Will these 301's get me penalized?
-
Hey everyone,
We're redesigning parts of our site and I have a tricky question that I was hoping to get some sound advice about. We have a blog (magazine) with subcategory pages that are quite thin. We are going to restructure the blog (magazine) and feature different concert and have new subcategories. So we are trying to decide where to redirect the existing subcategory pages, e.g. Entertainment, Music, Sports, etc.
Our new ticket category pages ( Concert Tickets, NY Yankees Tickets, OKC Thunder Tickets, etc) are going to feature a tab called 'Latest News' where we are thinking of 301 redirecting the old magazine subcategory pages. So Sports News from the blog would 301 to Sports Tickets (# Latest News tab). See screenshot below for example.
So my question is: Will this look bad in the eyes of the GOOG? Are these closely related enough to redirect? Are there any blatant pitfalls that I'm not seeing? It seems like a win/win because we are making a rich Performer page with News, Bio, Tickets and Schedule and getting to reallocate the link juice that was being wasted in an pretty much useless page that was allowed to become to powerful. Gotta keep those pages in check!
Thoughts appreciated.
Luke
-
Yea I guess we'll see. Thanks for the input.
-
tough call indeed. There is a lot of boiler plate and diffrent content so they might be consider un-related - I can't say though. You will see them in WMT as soft 404 and you can roll back if needed - I would say it's a common practice.
-
Thanks Eyepaq,
In your opinion, do you think that those pages are closely related enough for Google to pass on link equity? After all, it's a Sports News page redirecting to the Latest News section of a Sports Tickets page. Our assumption is that they will be see as sufficiently related, but it's a tough call.
-
Hi Luke,
You can redirect as many pages as you like. There is no filter or penalty from google related with redirects. I've seen millions of redirects tat didn't make sense on a single web site and nothing happened. Google also went on record on Web master central channel and said there is no limit for redirections.
The worst thing that can happen is that if the content is not similar or "connected" in any way - from Google's perspective - they will not pass any link equity with the redirects and they will treat the old pages as soft 404s - so the value that those pages used to hold will be lost - but again - there is no risk in getting hurt here.
Cheers.
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
-
Magento: Should we disable old URL's or delete the page altogether
Our developer tells us that we have a lot of 404 pages that are being included in our sitemap and the reason for this is because we have put 301 redirects on the old pages to new pages. We're using Magento and our current process is to simply disable, which then makes it a a 404. We then redirect this page using a 301 redirect to a new relevant page. The reason for redirecting these pages is because the old pages are still being indexed in Google. I understand 404 pages will eventually drop out of Google's index, but was wondering if we were somehow preventing them dropping out of the index by redirecting the URL's, causing the 404 pages to be added to the sitemap. My questions are: 1. Could we simply delete the entire unwanted page, so that it returns a 404 and drops out of Google's index altogether? 2. Because the 404 pages are in the sitemap, does this mean they will continue to be indexed by Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0 -
What's the best possible URL structure for a local search engine?
Hi Mozzers, I'm working at AskMe.com which is a local search engine in India i.e if you're standing somewhere & looking for the pizza joints nearby, we pick your current location and share the list of pizza outlets nearby along with ratings, reviews etc. about these outlets. Right now, our URL structure looks like www.askme.com/delhi/pizza-outlets for the city specific category pages (here, "Delhi" is the city name and "Pizza Outlets" is the category) and www.askme.com/delhi/pizza-outlets/in/saket for a category page in a particular area (here "Saket") in a city. The URL looks a little different if you're searching for something which is not a category (or not mapped to a category, in which case we 301 redirect you to the category page), it looks like www.askme.com/delhi/search/pizza-huts/in/saket if you're searching for pizza huts in Saket, Delhi as "pizza huts" is neither a category nor its mapped to any category. We're also dealing in ads & deals along with our very own e-commerce brand AskMeBazaar.com to make the better user experience and one stop shop for our customers. Now, we're working on URL restructure project and my question to you all SEO rockstars is, what can be the best possible URL structure we can have? Assume, we have kick-ass developers who can manage any given URL structure at backend.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | _nitman0 -
My blog's categories are winning over my landing pages, what to do?
Hi My blogs categories for the ecommerce site are by subject and are similar to the product landing pages. Example Domain.com/laptops that sells laptops Domain.com/blog/laptops that shows news and articles on laptops Within the blog posts the links of anchor laptop are to the store. What to do? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet1 -
Getting Rid Of Spammy 301 Links From An Old Site
A relatively new site I'm working on has been hit really hard by Panda, due to over optimization of 301 external links which include exact keyword phrases, from an old site. Prior to the Panda update, all of these 301 redirects worked like a charm, but now all of these 301's from the old url are killing the new site, because all the hyper-text links include exact keyword matches. A couple weeks ago, I took the old site completely down, and removed the htaccess file, removing the 301's and in effect breaking all of these bad links. Consequently, if one were to type this old url, you'd be directed to the domain registrar, and not redirected to the new site. My hope is to eliminate most of the bad links, that are mostly on spammy sites, that aren't worth linking to. My thought is these links would eventually disappear from G. My concern is that this might not work, because G won't re-index these links, because once they're indexed by G, they'll be there forever. My fear is causing me to conclude I should hedge my bets, and just disavow these sites using the disavow tool in WMT. IMO, the disavow tool is an action of last resort, because I don't want to call attention to myself, since this site doesn't have a manual penalty inflected on it. Any opinions or advise would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alrockn0 -
Should we use URL parameters or plain URL's=
Hi, Me and the development team are having a heated discussion about one of the more important thing in life, i.e. URL structures on our site. Let's say we are creating a AirBNB clone, and we want to be found when people search for apartments new york. As we have both have houses and apartments in all cities in the U.S it would make sense for our url to at least include these, so clone.com/Appartments/New-York but the user are also able to filter on price and size. This isn't really relevant for google, and we all agree on clone.com/Apartments/New-York should be canonical for all apartment/New York searches. But how should the url look like for people having a price for max 300$ and 100 sqft? clone.com/Apartments/New-York?price=30&size=100 or (We are using Node.js so no problem) clone.com/Apartments/New-York/Price/30/Size/100 The developers hate url parameters with a vengeance, and think the last version is the preferable one and most user readable, and says that as long we use canonical on everything to clone.com/Apartments/New-York it won't matter for god old google. I think the url parameters are the way to go for two reasons. One is that google might by themselves figure out that the price parameter doesn't matter (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1235687?hl=en) and also it is possible in webmaster tools to actually tell google that you shouldn't worry about a parameter. We have agreed to disagree on this point, and let the wisdom of Moz decide what we ought to do. What do you all think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peekabo0 -
Getting out of Google's Penguin
Hi all, my site www.uniggardin.dk has lost major rankings on the searchengine google.dk. Went from rank #2-3 on important keywords to my site, and after the latest update most of my rankings have jumped to #12 - #20. This is so annoying, and I really have no idea what to do. Can it cause bad links to my site? In that case what will I have to do? Thanks in advance,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Xpeztumdk
Christoffer0 -
%20 Rewrite in CMS doesn't get picked up by Search Engiens
Hi Mozzers I have a little issue on a rewrite that was implemented on a CMS. The CMS was built for my client without the option to put custom slugs in. So it takes the title of a post or page and uses it as a URL, the site was launched with a rewrite so that any space in the title is replaced with a - and that is the permanent URL for that post/page. This morning when I was busy doing my checkup on the site I found that the URLs are being indexed as %20 and not - however, if you navigate through the site the URLs are displaying correctly. How is it that search engines pick this up as a space in the slug if it has clearly been set as a - anyone had this issue before? Its causing duplicate content issues on the site because both ways display the same post/page. Cheers, Chris Captivate.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DROIDSTERS0 -
Can your site be penalized for changing the url structure and if so how long till you get back?
I'm doing well on yahoo and bing and the only reason I can think of for why I'm not showing on Google is because I changed the url structure a couple of months ago. I have solid on and off page done for this site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deciph220