301 redirects tanked our site on google - what now?
-
We had several hundred old pages on the site with duplicate content and new pages with fresh info on the same topics.
So I redirected the old pages to the new pages. Next day, plop, we're dumped off google for almost every keyword.
Dang I thought they didn't want duplicate content and old funky pages.
What did I do wrong and what can I do to fix it?
Thanks so much for anyone who can share their expertise.
Jean
-
Thanks so much for your response - and for reminding me to be patient.
I've tried leaving the pages intact with a link to the new url and found that the five or six pages of old vintages all pointing to the new page resulted in hundreds of almost empty pages.
I thought that it was effecting my SEO, having so many pages with almost nothing on them.
I have to put the info about all the older vintages on the current product so the customer can get the full story. So I can't put the info about each past vintage on its one page and then put all of the content on the current page.
Google counts that as duplicate content.
I'm not sure what you mean by "archive them"?
Thanks again,
Jean
-
Thanks so much for your words of wisdom.
Re the url with 2008 in the title - the "2008" is an unfortunate consequence of the way we named the pages originally. It is the most relevant page and lists the 2010 wine. This is not a page that was incorrectly redirected, the url's name was poorly designed.
Should I rename the pages to leave off the vintage? Ideally I'd think the url would be something like "shea-wine-cellar-homer-pinot-noir.html and not have the vintage in it at all. But, renaming all of those differently dated pages would require 301's, wouldn't it? That's a lot of 301s - a lot of the pages have the wrong vintage in the url.
Re why google is liking the blog post link that seems less on target versus the wine's own page - this has been happening since 1)I started posting good fresh content on the blog everyday; and 2) especially since the redirects - it's been more in the last few days than ever before.
I'll check, but the 301's were put i place by a very very good IT guy.
Again, thank you so much.
Jean
-
Yes, that is the information desired, thank you.
I do notice the 2009 review is more then double the length of the 2010 review, which is thin by comparison. Otherwise the page seems fine.
I tried navigating to other pages such as Oregon > Oregon Pinot Noir > Highest Rated Pinots and selected the first link "Shea Wine Cellars Homer Pinot noir 2010" but notice the URL is http://www.northwest-wine.com/Shea-Wine-Cellars-Homer-Pinot-noir-2008.html.
The link still shows 2008. Not a big deal per se, but it leads to questions about the redirects. Are you sure they were performed properly?
More importantly, it seems there is at least some keyword cannibalization on your site. I tried searching Google.com for "Shea Wine Cellars Homer Pinot noir 2010" which is an exact title match to the above page. Your site ranks 11th for the term but a different page appears: http://www.northwest-wine.com/wine/2012/05/the-shea-vineyard-2010-homer-estate-block-31-block-7/
Further analysis is required to determine the root cause of the issue. I would suggest first checking the 301s to ensure they were performed properly. I would also check your site for similar keywords to the redirected pages. When I search your site using your search box for "Shea Wine Cellars Homer Pinot noir 2010" the only page that comes up is the 2008.html page. Clearly Google.com feels the other page is more relevant.
-
Hold tight and give yourself at least a week before evaluating the result of your change.
I wouldn't redirect those myself. I'd just archive them, tack on a sold out notice, tweak the copy and offer a link to the new url.
-
http://www.northwest-wine.com is the site.
Here's an example of an old page that has not yet been redirected:
http://www.northwest-wine.com/Beaux-Freres-Willamette-Valley-Pinot-noir-2009.html
Here's the new page we'll redirect it to when it is sold out:
http://www.northwest-wine.com/Beaux-Freres-Pinot-noir-WV-2010.html
You can see why we are redirecting - the older page has the same content as the newer one, except the newer one has the additional content for the new vintage. I'm consolidating all of the older vintage tasting notes onto one page with the newer ones.
Is this the info you need? Thanks SO much for the quick response.
Jean
-
In order to offer any tangible advice, we would need to examine your site along with an example of an old article along with the new page which replaced 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
-
Redirect chains after a site migration
Hi A clients site was originally canonicalised to the www. from the non www versions Now its migrating to an international config of www.domain.com/uk and www.domain.com/us with the existing pages/urls (such as www.domain.com/pageA) 301'd to the new www.domain.com/uk/pageA for example Will this will create a 301 redirect chain due to the existence of the original canonicalised urls or is the way that works 'catch all' so to speak, and automatically update the canonical 301 redirects of the non www old architexcture url's to the new international architecture URL's ? I presume so but just want to check ? cheers dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Linking Root Domains after Site-Wide Redirect
(Edited for simplicity) Page #1 on site A has links from 5 different root domains. If I 301 that page to a page on site B that has zero links, will site B gain 5 linking root domains, per the Moz tool? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | ClearPoint0 -
Keywords based domains redirecting to a site.. is it SPAM?
Keywords based domains redirecting to a site is considered spam isn't it ? And if yes, then is it considered spam in all cases whether those domain based sites are related or non related to main site?
Technical SEO | | Personnel_Concept0 -
301 Redirect Have no ranking
Hi Guys wonder if you can help my site www.economy-car-leasing.co.uk has just been 301 from www.economyleasinguk.co.uk The reason for the move is the site is going to be structured for both cars and vans separately we did the 301 around 8 weeks ago and initially we thought everything went well, all the new site was indexed within 24 hours, we updated WMT on the old site we monitored around 150 keywords many were top 10 in Google 99% were top 5 pages However 8 weeks on we do not rank for hardly anything, i have confirmed all the redirects are working, we have 200 ok from the home page and all the other canonical pages return 301 we just implemented the canonical tag to all pages. we did factor that we will get some down time but not 8 weeks worth, i have done a 301 on this scale before with no real loss of rankings (Different site) Really tempted to put the old site back however its not what i want to do, Bing seems to have picked up on the change really well but im thinking Google just needs time The change looks like its done perfectly and everything is working as it should however it looks like that none of the original rankings or juice has been pushed over from Google yet and im wondering how long does it typically take to get the site ranking again site have gone from 17k unique s per month to less than 2k Paul
Technical SEO | | kellymandingo0 -
Could a URL change path conflict a 301 redirect?
Hi Mozzers, We create multiple pages for one of my client. Some of them are replacing old pages. I setup 5 of them out of 40. I was able to set them live via the drupal CMS. The new pages were actually published but didn't have any URL but had nodes in directory such as www.example.com/node298. To set them live i changed the url path to one page that already existed( www.example.com/old). In order to setup the replacing page: www.example.com/node298 i added the same name as the old one but in order to avoid URL conflicts with new page(www.example.com/new) I had to change the old page's url path as well such as www.example.com/old2) I know i have to 301 redirect the old to the new obviously but my question is: does a URL path change on the old page www.example.com/old matters in when 301 ing it? will it still transfer all the juice to the new page Visual Process: Main goal: www.example.com/old redirect to www.example.com/new but these two are exactly the same url So modification of URL path: www.example.com/old to www.example.com/old2 to avoid URL conflict Therefore www.example.com/old2 =www.example.com/old (just url change path difference) Question: Because of this url change, will a 301 from www.example.com/old2 to www.example.com/new will still carry all the juice that www.example.com/old carried or not? I hope i didn't make it too confusing. Let me know if it is the case Thanks Mozzers Ty
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Quick Seo question regarding 301 redirect
Hi everyone and thank you for showing interested in my problem and for helping me out with this easy thing i have going on
Technical SEO | | caw_ro
Here is how it puts out :
I have 2 websites, same niche, mostly same keywords.
Site #1 holding strong on google #2 ranking for months now.
Site #2 was holding strong in google top 10 rankings until 2 weeks ago when it got sandboxed for some reason
I want to use a 301 permanent redirect from Site #2 to Site #1 to pass all the link juice onto Site #1 and hopefully beat the #1 spot
The question:
Will this affect Site #1 is anyway, considering Site #2 is in somehow sandbox ( i assume that, since he dropped more then 70 positions over night )
Is thins a good think to do or i risk damaging Site #1 by doing this ?
Thanks allot in advance.
Best regards,
Trinca Alexandru0 -
Is this a safe 301 redirect?
We are moving our site from one platform to another. Currently on our site we have two homepages. "www.homepage.com" and "www.homepage.com/Index" Both pages have some high quality links pointing in on them. The problem: We are going to be doing a 301 redirect from "www.homepage.com/Index" page to "www.homepage.com" as we are moving platforms at this time we weren't going to create a "www.homepage.com/Index" page all. This leaves this page as an empty URL. With this webpage disappearing all together will we lose traction as we are redirecting an empty URL? Or is it better to recreate this "www.homepage.com/Index" on our new platform redirect it and wait for google to deIndex this page for us? As well is there a tutorial for how to implement 301 redirects or is this something worth looking for a developer and pay someone to do?
Technical SEO | | HCGDiet0 -
Multiple Domains, Same IP address, redirecting to preferred domain (301) -site is still indexed under wrong domains
Due to acquisitions over time and the merging of many microsites into one major site, we currently have 20+ TLD's pointing to the same IP address as our "preferred domain:" for our consolidated website http://goo.gl/gH33w. They are all set up as 301 redirects on apache - including both the www and non www versions. When we launched this consolidated website, (April 2010) we accidentally left the settings of our site open to accept any of our domains on the same IP. This was later fixed but unfortunately Google indexed our site under multiple of these URL's (ignoring the redirects) using the same content from our main website but swapping out the domain. We added some additional redirects on apache to redirect these individual pages pages indexed under the wrong domain to the same page under our main domain http://goo.gl/gH33w. This seemed to help resolve the issue and moved hundreds of pages off the index. However, in December of 2010 we made significant changes in our external dns for our ip addresses and now since December, we see pages indexed under these redirecting domains on the rise again. If you do a search query of : site:laboratoryid.com you will see a few hundred examples of pages indexed under the wrong domain. When you click on the link, it does redirect to the same page but under the preferred domain. So the redirect is working and has been confirmed as 301. But for some reason Google continues to crawl our site and index under this incorrect domains. Why is this? Is there a setting we are missing? These domain level and page level redirects should be decreasing the pages being indexed under the wrong domain but it appears it is doing the reverse. All of these old domains currently point to our production IP address where are preferred domain is also pointing. Could this be the issue? None of the pages indexed today are from the old version of these sites. They only seem to be the new content from the new site but not under the preferred domain. Any insight would be much appreciated because we have tried many things without success to get this resolved.
Technical SEO | | sboelter0