Reversing the bad effects of a problematic 301 redirect
-
I have a previously very strong ranking page that is now omitted from the SERPs, but only for one specific keyword phrase. I think I found the reason, which I'll explain, and I hope I can hear some confirmation of my theory and a way to correct it.
Let's use the following made up domain and keywords:
Political blog SiteA.com had a few news articles about "Blue Widgets" (like 10 out of 10,000 pages). They became exceedingly popular, so on SiteA.com we created a reference-type page about "Blue Widgets" and in the news articles we already had about Blue Widgets we added rich anchor text (Blue Widgets) links that pointed to this new About Blue Widgets page. (long before we wised up about keyword rich anchor texts and Google!)
After seeing how much traffic was coming to the About Blue Widgets page, we created a whole new site, SiteB.com, which was about Widgets (not just Blue Widgets), a page for each color of widget, and other pages about widgets. SiteB.com has an important and popular page, SiteB.com/blue-widgets, which is about Blue Widgets. We then 301 redirected the SiteA.com's About Blue Widgets page to SiteB.com/blue-widgets. This page in SiteB.com ranked very high (like #2, #3) for years.
Two weeks ago SiteB.com/blue-widgets fell out of the SERPs, but only for the phrase "Blue Widgets". The page still gets lots of traffic from other queries, and even the "Blue Widgets" query will bring up other pages on SiteB.com. So, the only thing hit is the specific query "Blue Widgets" for the specific page SiteB.com/blue-widgets.
It seems obvious to me that Google took the combination of a) a site that it probably no longer liked since we sold it (SiteA.com) since it's gone downhill, b) the rich keyword anchor text on SiteA.com pages pointing to the SiteA.com page optimized for that keyword, and c) then being 301 Redirected to a SiteB.com Blue Widgets page optimized for that same anchor text.
I only discovered the SiteA.com redirects last week, which I had completely forgotten about, and had them removed right away.
My question is, 1) if this indeed was the issue, now that the redirects from SiteA.com to SiteB.com are gone will my ranking eventually go back to normal? and 2) is there anything I can do to get Google to notice the change and have it go back to how it was?
-
You're right. If you removed the redirects, there's no need disavow. I assumed that was what you had done to remove the links given you said you sold Site A.
In my personal experience, it can take Google months, up to 8 months, to drop links. Hopefully in your case it won't take that long.
-
"That said, did you analyse all incoming links to determine if there have been any other suspicious adds or drops recently?" Yes.
"Surely you did other redirects from Site A to Site B?" No, I have not. That was all.
"You probably know this already given you've presumably disavowed the incoming links from SiteB, but just in case." Since I've taken the redirects off, I don't think there is a need to disavow; at least that's what I've been told.
"You can ask Google to recrawl the page using the "Fetch as Google" page in the crawl menu of Webmaster Tools. That might speed things up. No guarantee." Good idea, thank you. I hadn't thought of that.
-
(1) "if this indeed was the issue, now that the redirects from SiteA.com to SiteB.com are gone will my ranking eventually go back to normal?" Yes. If you've nailed the issue.
That said, did you analyse all incoming links to determine if there have been any other suspicious adds or drops recently? Do you want to share the specific page with us to see if anything else jumps out?
Surely you did other redirects from Site A to Site B? You've not suffered any other severe rankings loses?
What Wanatop says is also true. Sometimes there are seemingly unexplained ups and downs in the rankings. It could self-correct.
(2) "is there anything I can do to get Google to notice the change?" You probably know this already given you've presumably disavowed the incoming links from SiteB, but just in case... You can ask Google to recrawl the page using the "Fetch as Google" page in the crawl menu of Webmaster Tools. That might speed things up. No guarantee.
-
My advice would you to do 301 redirects in the siteA to the most powerful keyword page star, and there make outgoing links.
Also on site B you should create a powerful page with concrete Keyword, and make link only there.
If you work with very large semantic and mixed, though of the same theme, confuse the seeker, you have to be as consistent as possible, if a particular keyword is important not stick to it.
You know well that the SEO must be calm, big ups then downs espan small, and vice versa, give it time.
-
"f I understood correctly the redirect from siteA.com/blue-widget is gone.."
Yes, it is gone.
I understand your points, but those are not what has caused the page to disappear from the SERPs. I also have pages such as Red Widgets, Green Widgets, etc, that are still ranking on page one for their terms. The pages are structured in the same ways as is the now-SERP-missing Blue Widgets page.
-
If I understood correctly the redirect from siteA.com/blue-widget is gone..
If the above statement is correct, how is the internal architecture and anchor text structured? Are you still emphasising your efforts onto the page SiteB.com/blue-widget? Could you reduce the number of links of that other page that takes the place of the desired page?
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
-
301 redirect hops from non-https and www
It's best practice to minimize the amount of 301 redirect hops. Ideally only one redirect hop. It's also best practice to 301 redirect (or at least canonical) your non-https and/or your non-www (or www) to the canonical protocol/subdomain. The simplest (and possibly the most common) way to implement canonical protocol/subdomain redirects is through a load balancer or before your app processes the request. Both of which will just blanket 301 to the canonical domain/protocol regardless if the path exists or not In which case, you could have: Two hops. i.e. hop #1 http://example.com/foo to https://example.com/foo, hop #2 https://example.com/foo to https://example.com/bar 301 to a 404. Let's say https://example.com/dog never existed, but somebody for whatever reason linked to it (maybe a typo). If I request https://www.example.com/dog, the load balancer would 301 to a 404 page. Either scenario above should be fairly rare. However, you can't control how people link to you. Should I care about either above scenario? I could have my app attempt to check if the page exists before forwarding, but that code could be complicated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dsbud0 -
301 Redirect and Loss of PA and DA
Mozzers, http:itsgr82bme.com Old domain homepage had a DA of 24 and a PA of 36 Currently redirected to http://thekidstime.com Homepage shows a DA of 6 and a PA of 1. That is a significant loss of authority. I thought a 301 is supposed to be better than that. What gives? What are the next steps, asking the old backlinks to update their links? Thanks for your help, Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | matt.nails0 -
Several 301 Redirects to Same Page
Hi, I have 3 Pages we won't use anymore in our website. Let's call them url A, url B and url C. To keep their SEO strength on our domain, I've though about redirecting all of them to url D. For what I understand, when 301 redirecting, about 85-90% of the link SEO juice is passed. Then, if I redirect 3 URLs to the same page... does url D receive all the link SEO juices for URLs added up? (approximately)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading1
e.g. future url D juice = 100% current url D juice + 85% url A juice + 85% url B juice + 85% url C juice Is this the best practice, or is there a better way? Cheers,0 -
Redirect at Registrar or Server
Hi folks, I have run into a situation were a new client has 3 TLDs (e.g. mycompany.com, mycompany.org and mycompany.biz), all with the same content. They are on a Windows IIS environment, which I am not familiar with. Until now, all of my clients have been Linux/Apache environment, so I always dealt with these issues utilizing htaccess. Currently all resolve to the same IP, but the URL remains the same in the browser address field (e.g. if you type-in mycompany.org - it remains as such). We want the .org and .biz version to 301 Redirect to the .com TLD. I am wondering what the best practice might be in this situation? Could we simply redirect at the registrar level or would implementation at the server level be best? If so, I would really appreciate an example from someone with experience implementing redirects on IIS. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SCW0 -
302 redirects in the sitemap?
My website uses a prefix at the end to instruct the back-end about visitor details. The setup is similar to this site - http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=sf with a 302 redirect from the normal link to the one with additional info and a canonical tag on the actual URL without the extra info ((the normal one here being http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com,) However, when I used www.xml-sitemaps.com to create a sitemap they did so using the URLs with the extra info on the links... what should I do to create a sitemap using the normal URLs (which are the ones I want to be promoting)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
What is the Proper Use of 301 redirects for SEO purposes?
I heard and read from different sources that 301 redirects from aged domains with healthy link profiles is great to boost a sites rank as oppose to building a site around the page and linking it to the domain you want to rank. Whats is the best practice for this strategy? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | junkcars0 -
Choose of destination for a 301 redirection
Hi, I had a website paris-football.com which ranked quite well on specific request as 'paris football" and "paris foot". I decided 2 months ago to stop this website as I had no time to update it and it was quite rubish in terms of content and make a redirection to a better quality website. I decided to redirect to the deep url http://www.sportytrader.com/paris-foot.php . The destination Url has not beneft from the redirection and has even seen its rankings drop since the redirection. do you think that it would have been better to redirect to the Home Page http://www.sportytrader.com ? Do you think that I can still change the destination url ? Thanks a lot for your help,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jarnac0 -
Not allowing me 301 Redirect
I am trying redirect my old site to my new site, both on the same domain. For one reason or another, I am having a hard time redirecting the some of the old urls to the new site. Please let me know how I can fix this issue. Below are the following old urls that are not allowing me to redirect: <colgroup><col width="636"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/press/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/press/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/accommodations/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/dining/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/entertainment/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/events/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/flintstones/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/beach.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/dining.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/pools.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html |0