Are 301s advisable for low-traffic URL's?
-
We are using some branded terms in URLs that we have been recently told we need to stop using. If the pages in question get little traffic, so we're not concerned about losing traffic from broken URLs, should we still do 301 redirects for those pages after they are renamed?
In other words, are there other serious considerations besides any loss in traffic from direct clicks on those broken URLs that need to be considered?
This comes up because we don't have anyone in-house that can do the redirects, so we need to pay our outside web development company. Is it worth it?
-
If those pages are indexed by Google and Google returns them in SERPs then yes, they will 404. That is why you need to test the page first and do a header redirect 301 to either the category page or the home page.
Hope that was the This Answered My Question : )
-
Great feedback! I still just have 1 remaining question, though, which I've posted below Richard's comments. Thanks!
-
The trademark issue is with the names of the subfolders, not the domain name.
-
So can you just change the links to look at the new URL? Still best to redirect them though.
Curious about why you have to change them now though as I just assumed you were using a competitors trademark in a domain before
-
Thanks for that tool! I was not familiar with it.
-
This almost fully answers my question. Those pages don't have inbound links from other sites. We have over 10,000 pages on the site, so we can't have links to them all. So, they aren't worth keeping for traffic or links.
But you say, "I would hope that you capture your 404 errors and 301 redirect all the time anyway." So, my last remaining question is: Am I necessarily creating 404 errors by not redirecting?
Thanks, everyone!
-
Yes, these are just pages on our main site. They will be renamed, and we will be keeping the content on the site.
-
If I'm reading this right though, it is only the URLs they've got to stop using, not the content. Therefore a 404 provide alternate content suggestions isn't necessary in this case; I agree that a 301 redirect is best solution - it passes the human traffic and the link juice to the correct location.
As to whether it is worth the cost, then of course it is the famous answer of "it depends". However, I'd imagine that the cost of redirects should be pretty minimal and if the old URLs drive just a couple of conversions (whatever that may be) then it should have been worthwhile, even ignoring the link juice.
-
As Ryan was stating; if those pages have inbound links, test those links for strength and if they are worth keeping, then 301.
Either way, I would hope that you capture your 404 errors and 301 redirect all the time anyway.
-
Sites put up and take down pages all the time. Broken links are of no consequence to the overall site quality.
This is a different discussion altogether, but broken URL situations actually offer an opportunity for a 404 page that offers users alternate content.
-
Are you linking out to these sites you have to get rid of?
In fact are they even sites or just other pages on your main site? I have maybe misunderstood
EDIT - I'll go ahead and assume I've just got the wrong end of the stick and it's pages on your site that you need to get rid of.
In that case if you can't redirect them can you change the links to point to different pages or even just remove them?
-
Thanks for this reply, and for the others!
OK, so the fact that your site has broken URLs doesn't bring your site in general down in the search engine rankings? Broken URLs aren't necessarily an indicator of a poor quality site that would result in some sort of penalty?
-
Redirecting them won't help the main domain rank for these brand terms, but it will capture the type in traffic and pass most of the link juice coming into these other sites.
Ultimately it shouldn't take your web development company long (unless you have hundreds) and indeed you could maybe even do it at the registrar easily (if not efficiently), so don't pay through the nose for it.
On the other hand, unless you rely on links from those other sites it won't harm your main site in any way by letting them die.
-
There are two things I would look closely at in such a situation...
Traffic: First, you want to know if these pages are generating any traffic. If they are, you should keep them. If they aren't (which it sounds like they aren't), move on to checking links...
Links: Before you scrap pages generating little inbound traffic, you should check to see if said pages have any inbound links. If they do, you would want to evaluate the quality of those links and determine if that is greater or lessor than the cost of keeping the pages and setting up redirects. If you determine these pages have valuable links, definitely 301 redirect them to a good substitute page.
When I speak of the cost associted with setting up the redirects I'm talking about the time taken to set up the redirects (likely your time or ITs time).
We use Open Site Explorer to help us audit inbound links to pages.
-
The link doesn't need to be broken. 301 redirect the existing link to the new one and anyone that is linking or typing or clicking into the old URL will be forwarded to the new one and they wont know it. Make sense? Yes, do it!
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
-
Question on Google's Site: Search
A client currently has two domains with the same content on each. When I pull up a Cached version of the site, I noticed that it has a Cache of the correct page on it. However, when I do a site: in Google, I am seeing the domain that we don't want Google indexing. Is this a problem? There is no canonical tag and I'm not sure how Google knows to cache the correct website but it does. I'm assuming they have this set in webmaster tools? Any help is much appreciated! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | jeff_46mile0 -
Strange URL's indexed
Hi, I got the message "Increase in not found errors" (404 errors) in GWT for one of my website. I did not change anything but I now see a lot of "strange" URL's indexed (~50) : &ui=2&tf=1&shva=1 &cat_id=6&tag_id=31&Remark=In %22%3EAny suggestion on how to fix it ?Erwan
Technical SEO | | johnny1220 -
Possible penguin hit but then back, now what's next?
hiz, i did a little check on my site by answering the quiz at mytrafficdropped.com and there was a question about on what dates there was drop in organic. and i did checked my analytics on a top sending keyword. here is what i found. see attached image . Traffic dropped totally on April 20 to onwards. Then got back better in june, but again dropped in October, still down.. anythoughts guys ? 1Jk47.png
Technical SEO | | wickedsunny10 -
How can I see the SEO of a URL? I need to know the progress of a specific landing-page of my web. Not a keyword, an url please. Thanks.
I need to know the evolution on SEO of a specific landing-page (an URL) of my web. Not a keyword, a url. Thanks. (Necesito saber si es posible averiguar el progreso de una URL específica en el posicionamiento de Google. Es decir, lo que hace SEOmoz con las palabras clave pero al revés. Yo tengo una url concreta que quiero posicionar en las primeras posiciones de Google pero quiero ver cómo va progresando en función a los cambios que le voy aplicando. Muchas gracias)
Technical SEO | | online_admiral0 -
Duplicate pages, overly dynamic URL’s and long URL’s in Magento
Hi there, I’ve just completed the first crawl of my Magento site and SEOMOZ has picked up 1,000’s of duplicate pages, overly dynamic URL’s and long URL’s due to the sort function which appends URL’s with variables when sorting products (e.g. www.example.com?dir=asc&order=duration). I’m not particularly concerned that this will affect our rankings as Google has stated that they are familiar with the structure of popular CMS’s and Magento is pretty popular. However it completely dominates my crawl diagnostics so I can’t see if there are any real underlying issues. Does anyone know a way of preventing this? Cheers,
Technical SEO | | WendyWuTours
Al.1 -
Keyword rankings improve but traffic doesn't
I am working on a couple of SEO projects and have noticed over the past couple of months that the keywords rankings have improved immensely with most of them amongst top 10 on google, but still the traffic on the website doesn't improve much. Can somebody explain me the possible reasons behind this, and what can I do to attract more traffic?
Technical SEO | | KS__0 -
Do any short url's pass link juice? googles own? twitters?
I've read a few posts saying not shorten links at all but we have a lot to tweet and need to. Is googles shortener the best option? I've considered linking to the category index page the article is on and expect the user to find the article and click on the article, I don't like the experience that creates though. I've considered making the article permalink tiny but I would lose the page title being in the url. Is this the best option?
Technical SEO | | Aviawest0