New Website Look/Structure - Should I Redirect or Update Pages w/ Quality Inbound Links
-
This questing is regarding an ecommerce website that I hand wrote(html) in 1997. One of the first click and buy websites, with cart/admin system that I also developed.
After all this time, the Old plain HTML look just doesnt cut it. I just updated to XHTML w/ a very modern look, and believe the structured data will index better. All products and current category pages will have the identical vrls taken from the old version. I decided to go with the switch after manual penalty, which has since been removed... I figured now is the time to update.
My big question is that over the years, a lot of my backlinks came from products/news that are either no longer relevant or just not available. The pages do exist, but can only be found from the Outbound Link Source.
For SEO purposes, I have thought a few things I can do but can't decide which one is the best choice. Any Insight or suggestions would be Awesome!
1. Redirect the old link to the most relevant page in my current catalog.
2. Add my new header/footer to old page(this will add a navigation bar w/ brands/cats/etc)
3. Simply add a nice new image to the top of these pages linking home & update any broken/irrelevant links. I was also considering adding just the very top 2 inches of my header(logo,search box, phone, address)
*note, some of these pages do receive some traffic. Nothing huge, but consider the 50+ pages, it ads up.
-
Yeah because of the age of my website, there was just news that was picked up YEARS ago... a lot are hi-pr links, i just want to make sure I do the right thing with em because as it stands right now any traffic gained from these now is 75%+ bounce rate. Good anchor text for most, 301 is what I was thinking about first... then i thought, maybe just wrap the pages in my new header and hope the searches dont remove or derank these random pages.
Again - We are talking about 50 pages, which bring in about 4k clicks a month... Albeit not huge, just didnt know what to do with them.
One more Idea - I make a new different header that used a "nofollow" on all links for all my category & brand pages, then use it to wrap these old pages... The idea would be to preserve the "old content" , and hopefully keep the pages ranked #1 for their respective low volume searches...
Would that even work?
-
301 the old pages to the new pages that are most relevant to the pages so that user experience should not get hurt!
**If links are spammy then try not to redirect (at least without disavowing bad quality links)
-
I vote to 301 the crusty old links and be done with it. I don't think you'll be able to squeeze much more juice out of them in any other fashion so just set the 301s and move on.
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
-
Link externally from destination pages
Hello, From my destinations pages, is it beneficial to have a link going externally to the hotels my clients are staying in ? In other words is it beneficial to my website or will it hurt me to link external from all my destinations pages to all the hotels my clients are staying in ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Would you redirect Website A to Website B, when Website B is in the middle of a HTTP=>HTTPS migration?
Hey guys, I'm curious on your thoughts around this scenario... Website A: 35,000 monthly pageviews 1,000 pages 375 root linking domains currently HTTPS focused on one topic weak rankings for competitive keywords Website B: 3M monthly pageviews 32,500 pages 3,500 root linking domains started HTTP to HTTPS migration 1 week ago. 1/3 of pages indexed as HTTPS. focused on many topics strong rankings for competitive keywords Requirement: I want to have a reliable read on how Website A's keyword rankings change after redirecting it's pages to Website A. This post-migration analysis will be used as a basis to assess the risk of redirecting another website we own that is similar to Website A into Website B. My question: Would you wait until most of the pages on Website B are indexed as HTTPS before doing a 301 of Website A to Website B? Please back up your answer with reasons why or why not 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jeremycabral0 -
Location Pages On Website vs Landing pages
We have been having a terrible time in the local search results for 20 + locations. I have Places set up and all, but we decided to create location pages on our sites for each location - brief description and content optimized for our main service. The path would be something like .com/location/example. One option that has came up in question is to create landing pages / "mini websites" that would probably be location-example.url.com. I believe that the latter option, mini sites for each location, would be a bad idea as those kinds of tactics were once spammy in the past. What are are your thoughts and and resources so I can convince my team on the best practice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KJ-Rodgers0 -
GWT - Links to website - Are they accurate
Hi I am looking at GWT more and more and I starting not to believe the information within it. For example we had a link on XYZ.com say 6 months ago. This link as been removed no reference to our website, however it still showing on GWT inbound links. I have noticed quite a few sites which have no relevance to our site. Is anyone else finding the information wrong in WMT
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Links from non-indexed pages
Whilst looking for link opportunities, I have noticed that the website has a few profiles from suppliers or accredited organisations. However, a search form is required to access these pages and when I type cache:"webpage.com" the page is showing up as non-indexed. These are good websites, not spammy directory sites, but is it worth trying to get Google to index the pages? If so, what is the best method to use?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maxweb0 -
To recover from Penguin update, shall i remove the links or disavow links?
Hi, One of our websites hit by Penguin update and I now know where the links are coming from. I have chance to remove the links from those incoming links but I am a little confused whether i should just remove the links from incoming links or disavow the links? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rubix0 -
Ecommerce: Add new range to current website or Create a new one
Hello, I run a website called easywatering.co.uk. We rank well for keywords in our industry in the UK selling Garden Irrigation. This is very much a summer business. My directors are saying that they want to start selling winter products (that have no relevancy for the keywords we target). They also want to keep costs down by using easywatering.co.uk to sell this new product line. If we do start targeting for new keywords that are out of our current industry, do you think that we would dilute the current content and therefore reduce our relevancy for the keywords? Or do you think that we would be fine to start targeting for new keywords in a different industry sector?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeanLade0 -
New folder structure
We are in the process of relaunching one of our website's that will use a totally need folder structure. Previously we used mydomain.com/content/country/region/city/district/hotel_name/ Now we are changing to make the URL shorter, more precise - since we are using a new CMS, to be mydomain.com/gb_Hotel-Name/ My question is currently we've in the region of 10,000 pages indexed in Google. So we are going to have to create 301 permanent redirects from the old URLs to the new URLs. From your previous experience, is this the correct way of approaching the task.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NeilTompkins0