301 Clean-Up - Best Practices & Procedure?
-
Hello Again,
I have taken over managing a website for about 2 months and have fixed a whole heap of problems. Im now turning my attention to the URL rewrites as there are ALOT of them. I have fixed the most problematic offenders that were blocking products and all sorts of mischief but I now want to clean them up.
The website is on Magento, and there are 240 custom URL rewrites.
Question 1: Am i correct that I should edit the links on my website so that they link directly to the new page instead of utilising the re-direct for best SEO results.
Question 2: If my website doesn't utilise the URL rewrite (fixed in question 1) its only purpose is to transfer link juice from any external link the page had before. If this page didnt have any external inbound links then I can delete the URL rewrite as it serves no purpose.
Question 3: If Q1 and Q2 are correct, what is the quickest way to check the inbound links to a page quickly so I can make a quick decision on if i should remove the re-write.
Many Thanks in advance!
-
Thank you ATP for your answer +1 thumbs up
-
Answer 1 - Yes, you are correct. Update internal links. This is best practice.
Answer 2 - No, this is not correct. If users have a URL stored in a bookmark or someone is linking to it with javascript, in an email, or some way that would not show up in a backlink report the redirect would get them to the right page. Redirects are for more than just passing page-rank.
Answer 3 - Use the Moz toolbar for this on a page-by-page basis, or use OSE for the site as a whole. You should also check Google Webmaster Tools, as they have a fresher database than OSE and may know of new links, or ones that OSE didn't catch.
-
From my understanding it is a disadvantage Adam,
Although a 301 passes link juice it only passes a percentage of it, a little is lost along the way. Also redirects increase the amount of time needed for a page to load after the click as it has to walk down a longer path to reach its destination. Im sure I read somewhere (cant find the source sorry) that too many redirects and redirect "chains" can negatively impact your ranking but it likes redirects that genuinely offer replacement relevant content.
If it were me I would at the very least
Redirect: /this-is-it/ -> /how-nice/ removing a step in that path
Keep: /yep-yep/ -> /how-nice/Then change all links on your website point to /this-is-it/ and /yep-yep/ to /how-nice/
If possible get any backlinks changed to the new url also. -
I would like to add a question to the previous ones I hope that ATP won't mind, Is it a disadvantage in a SEO perspective to have 301-s that for example set for 3 pages and the previous 1 has been deleted already?
Example: /this-is-it/ (deleted old original page) --301--> /yep-yep/ --301--> /how-nice/ (current page)
Cheers,
Adam -
Hi There,
If I understand the first question correctly, Yes you should point all of your links to your new URL/page. 301 the old page and if there are any backlinks ask the webmaster of that page to point to the new URL. There are a few websites that allow you to check backlinks. I like MOZ Open Site Explorer but i've also used Ahrefs.
I hope this helps! Let me know if you have anymore questions.
Be well,
Alex Brown
Del Mar Fans and Lighting
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
-
Changing URL structure of site, including AMP - redirect AMP too?
So, I'm changing all the URLs of a site, including all its AMP URLs, I'll be redirecting all the normal URLs, but do I need to also redirect all the AMP pages?
Technical SEO | | alksfjasldfu934341 -
Best Practice Out-of-Date Sales and Events
Hi Everyone, http://www.palaceresorts.com/cozumelpalace/en/cozumel-ironman-triathlon I found an out-of-date event in the clients' crawl report that returns a 404 not found Status Code. I remember to have read an article advising webmasters to don't ever remove a single landing page, but instead to advise that the sale/event it's expired and some information about the upcoming event. Does anyone have had this experience before ? Could you provide me with a real case scenario. Thank You
Technical SEO | | Ariadna-US0 -
301 vs 302 & Link Juice
Has any one come across any recent cases of a 302 link passing more link juice than before?
Technical SEO | | CeeC-Blogger0 -
302 to 301
Hello, We have a temporary redirect (302?) from http url to https url. Seomoz has suggested that we change the 302 temporary redirect to a permanent 301 redirect. Sounds good.... but how do we do that?! Appreciate any and all feedback!
Technical SEO | | OTSEO0 -
How do I fix a 301 Redirect Loop?
Saturday I waas doing some correcting of some duplicate titles, including nofollowing tags, etc. (my main problem was duplicate titles due to tags and categories being indexed). Now this morning I see that one of my pages refuses to load, citing a 301 redirect loop. http://www.incredibleinfant.com/feeding/switching-baby-formula/ Originally, the page was posted under the wrong category. http://www.incredibleinfant.com/uncategorized/switching-baby-formula I resaved it under the correct category (feeding) and now it won't load. Can someone help me figure out how to correct this mess? Thanks so much Heather
Technical SEO | | Gotmoxie0 -
To 301 redirect or not to 301 redirect? duplicate content problem www.domain.com and www.domain.com/en/
Hello, If your website is getting flagged for duplicate content from your main domain www.domain.com and your multilingual english domain www.domain.com/en/ is it wise to 301 redirect the english multilingual website to the main site? Please advise. We've recently installed the joomish component to one of our joomla websites in an effort to streamline a spanish translation of the website. The translation was a success and the new spanish webpages were indexed but unfortunately one of the web developers enabled the english part of the component and some english webpages were also indexed under the multilingual english domain www.domain.com/en/ and that flagged us for duplicate content. I added a 301 redirect to redirect all visitors from the www.domain/en/ webpages to the main www.domain.com/ webpages. But is that the proper way of handling this problem? Please advise.
Technical SEO | | Chris-CA0 -
What is the best practice to handle duplicate content?
I have several large sections that SEOMOZ is indicating has duplicate content, even though the content is not identical. For example: Leather Passport Section - Leather Passports - Black - Leather Passposts - Blue - Leather Passports - Tan - Etc. Each of the items has good content, but it is identical, since they are the same products. What is the best practice here: 1. Have only one product with a drop down (fear is that this is not best for the customer) 2. Make up content to have them sound different? 3. Put a do-no-follow on the passport section? 4. Use a rel canonical even though the sections are technically not identical? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
Is my 301 redirect working?
Very simple question here . I've redirected a bunch of older pages with decent ranking to some newer pages on my site, using the Thesis theme's built-in redirect function. However, in the SERPS, the older pages (and, importantly, older titles) still show up. When clicked on, they redirect to the new page, but it's still irritating because the older titles make the site look out of date. Is this Working As Intended, or have I or my theme done something wrong? And if it's the latter, what's the best way to achieve a redirect, preferably with a Wordpress plugin?
Technical SEO | | Cairmen0