Is This 301 Use Best Practice??

[AWCthreads]

I know its effective practice cuz we're getting our arse kicked. I'm curious if its best practice (white, gray or black hat).

I'm checking a competitors link profile on its landing page that is hitting the top of page 1 for several keywords.

This competitor (national chain) has a strong domain authority (69). The particular landing page I'm checking in OSE has two 301 redirects from its own site among some other directory links to the page.

The page shows 15 external links and half of them are very strong including it's own 301's.

Aren't they essentially sending their own juice to the landing page to bolster page/domain authority to rank higher in the SERPS for those keywords?

Is this a common practice using the 301's to a landing page? Is it white, gray or black hat?

They are appearing suddenly appearing on the first page for several category keywords, so we're doing some snooping.

Thanks.

[KaneJamison]

Google passes link value through the 301 redirect to the destination page. Since there is no longer a page with content where there used to be, they do not take into consideration the former content of the page.

I didn't mean to post the URL, I typically wouldn't on here. You could always post a bit.ly link and remove it or something like that as well.

Keep in mind that OSE has a couple week delay or longer on showing new links, so you're looking at links built in December or earlier. If they really are actively building links right now, there will be a delay in seeing those.

[firstconversion]

Only the number of links. Stick the original 2 urls into Open Site Explorer and see if they have links pointing to them that could flow through that 301

If they don't have links pointing to them,t hen they are unlikely to be the cause of the rankings

[AWCthreads]

Thanks Kane. I'm reluctant to post the url. I'm assuming the 301's have value as they have reasonable page authority.

Can Google "interpret" the content of a 301 source page or only the number of links?

[KaneJamison]

I'm not sure if this is what you were implying, but simply implementing a 301 redirect to a page won't add value. If there are a number of links to the 301 URL before it redirects, that's where the value comes from.

If there are links pointed at the old URLs then the 301s will certainly add some value, but it's probably not manipulative, it's more likely a typical 301 redirect from an old URL.

By the time I'm done with any client's website that has been around for a few years or has been redesigned once or twice, I typically have a large number of 301 redirects in place. This isn't spammy or manipulative, it's just proper site management.

If you can give us any more details or particulars I might be able to answer better. Might be hard to do without us know the URLs, unfortunately.