To redirect or not to redirect...That is the question
-
We have old product data that is being updated (approx 30k sku's). Most of the old pages have been indexed and drive the majority of our online sales. But, the updated products have different titles, H1's, etc and have been re-formatted for the better in terms of usability.
So, should we redirect thousands of pages to the new pages? Will Google be ok with that?...or should we reformat the current url's with the new data? And, if we reformat current url's with new data...the fear is that the on-page elements that the pages are being pick up for will get wiped out, (be it the H1 in some cases or the title or alt tag for another, etc) because it's simply too much to retain them during the import.
Please share
-
This sounds a little risky.
I would avoid doing redirects if possible.
If this was my site, I would get into my analytics and find out which 100 pages are pulling in most of the sales from people who enter from search. I would then spend whatever time it takes to recode about five pages by hand, using the best SEO practices within my ability.
I want to make them into something kickass.
After I did the first five of those pages, I would get in touch with a consultant, show her those pages (before and after shots), tell her the goal and have her give opinion on what might be done better. When I do something big like this I always get second opinion from someone who does more SEO than me and who is smarter about it than I am. I might ask a question on Moz or get a friend to look at something. I always get advice from people I trust when doing this. I don't worry about cost. One taken opportunity can be worth literally a million dollars in the long term. One screw up can cost many thousands of dollars immediately and millions over time.
So, after these consults I would launch a few dozen hand-crafted pages and see what happens. A couple weeks later I would launch more if the results were good.
The higher the value of these pages the more that I would do by hand. Once I thought that I had things under control then I would write or have written a program to do the rest of the job automatically.
I am never in a hurry on a high value job like this.
-
My vote is redirect them to the new sku data; you will probably drop in the rankings for a while, but I would imagine in a few months you will come back.
The biggest reason to redirect is just business related - ultimately you want your customers to have a good experience and part of that is making sure they are getting what they need. Once they get to your site, you have to wow them and do a good job fulfilling the order. Just getting them to the site is just the start of the whole process.
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
-
How To Avoid Redirect Chains When Switching From http to https
I have been working on on-page SEO which has involved switching from http to https, and renaming URLs. I am running in to issues with redirect chains. Here is a scenario: Old URL: http://bwisecontractors.ca/products/decks-and-deck-covers/ New URL: https://bwisecontractors.ca/renos-additions/sunrooms-patio-covers/ Since I already created the redirect addressing the redirecting from http to https for the root domain: (http://bwisecontractors.ca to https://bwisecontractors.ca), should the redirect for the above be http://bwisecontractors.ca/products/decks-and-deck-covers/ to https://bwisecontractors.ca/renos-additions/sunrooms-patio-covers/ , or should it be http://bwisecontractors.ca/products/decks-and-deck-covers/ to http://bwisecontractors.ca/renos-additions/sunrooms-patio-covers/ (and the root domain redirect will take care of going from http to https)
On-Page Optimization | | BWiseContractors0 -
Redirect and Redirect Error in Moz Crawl
Hello, We have a wordpress blog attached to our magento website located at domain.co.uk/blog/ Moz was coming back showing we had multiple page versions on show (http and https) So i updated the htaccess file to what is below. This has fixed most of the errors, however the homepage is being a little tricky. Moz is now saying that the page is redirecting and redirecting again http://www.domain.co.uk/blog to
On-Page Optimization | | ATP
http://www.domain.co.uk/blog/ to
https://www.domain.co.uk/blog/ BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/</ifmodule> RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L] END WordPress Within wordpress settings the urls are set up as follows Wordpress Address URL: https://www.domain.co.uk/blog Site Address URL: https://www.domain.co.uk/blog i tried to add a trailing / to these but it gets automatically removed. So i am assuming that wordpress is serving up https://www.domain.co.uk/blog **RewriteBase /blog/ **is re-directing it to / then my https rewrite is re-directing it again I am not sure where exactly to fix this, could anybody advise? Many thanks,0 -
On Site Question: Duplicate H2...
Hi All A few on-site audit tools pull information on duplicate H2 tags on pages. This implies it's a bad thing and should be fixed - is that the case? On one of my sites the tag-line is in H2 in the header, so appears on every page... Just wondering if this is something worth fixing. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | GTAMP0 -
301 twice redirect (no negative)
Can i made twice 301 redirect, because i got "droped" domain and i dont want negative effect to new website. Can i redirect users some other way with no negative effect for fresh website?
On-Page Optimization | | cerar0 -
Should I Redirect My Subdomain Or Not?
Hi everyone, I have a question regarding my subdomain. My website is japracool[dot]com and it was under coriate[dot]com (in my hosting service). I still can access my website trough japracool[dot]coriate[dot]com. My question, should I redirect it to japracool[dot]com? Thanks before.
On-Page Optimization | | Japracool0 -
Question about url structure for large real estate website
I've been running a large real estate rental website for the past few years and on May 8, 2013 my Google traffic dropped by about 50%. I'm concerned that my current url structure might be causing thin content pages for certain rental type + location searches. My current directory structure is:
On-Page Optimization | | Amped
domain.com/home-rentals/california/
domain.com/home-rentals/california/beverly-hills/
domain.com/home-rentals/california/beverly-hills/90210/
domain.com/apartment-rentals/california/
domain.com/apartment-rentals/california/beverly-hills/
domain.com/apartment-rentals/california/beverly-hills/90210/
etc.. I was thinking of changing it to the following:
domain.com/rentals/california/
domain.com/rentals/california/beverly-hills/
domain.com/rentals/california/beverly-hills/90210/ ** Note: I'd provide users the ability to filter their results by rental type - by default all types would be displayed. Another question - my listing pages are currently displayed as:
domain.com/123456 And I've been thinking of changing it to:
domain.com/123456-123-Street-City-State-Zip Should I proceed with both changes - one or the one - neither - or something else I'm not thinking of? Thank you in advance!!0 -
How do I do a 301 Redirect in Wordpress
I have several pages that are showing up as "duplicate" on my Wordpress based site based upon the structure of site. I was wondering how to do a 301 redirect for these pages
On-Page Optimization | | SteveSweat0 -
Newbie with a few questions
Hi! First post here. Would be great if someone could help me out with a few questions: 1. When I search a brand-name, there are 6 pages in 2 columns listed right below the brand in the SERPS. Is it possible to choose which pages in the "category list" that Google shows? 2. From what I've understood, the keywords being included early in the content is of much higher importance than using them in a perfectly structured tag hierarchy. Instead of using a hierarchy like this: I could use something like this (which reads much better): ****Would this make any difference? 3. My category pages show up in the search listings. Is this a bad thing? Should I nofollow or noindex? 4. Category and author pages triggers duplicate content in seomoz. Should I do anything about it? Should i make all the excerpts unique to avoid this? 4. Is the title tag recommendation of 66 characters with or without the brand name? Am I good as long as the post part of the title is less than 66? Remove the brand name from the title all together?****
On-Page Optimization | | mathiasppc0