What will happen if we 302 a page that is ranking #1 in google for a high traffic term?
-
We're planning to test something and we want to 302 a page to another page for a period of time. The question is, the original page is ranking #1 for a high traffic term.
I want to know what will happen if we do this? Will we lose our rank? Will the traffic remain the same?
Ultimately I do not want to lose traffic and I do not want to 301 until it has been properly tested.
-
Then why redirect at all? Why not just update the page with the new content / layout (whatever) and keep a record of when you changed it. If you keep the old layout / content you can always switch back if the test proves the old worked better than the new...
-
Thank you both.
Yes we did however for the complexity of the test and what we are trying to achieve it made more sense to do a real world production test with 100% of the traffic and compare to historical data.
-
Hi David,
I was going to say the same as Patrick. A/B test.
We use Google analytics experiments and it has never affected our rankings.
Good luck
Amelia
-
Hi David
Have you considered A/B testing? I am assuming here that you are going to be testing design or layout changes and want to see how users take on these changes.
If so, have you considered trying:
Google Experiments
VWO
Optimizely You can test layouts without having to do redirects via a Javascript snippet that is put on the page in the code.If not, a 302 could potentially hurt your page's search engine visibility. The redirected page will still retain its PageRank, MozRank, Page Authority and Traffic Value – and the detour page will not accumulate any (source); thus, you won't rank until you bring that page back (and even then, it's not promised). That being said, if you do use a 302 redirect, be EXTREMELY careful and have a backup plan. Don't use this redirect extensively. It should also be noted that 302 redirects that are in place for a certain amount of time WILL be treated as 301s by Bing. If you are testing out page elements, remember you have options above. Here is more information on redirects.
Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions or comments! Good luck!
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
-
Fresh page versus old page climbing up the rankings.
Hello, I have noticed that if publishe a webpage that google has never seen it ranks right away and usually in a descend position to start with (not great but descend). Usually top 30 to 50 and then over the months it slowly climbs up the rankings. However, if my page has been existing for let's say 3 years and I make changes to it, it takes much longer to climb up the rankings Has someone noticed that too ? and why is that ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Why is Google Ranking the Umbrella Category Page when Searching for Sub-Categories Within that Umbrella Category?
I have an e-commerce client who sells shoes. There is a main page for "Kids" shoes, and then right under it on the top-navigation bar there is a link to "Boys Shoes" and "Girls Shoes." All 3 of these links are on the same level - 1 click off the home page. (And linked to from every page on the website via the top nav bar). All 3 are perfectly optimized for their targeted term. However, when you search for "boys shoes" or "girls shoes" + the brand, the "Kids" page is the one that shows up in the #1 position. There are sitelinks beneath the listing pointing to "Girls" and "Boys." All the other results in Google are resellers of the "brand + girls" or "brand + boys" shoes. So our listing is the only one that's "brand + kids shoes." Our "boys" shoes page and "girls" shoes page don't even rank on the 1st page for "brand + boys shoes" or "brand + girls shoes." The only real difference is that "kids shoes" contains both girls and boys shoes on the page, and then "boys" obviously contains boys' shoes only, "girls" contains girls' shoes only. So in that sense there is more content on the "kids" page. So my question is - WHY is the kids page outranking the boys/girls page? How can we make the boys/girls pages be the ones that show up when people specifically search for boys/girls shoes?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPD_NYC0 -
Why has my home page replaced my sub-category page for set of keywords? Happened 2x in last 2 weeks for day or so only to fix itself. What is going on?
Today I noticed a really weird problem. Our LED Step Lights page (https://www.pegasuslighting.com/led-step-lights.html) has been replaced in the search results with our home page. See screenshot below. As I started to research what was going on, I noticed that this same thing must have happened on January 26 and 27 because in my Analytics I can see that our LED Step Lights sub-cat page had a sudden drop in traffic on those two days only to bounce back again on the 28th. See screenshot below. Our LED Step Lights page has had no changes in content, meta information, or anything in months. We have done no recent link building to this page in years. I don't understand what is going on. This is a popular page for us generating decent traffic. I really don't understand what is going on or even how to try and resolve this problem. I checked our Search Console. No messages. No manual web spam actions. Nothing to suggest that anything is going on except for the weird drops in traffic. Has anyone ever seen this happen before? Does anyone have any ideas as to what may be going on? serp-led-step-lights.png organic-traffic-drops.png search-console-led-step-lights.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cajohnson0 -
Google Mobile algo traffic issue?
Hello, I have just been approach by a website owner - site isn't mobile friendly in any way - and they've seen a significant fall off in traffic since 23 Jan... backlink profile is clean (and no linkbuilding undertaken) - nothing else has changed... - more than half their traffic is via mobile devices and they've lost a good 1/3 of their traffic - and drilling deeper it's their organic traffic that's been hit. Anybody else seeing similar? edit... for reference: https://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/google-released-mobile-algorithm-think.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Rankings and search traffic fell off a cliff
Hi Moz community, One of my clients has a beast of a website built in ASP.NET (which causes me problems cos I don't have much experience in that) It is a job-site that aggregates job opportunities from other job-sites and provides a job matching service by email etc. They used to have great presence on Google naturally for thousands of job searches. Since Penguin and Penguin 2.0 (I think) their traffic has fallen off a cliff. I have been doing some "off-page" experimentation, seeing if we can fix a lot of issues by re-sculpting their backlink profile (seeing as it was after penguin). but what I have found is that some pages respond to this off page work but some just do not at all, despite how we approach it, such as disavowing previous links building fresh new top quality content links with natural anchor text etc.... Which has lead me to the conclusion that the wider issue is on-page and potentially site structure. Unfortunately as it is ASP.NET I am not so comfortable diagnosing the issues. I think also some issues will be related to dupe content etc.... but I would LOVE to get some input from my learned Moz colleagues. The website is http://www.allthetopbananas.com/ - any tips on how to recover from this dramatic loss of traffic would be massively appreciated. Kind regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | websearchseo0 -
Google Generating its Own Page Titles
Hi There I have a question regarding Google generating its own page titles for some of the pages on my website. I know that Google sometimes takes your H1 tag and uses it as a page title, however, can anyone tell me how I can stop this from happening? Is there a meta tag I can use, for example like the NOODP tag? Or do I have to change my page title? Thanks Sadie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dancape0 -
How are pages ranked when using Google's "site:" operator?
Hi, If you perform a Google search like site:seomoz.org, how are the pages displayed sorted/ranked? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anthematic0 -
How do I increase rankings when the indexed page is the homepage?
Hi Forum, This is a two-part question. The first is: "what may be the cause of some rank declines?" and the second is "how do I bring them back up when the indexed page is the homepage?" Over the last week I noticed some declines in several of my top keywords, many of which point to the site's homepage. The site itself is an eCommerce site, which had less visits last week than normal (holidays it seems, since the data jibes with key dates). Can a decline in traffic cause ranking declines? Any other ideas of where to look? Secondly, for those keywords that link to the homepage, how do we bring these back up since a homepage can't be optimized for every single keyword? We sell yoga products and can't have a homepage that is optimized for keywords like "yoga mat," "yoga blocks," "yoga pilates clothing," and several others, as these are our category pages' keywords. Any thoughts? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pano0