

Thanks J

[SebastianCowie]

Exactly, it would mean that you're minimizing the risk of having the site penalised as well. Let me know how it goes!

[HarveyP]

Thanks Sebastian.

Yes I already have VWO code installed on the clients site so that's good news. I didn't realise I could set up a test for just traffic from a specific referrer URL.

So basically I can split test the homepage versus a completely new landing page in VWO to prove the concept. Thanks!

[HarveyP]

Thanks yes, i'm only investigating options right now of course.

As you say it's a very valuable link (I wish i had one of those!).

I'm certainly not going to make major changes until more research is done. However if we could double the conversion rate (which I think is possible in this case), it would really be a big win!

[SebastianCowie]

Hi Harvey,

Good job on the gov link

Answering your A/B test, although there are a few posts out there that have shown a reduction in visibility as a result of cloaking etc, but assuming you correctly implement the test there shouldn't be an issue.

I know most multivariate testers offer a/b testing based on referral URL so that shouldn't have an effect on the link or Google's opinion of it.

Ultimately Google engages in the same kind of tests and if you visit the Google homepage in I.E you get a little box asking you to install Chrome, so a minor test like this shouldn't have any negative implications.

VisualWebsiteOptimizer definitely offers referal URL testing and I believe Optimizely does as well - if you're a pro member you can get 3 months free of VWO or 25% off Optimizely packages

[Andropenis_Australia]

Not an expert here but redirects are never as good as straight forward links IMO.

In your position I would probably make the landing page more easily accessible from the top of the homepage and direct users to visit the page that way.

It's a very valuable link, so probably best not to test the waters when they are unknown.

Just my opinion of course and one of the ways we learn about seo is of course to experiment, but do consider all aspects before making any redirect changes, pros/cons etc.

All the best!