Permanently using 301 for internal link

[nirpan]

Hello Folks,

Tried going through the 301 answers but could not find any question similar to what I had. The issue we have is we have got a listing page with the products like this:

/used-peugeot/used-toyota-corolla

As you can see this URL is not really ideal and I want to redirect it to /used-toyota/corolla using mod_rewrite. The redirect will be 301. My concern here is the URL in the listing page won't change to /used-toyota/corolla and hence the 301 will be 'permanently' placed and I was wondering if this will lose some link juice of the 301ed URL. Now with 301 being a 'permanent' redirect one would assume it should not be an issue but I just wanted to be sure that I am correct in assuming so. Thank you for your time.

[nirpan]

Hi Tom,

Thank you for taking the time to reply. And we do want to go the way of changing the URL in the listing page but had a little confusion over the need/type of overview page.

Currently, the url consists of /used-peugeot/used-toyota-corolla but with the new URL (/used-toyota/corolla ), we was wondering if I needed a kind of an overview page for each manufacturer (like /used-toyota, /used-honda)? In the existing URL, there is one generic overview page (used-peugeot) which is not ideal but as most of the listing vehicles are peugeot, it had been the case up until now. So will keeping the /used-peugeot overview page while implementing new URL (/used-toyota/corolla) be a good idea or will we have to have an overview page for each manufacturer (e.g. /used-honda, /used-kia) and so on?

Once more thank you very much for taking the time to reply.

[TomRayner]

Hi Niraj

The absolute best practice would be to change the URL on the listing page.  However, this might not be possible.

In addition, you are right in thinking that a 301 will pass the same "link juice", for lack of a better term, as having an original link.  This was confirmed by Matt Cutts fairly recently in this video - a 301 redirect will pass the same strength as a link would.  Always worth remembering that, with each link or 301, some link juice is always lost - but you won't lose additional strength by using a 301.

So your assumptions are correct.  Like I said, if there is anyway to change the listing page I'd do that too, but a 301 will suffice.