Persistent listings or 301 redirects better for SEO?
-
Imagine these 2 scenarios for an ecommerce listing.
1. A listing that only closes once stock runs out
2. A listing that relists every 7 days assuming stock has run out and doing a 301 redirect to the latest version of that listing (imagine it relists several times)
You might ask why on earth we would have the 2nd scenario, but we are an auction site where some listings can't be bid on. In other words those Buy Now only listings are also part of the auction model - they close after 7 days.
For me it is a no-brainer that scenario 1 is better for SEO, and I have my ideas on why this is better for SEO than the second scenario such as age, SERP CTR, link equity not being diluted by 301 redirects not changing every 7 days when the listing relists multiple times etc.
I was wondering if someone could articulate better than I possibly could why scenario 1 is better for SEO, and why scenario 1 would rank better in the SERPS....would it?
Many thanks!
Cheers,
Simon
-
Hi sichristie,
I find your question confusing, probably because it's a complex scenario you're trying to describe. If I understand it correctly, I agree scenario 1 would be better for SEO because it's all about reputation. If you're looking for an explanation that might resonate with lay people, I'd try an analogy that builds upon the rationale you've described above. Here's an example of what I mean.
Say to your audience, "Assume you are lost and thirsty in a desert when you come upon a set of three paths pointing in different directions. All three have a sign posted with an arrow saying "this way to fresh water". One of the paths looks like it's been there a long time. It's deep and well worn. Up ahead you can see others have taken this path because there are small items like candy wrappers and cigarette butts shed along-side the path. The other two paths are faint and debris free. You're barely able to make them out in the sand. It looks like their signs have been planted there recently, maybe even moved a few times."
Which path would you take?
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
-
SEO page descriptions on mobile - how to hide while preserving the juice for SEO?
Hi everybody, On our pages we have crafted good text paragraphs for SEO purposes. On desktop everything is fine but on mobile the paragraph of text pushes the main content really low on the page. Is there a way of hiding the text while preserving the SEO juices and not getting penalised by Google for spamming techniques? I'd appreciate any recommendations on how to deal with this. Thanks very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Firebox0 -
How long should I keep the 301 redirect file
We've setup an new site and many pages don't exist anymore (clean up done). But for many of them we have new pages with new url's. We've monitored the 404 and have now many URL's redirected with 301 (apache file). How long should we keep this in place? Checking all links manually to see of new url is in place of the old url (in google) is too much work. tx!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KBC0 -
Technical SEO
Hi Team, What are the points we are missing on our website from technical SEO front? http://www.giftxoxo.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Obbserv0 -
301 redirects
Hello, I want to ditch about 1000 pages of a 2000+ page site. I believe the 301 redirect thing is the way to go but my expertise is limited. Is there a way to do a blanket redirect ie if a user or search engine looks for a page thats not there it all gets redirected to the index page or do I have to do each one manually? Thanks Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jwdl0 -
Lost all ranking after site-wide 301 redirect
Hi all I did a complete site-wide 310 redirect about 3 weeks ago for a site that had consistently been in Pos 1-5 for my targeted keyword ("low glycemic foods"). I changed the domain from low-glycemic-foods-org to low-glycemic-diet.com because I thought that was a more appropriate title and thru my readings I believed that if I carefully followed the recommended procedures I would quickly regain my SERP. Webmaster tools is showing that I have over 800 inbound links - many from very trustworthy sources including .edu, etc BUT my home page is nowhere to be found for the keyword search "low glycemic diet". My Seomoz onpage SEO score is an "A" Any enlightenment would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | veezer0 -
Any way to find which domains are 301 redirected to competitors' websites?
By looking at the work from an SEO collegue it became clear that his weak linkbuilding graph probably is not the cause for his good rankings for a pretty competitive keyword. (also no social mentions where found) I was wondering what it could be, site structure and other on page optimization factors seems to be ok and I don't think there will be exceptionally good or bad user behavior... Finally I looked at the competitors and found that they have more links, better content en better design, so I got a little stuck. The only reason I can think of is that he is doing 301 redirects (or is rel=canonical tags). Is there a way to trace these redirects back to the source in order to include this important variable in your competitor research? thnx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djingel10 -
Old pages still crawled by SE returning 404s. Better to put 301 or block with robots.txt ?
Hello guys, A client of ours has thousand of pages returning 404 visibile on googl webmaster tools. These are all old pages which don't exist anymore but Google keeps on detecting them. These pages belong to sections of the site which don't exist anymore. They are not linked externally and didn't provide much value even when they existed What do u suggest us to do: (a) do nothing (b) redirect all these URL/folders to the homepage through a 301 (c) block these pages through the robots.txt. Are we inappropriately using part of the crawling budget set by Search Engines by not doing anything ? thx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | H-FARM0 -
301 Redirect or Canonical Tag or Leave Them Alone? Different Pages - Similar Content
We currently have 3 different versions of our State Business-for-Sale listings pages - the versions are: **Version 1 -- Preferred Version: ** http://www.businessbroker.net/State/California-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx Title = California Business for Sale Ads - California Businesses for Sale & Business Brokers - Sell a Business on Business Broker Version 2: http://www.businessbroker.net/Businesses_For_Sale-State-California.aspx Title = California Business for Sale | 3124 California Businesses for Sale | BusinessBroker.net Version 3: http://www.businessbroker.net/listings/business_for_sale_california.ihtml Title = California Businesses for Sale at BusinessBroker.net - California Business for Sale While the page titles and meta data are a bit different, the bulk of the page content (which is the listings rendered) are identical. We were wondering if it would make good sense to either (A) 301 redirect Versions 2 and 3 to the preferred Version 1 page or (B) put Canonical Tags on Versions 2 and 3 labeling Version 1 as the preferred version. We have this issue for all 50 U.S. States -- I've mentioned California here but the same applies for Alabama through Wyoming - same issue. Given that there are 3 different flavors and all are showing up in the Search Results -- some on the same 1st page of results -- which probably is a good thing for now -- should we do a 301 redirect or a Canonical Tag on Versions 2 and 3? Seems like with Google cracking down on duplicate content, it might be wise to be proactive. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks. Matt M
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MWM37720