301 Redirects?
-
Hello fello Mozzers,
I have just read a post about 301 redirects on the Blog. A great read and has provided me with a bit more insight and highlights what could be a potential issue for a managed site I look after.
On this website I manage, I have inherited a .htaccess file with literally hundreds of non file based existant 301 links.
e.g. redirect 301 /dealerbrandname http://www.domain.com/
So we have lots of dealers and they place a link on there site to http://www.domain.com/dealerbrandname
We then redirect it to the homepage or a relevant topic page along with some tracking variables. Is this likely causing significant issues, based on the post I read I imagine it will be, but anymore thoughts on this would be hugely helpful.
CheersTim
-
I think he's talking about the tactic of removing pages and simply issuing a 301 back to the homepage. That tactic is indeed devalued. If you're 301ing to a page that's on-topic it's not as bad. In this case, you're not trying to keep PR, just bounce. Remember, also, that a 301 is not perfect. It might not transfer all the link juice through.
As I said before, it's ideal if you had content on the URLs they're actually linking to. From an SEO standpoint, that's gold. Dealers link to a page on your site with unique content (hopefully they're nofollowing these links). Google eats that kind of stuff up.
-
Hi Highland.
This was the article in question - http://moz.com/blog/save-your-website-with-redirects
And this was the statement that made me worry as we have numerous dealer redirects doing this kind of action. Unless I am interpreting it wrongly.
_Savvy SEOs have known for a long time that redirecting a huge number of pages to a home page isn’t the best policy, even when using a 301. Recent statements by Google representatives suggest that Google may go a step further and treat bulk redirects to the home page of a website as 404s, or soft 404s at best. _
This means that instead of passing link equity through the 301, Google may simply drop the old URLs from its index without passing any link equity at all.
Cheers - Tim
-
It would be best if http://www.domain.com/dealerbrandname were a real page and not simply a redirect (you're getting natural link juice to it after all) but I can't think of any issues in bouncing them to some deeper page.
Can you elaborate on what this blog said to make you think your current setup is bad?
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
-
What happens when we change redirects to pass linkjuice to different pages from backlinks? Google's stand?
Hi Moz community, We have employed different pages (topics) at same URLs for years. This has brought different backlinks to same page which has led to non relevancy of backlinks. Now we are planning to redirect some URLs which may improve or drop rankings of certain pages. If we roll back the redirects in case of ranking drop, will there be any negative impact from Google? Does Google notice anything about redirect changes beside just passing pagerank from backlinks? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Can we ignore "broken links" without redirecting to "new pages"?
Let's say we have reaplced www.website.com/page1 with www.website.com/page2. Do we need to redirect page1 to page2 even page1 doesn't have any back-links? If it's not a replacement, can we ignore a "lost page"? Many websites loose hundreds of pages periodically. What's Google's stand on this. If a website has replaced or lost hundreds of links without reclaiming old links by redirection, will that hurts?
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
301 from one domain to another. Possible?
Hi all, I'm looking to re-direct one domain to another so that the content can be edited more easily under one CMS. Is this possible or will search engines penalise you for such a move? Not overly worried about losing link juice by implementing a 301 because the website we're hoping to re-direct from is a new page. Cheers
Algorithm Updates | | SwanseaMedicine0 -
301 redirect to URL plus anchor tag???
Hi - my company has just had a site redesign completed, and our "old" site we have landing pages for a full product line. The new design has taken the content from those landing pages and placed them into one long scrolling page. We currently rank well on the "old" landing pages but now all that content is contained in a single page with anchor tags throughout attached to the headings. Can you set up 301's to anchor tags? Example: old site www.mysite.com/products/automotive/auto-parts.html new site: www.mysite.com/products/automotive#auto-parts
Algorithm Updates | | Jenny10 -
Question About : Redirecting Old Pages to New & More Relevant Ones
I'm looking over a friends website, which used to have great natural ranking for some big keywords. Those ranking & CTR's have dropped a lot, so the next thing I checked into was top selling Brand & Category pages. Its seems like every year or so a New Page was constructed for each brand... Many of which have high quality and natural inbound links. However, the pages no longer have products and simply look outdated. I'm trying to figure out if they should place redirects on all the old pages to a new URL which is more seo friendly. Example Links : http://www.xyz.com/nike2004.html , http://www.xyz.com/nike-spring2006.html , http://www.xyz.com/2011-nike-shoes.html - (have quality inbound links, bad content) .... Basically would it be advantageous to place redirects on all of these example pages to a new one that will be more permanent... http://www.xyz.com/nike-shoes.html I'm also looking at about 15 brands and maybe 100+ old/outdated urls, so I wasn't sure if I should do this & to what extent. Considering many of the brand pages do rank, but not as well as they should... Any input would help, thanks
Algorithm Updates | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Redirecting Blog WITHOUT .htaccess
Hello Mozzers! I currently have a WordPress blog on a subdomain that I'd like to redirect to a subdirectory. Unfortunately, the CMS that I am on will not allow me implement a rewrite rule because we do not have access to the server (It's on Shopify, which is a fully hosted solution). If we set up a 301 from blog.domain.com to domain.com/blog, will all my link juice be preserved? Or is it better just to keep it on the subdomain for now? I'd like to avoid importing all my content into Shopify's native blog, if I can, just because we may be moving to another CMS shortly. Thank you in advance! -Alima Team
Algorithm Updates | | okatieo0 -
301'ing away from an exact match domain.
Hi Moz Community! My website gets just over 50% of its traffic from ranking in the top 3 in over 10 countries for my exact match keyword domain. 80% + from keywords related to the exact match domain. We are now looking at doing a to 301 re-direct to a new domain to start a fresh branding to the site to increase scope and expand. This would involve removing the keyword from the homepage and domain entirely . However. Considering all competitors ranking for our main keyword, have the keyword in their domain as either a subdomain to or in their root domain and in their homepage content, would this make ranking without the keyword in domain & content hard? I have found a very similar example that has done so, so I guess the answer to that question is no its not. about 65-70% of our anchor text on our backlinks is for our domain keyword. Can anyone advise how best to go about maintaining rankings after 301ing or how best to go about 301ing to make sure that we can maintain the rankings for our main keyword! Any advise at all would be greatly appreciated, Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | howiex10 -
301 Redirects
Moz pro have crawled my site a few times now and is reporting 105 cases of 301 redirect. Looking at some examples IE http://www.indigocarhire.co.uk/faq/young-driver-car-hire/bromley redirected to http://www.indigocarhire.co.uk/faq/young-driver-car-hire/bromley/ only difference i can see is the traling /.... there is nothing set up in webmaster or in the website itself, so how come this and another 104 are being flagged as 301 Appreciate any help or advice Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | RGOnline0