Guidance for setting up new 301s after having just done so (

[Dan-Lawrence]

Hi

I've recently set up a load of 301 redirects for a clients new site design/structure  relaunch

One of the things we have done is take the kw out of the sub-category landing page url's since they now feature in the top level category page urls and don't want to risk over-optimisation by having kw repeats across the full urls.  So the urls have changed and the original pages 301'd to the new current pages.

However If rankings start to drop & i decide to change urls again to include kw in final part of url too for the sub category landing pages, whats best way to manage the new redirects ?

1. Do i redirect the current urls (which have only been live for a week and have the original/old urls 301'd to them) to the new url's ? (worried this would create a chain of 301's which ive heard is not ideal)

2. Or just redirect the original urls to the new ones, and can forget about the current pages/url's since only been live for a week ?
   (I presume best not since GWT sitemaps area says most new urls indexed now so I presume sees those as the original pages replacement now)

3. Or should they all be 301'd (original urls and current urls to the new) ?

4. Or best to just run with current set up and avoid making too many changes again, and setting up even more 301's after having just done so ?

Many Thanks

Dan

[Dan-Lawrence]

Hi Aleyda

Sorry 1 more question:

Ive noticed that the new pages have started to rank well already.

In this case is it still advisable to 'fetch as google' in GWT the old redirected urls or, since the new pages have been found and ranking well, best to not fetch the old urls ?

Best Rgds

Dan

[Dan-Lawrence]

ok great many thanks Aleyda !!

[Aleyda]

You shouldn't remove them. If you implement the 301-redirects and do everything what's described before, although it might take some time, they should be eliminated from the index while referring their value with the redirects.

[Dan-Lawrence]

Great thanks Aleyda

I have already done most of those things except for fetching as googlebot in gwt, which ill do next.

Please confirm then that theres no need to remove the old urls in GWT at any point and they should just 'fade away' ?

many thanks

dan

[Aleyda]

Hi Dan,

Despite it's not a domain migration there are a lot of aspects that apply in this situation too! For example:

• You should monitor is that up update your internal (menu, content from your own site) and external links (at least the most important) towards the old URLs and target to the new ones.
• Make sure that the 301-redirects have been correctly implemented (in a URL to URL basis) to the relevant pages and make sure the new ones are still relevant and optimized for the same keywords than the previous ones.
• Generate a new XML sitemap with your new URLs and resubmit them in GWT.
• Resubmit your Old URLs with the fetch as Googlebot option in GWT to make sure Google knows about the update and identifies the 301-redirects.
• Monitor the (organic search and general) traffic and visibility (with GA and GWT) that the old URLs still receive vs. the new ones. If everything has been correctly implemented then there should be a trend that goes down with your old URLs and one that goes up with your new ones. If not, check which ones are still receiving a high amount of traffic and why: if they're still linked from an external source and hasn't been correctly redirected, etc.

Follow the previous recommendations and you should be able to minimize the effects of the changes.

Thanks,

Aleyda

[Dan-Lawrence]

Many Thanks Aleyda for your detailed reply

In this case though its not a site migration just a redesign but thanks for your great info ill use for future reference when tackling any migrations

In the case of a redesign where the urls have been changed (and hence why set up the 301's) would you recommend after aproximately 2 weeks that you should 'fetch as google' in GWT the old page urls and then few days after that remove the old urls ? (or should they just disapear eventually ?)

Many Thanks

Dan

[Aleyda]

Hi again Dan,

I would recommend that you first follow this checklist so you make sure your whole migration is SEO friendly and that you're not forgetting anything in the migration process and that you validate everything well.

The best process is the one the most straightforward one: do the migration as simple as possible (from one domain to the other with 301 redirects) and avoid changing many things at the same time. Please keep in mind that redirects will help but is not the only thing you should do, take a look at the checklist and you'll see.

It's actually natural that in the following days after the migration your rankings drop, search engines need time to crawl and index again the URLs in the new site, identify that you have moved your content from the old domain to the new one and with the help of the 301-redirects.

Among the additional things you should do to have an SEO friendly migration that you'll see in the checklist are that you should notify Google that you've moving your domain through Google Webmaster Tools (there's an option for this), create a new profile and generate a sitemap for the new domain, verify that the 301-redirects are all well implemented, that the content relevance is also kept in those pages for the keywords they were ranking with, that external and internal links going to the old urls are updated and now go to the new ones, prioritizing those landing pages that had the most highly relevant traffic, trying to change the minimum from the structure -keep one change at a time to be able to identify any issue-, check and follow-up on crawling errors). If you do everything what is recommended on the checklist little by little you should see how you start regaining your rankings again, but you need to give time (usually at least a couple of months if everything goes right).

So, there are a lot of other factors and I will make sure to follow the recommendations to minimize the negative impact, although is impossible of not having it. What is definitely not recommended is that you are updating many times your URLs or that you redirect many times, this is why this process should be effectively planned and designed validating all the aspects from the beginning and making sure that the more relevance signals you can keep (like the keywords in the appropriate elements of the pages) the best it is and making one change at a time makes things much more simple (first migrate, then one the effects of the migration have gone you can start optimizing and changing the new domain architecture) otherwise it can get really messy and this is what you're already experiencing I'm afraid.

I hope this helps! Aleyda

[Highland]

301 chains aren't ideal but, as long as they result in a real page, it's OK. The danger is you get a bad 301 in there which results in an infinite loop (A points to B points to C points to A).

I would avoid changing URLs on a frequent basis. A 301 is chaos for pages and results. Sometimes a page will inherit all of its predecessor's rank in a timely fashion but I've also seen where it takes time. You should expect some rankings drop after a URL structure change. It should recover in time but, again, there's no telling how fast that happens. As long as you can afford a short term drop, I say let it ride.