New web site - 404 and 301
-
Hello,
I have spent a lot of times on the forum trying to make sure how to deal with my client situation. I will tell you my understanding of the strategy to apply and I would appreciate if you could tell me if the strategy will be okay.
CONTEXT
I am working on a project where our client wants to replace its current web site with a new one. The current web site has at least 100 000 pages. The new web site will replace all the existing pages of the current site.
What I have heard for the strategy the client wants to adopt is to 404 each pages and to 301 redirect each page. Every page would be redirect to a page that make sense in the new web site.
But after reading other answers and reading the following comment, I am starting to be concerned:
'(4) Be careful with a massive number of 301s. I would not 301 100s of pages at once. There's some evidence Google may view this as aggressive PR sculpting and devalue those 301s. In that case, I'd 301 selectively (based on page authority and back-links) and 404 the rest.'
I have also read about performance issue ...
QUESTION
So, if we suppose that we can manage to map each of the old site pages to a page in the new web site, is a problem to do it? Do you see a performance issue or devaluation potential issue?
If it is a problem, please comment the strategy I might considere to suggest:
-
Identify the pages for which I gain links
-
From that group, identify the pages, that gives me most of my juice
-
301 redirect them and for the other, create a real great 404 ...
Thanks !
Nancy
-
-
yes. many have the belief that you are transfereing the value of the page, that not the case, you are redirected requests for that page. A user may reqest yiour page and be redirected to anouther, a search engine may request the page to assign link juice to it, and it will be redirected.
a good analogy is, if you and tom have a store, and tom puts a sign on his door, closed go to Nancy's store, you will get most of his customers, but you will not get the value of his stock.
OK you may have some customers that have your link bookmarked and for that reason you could 301 it, but I doubt that is a good enouth reason to 301 so many pages.
-
Thanks Alan for thIe answer. But maybe I was not clear but I don't believe the strattegy to all point to the same page. They will make their best to point each new page to a page matching the same content.
So in your mind, there is no purpose doing a 301 redirect to pages that have no inbound link, is that correct?
Thanks again !
-
i think you have understaood quite well.
Many people seem to think you 301 redirect the page and any worth it has, this is not the case, a 301 redirecet redirects the request to the page, so in short if the page has no in comming link juice then it does not need to be 301 redirected.
You are correct, do not 301 redirecet in mass to one page, Bing for one has said they will disssmiss them. You shouyld 301 on a one to one or close to it basis.
As for performace issue, it is true that you create a second request when a 301 is encaountered, but this should not be much of a issue.
As for your 404 page, make sure it actualy returns a 404.
Expect a drop in rankings as 301 redirectes leak link juice, This is often offset by better bullt new website. There will be a major short term drop also that will last a few weeks.
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
-
How long will old pages stay in Google's cache index. We have a new site that is two months old but we are seeing old pages even though we used 301 redirects.
Two months ago we launched a new website (same domain) and implemented 301 re-directs for all of the pages. Two months later we are still seeing old pages in Google's cache index. So how long should I tell the client this should take for them all to be removed in search?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Liamis0 -
Selectively 301 redirects
Hi there: We are developing a pretty typical 301 redirection strategy. We basically are moving blog posts from a former sub-domain to the top level of our new designed site. We've pulled a site crawl of the old sub-domain and want to make sure we redirect any posts with a significant backlink profile to their current counterparts. Most other posts are just going to be redirected to the main 'front door' of our new blog. Is there a way to selectively redirect a certain number of posts and then 'globally' redirect everything else to a single URL? I would assume this would be a pretty common task, but can't find an easy way to do what we want to do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
Our web site lost ranking on google a couple of years ago. We have done lots of work on it but still can not improve our search ranking. Can anyone give us some advise
A couple of years ago the ranking on our site dropped over night. I believe someone working here at the time purchased links about that time. We have been doing lots of work on the site since then to improve it. We can not get our rankings back up on google searches. Can anyone give us some advise about what to do or where to go for some help that we can trust.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CostumeD0 -
Site duplication issue....
Hi All, I have a client who has duplicated an entire section of their site onto another domain about 1 year ago. The new domain was ranking well but was hit heavily back in March by Panda. I have to say the set up isn't great and the solution I'm proposing isn't ideal, however, as an agency we have only been tasked with "performing SEO" on the new domain. Here is an illustration of the problem: http://i.imgur.com/Mfh8SLN.jpg My solution to the issue is to 301 redirect the duplicated area of the original site out (around 150 pages) to the new domain name, but I'm worried that this could be could cause a problem as I know you have to be careful with redirecting internal pages to external when it comes to SEO. The other issue I have is that the client would like to retain the menu structure on the main site, but I do not want to be putting an external link in the main navigation so my proposed solution is as follows: Implement 301 redirects for URLs from original domain to new domain Remove link out to this section from the main navigation of original site and add a boiler plate link in another area of the template for "Visit xxx for our xxx products" kind of link to the other site. Illustration of this can be found here: http://i.imgur.com/CY0ZfHS.jpg I'm sure the best solution would be to redirect in URLs from the new domain into the original site and keep all sections within the one domain and optimise the one site. My hands are somewhat tied on this one but I just wanted clarification or advice on the solution I've proposed, and that it wont dramatically affect the standing of the current sites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiroAsh0 -
Links from new sites with no link juice
Hi Guys, Do backlinks from a bunch of new sites pass any value to our site? I've heard a lot from some "SEO experts" say that it is an effective link building strategy to build a bunch of new sites and link them to our main site. I highly doubt that... To me, a new site is a new site, which means it won't have any backlinks in the beginning (most likely), so a backlink from this site won't pass too much link juice. Right? In my humble opinion this is not a good strategy any more...if you build new sites for the sake of getting links. This is just wrong. But, if you do have some unique content and you want to share with others on that particular topic, then you can definitely create a blog and write content and start getting links. And over time, the domain authority will increase, then a backlink from this site will become more valuable? I am not a SEO expert myself, so I am eager to hear your thoughts. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | witmartmarketing0 -
One Web site many Domains
One of my client have about 12 domains related to his one web site .all domain name relevant to keywords .but doing seo for one target domain name.Now he ask what to with rest od domains plz advice and experts advices are highly appreciate..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
In mobile searches, does Google recognize HTML5 sites as mobile sites?
Does Google recognize HTML5 sites using responsive design as mobile sites? I know that for mobile searches, Google promotes results on mobile sites. I'm trying to determine if my site, created in HTML5 with responsive design falls into that category. Any insights on the topic would be very helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BostonWright0 -
On-Site Optimization Tips for Job site?
I am working on a job site that only ranks well for the homepage with very low ranking internal pages. My job pages do not rank what so ever and are database driven and often times turn to 404 pages after the job has been filled. The job pages have to no content either. Anybody have any technical on-site recommendations for a job site I am working on especially regarding my internal pages? (Cross Country Allied.com)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0