New Website Look/Structure - Should I Redirect or Update Pages w/ Quality Inbound Links
-
This questing is regarding an ecommerce website that I hand wrote(html) in 1997. One of the first click and buy websites, with cart/admin system that I also developed.
After all this time, the Old plain HTML look just doesnt cut it. I just updated to XHTML w/ a very modern look, and believe the structured data will index better. All products and current category pages will have the identical vrls taken from the old version. I decided to go with the switch after manual penalty, which has since been removed... I figured now is the time to update.
My big question is that over the years, a lot of my backlinks came from products/news that are either no longer relevant or just not available. The pages do exist, but can only be found from the Outbound Link Source.
For SEO purposes, I have thought a few things I can do but can't decide which one is the best choice. Any Insight or suggestions would be Awesome!
1. Redirect the old link to the most relevant page in my current catalog.
2. Add my new header/footer to old page(this will add a navigation bar w/ brands/cats/etc)
3. Simply add a nice new image to the top of these pages linking home & update any broken/irrelevant links. I was also considering adding just the very top 2 inches of my header(logo,search box, phone, address)
*note, some of these pages do receive some traffic. Nothing huge, but consider the 50+ pages, it ads up.
-
Yeah because of the age of my website, there was just news that was picked up YEARS ago... a lot are hi-pr links, i just want to make sure I do the right thing with em because as it stands right now any traffic gained from these now is 75%+ bounce rate. Good anchor text for most, 301 is what I was thinking about first... then i thought, maybe just wrap the pages in my new header and hope the searches dont remove or derank these random pages.
Again - We are talking about 50 pages, which bring in about 4k clicks a month... Albeit not huge, just didnt know what to do with them.
One more Idea - I make a new different header that used a "nofollow" on all links for all my category & brand pages, then use it to wrap these old pages... The idea would be to preserve the "old content" , and hopefully keep the pages ranked #1 for their respective low volume searches...
Would that even work?
-
301 the old pages to the new pages that are most relevant to the pages so that user experience should not get hurt!
**If links are spammy then try not to redirect (at least without disavowing bad quality links)
-
I vote to 301 the crusty old links and be done with it. I don't think you'll be able to squeeze much more juice out of them in any other fashion so just set the 301s and move on.
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
-
Someone redirected his website to ours
Hi all, I have strange issue as someone redirected website http://bukmachers.pl to ours https://legalnibukmacherzy.pl We don't know exactly what to do with it. I checked backlinks and the website had some links which now redirect to us. I also checked this website on wayback machine and back in 2017 this website had some low quality content but in 2018 they made similar redirection to current one but to different website (our competitor). Can such redirection be harmful for us? Should we do something with this or leave it, as google stop encouraging to disavow low quality links.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kahuna_Charles1 -
Revert to old domain w/ better DA/PA or stick with new one?
I switched from one domain to another because I wanted a domain that had our company name so it was more brand-y. However, the old domain had better DA/PA. Originally I set up a global 301 from the old to the new, but now I'm finding that I actually need to set up individual 301's from each URL of the old site, or at least from each page. The new domain is http://www.bohmkalish.com and the old domain was http://www.ssdlawcalifornia.com. However, I am using Wix so it looks like I can't always do URL-URL 301's, although I can redirect any URL to a page on the new website. The problem is that, in some cases, the content on the new site is different (or, for example, I can only link a particular blog post on the old site back to the new site's blog's main page). How closely do URLS/pages need to resemble each other for link juice to be transferred? Also, should I try to set up all these redirects manually or bite the bullet and go back to using the old domain? The problem is that I did a lot of beginner SEO junk for the new domain, like submitting to a few higher-quality directories, and getting our website on various industry resource sites, etc. I'd need to re-do this entirely if I go back to the old page. What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BohmKalish1230 -
Does link equity to a page that is 301'd to a new domain pass juice on?
If we build some quality inbound links to certain pages, that are a later date 301'd to another domain, does any equity or juice get transferred across? Or is the inbound link's value wasted? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Quick wins for new page
Hi! I recently put this page live for a new client targeting the term 'hospitality IT' in the UK. http://www.antana.co.uk/hospitality-IT.html I've done a bit of guest blog writing and the page is currently #10. There are very links to the site overall, and only a handful to the page itself. Should I focus on building links to the root domain or the page, and is there any other quick changes I can make to give it a boost? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
Is 301 redirect suggested on pagination pages
Hi - Due to pagination the default page of site is coming in 2 url with - ?page=1/ sub-url and /sub-url is 301 a recommended solution due to this pagination urls Also - is it required to create separate title and meta description of every pagination page We are taking specifically in context of our discounts and offer section http://www.mycarhelpline.com/index.php?option=com_offers&view=list&Itemid=9
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Too many on page links - product pages
Some of the pages on my client's website have too many on page links because they have lists of all their products. Is there anything I should/could do about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlightAnalytics0 -
Redirecting www.example.com to www.example.com/directory/
Hi All, There's been some internal debate going back and forth about redirecting the homepage of a site to a directory. There are a few different POVs circulating, one of which is that it's no different than redirecting to a /index page. Basically, the homepage is ranking for the keyword that we want the directory to rank for but I can't seem to justify placing this type of redirect. The content on both pages is different, but for the term both the homepage and the directory make sense to rank. Has anyone ever done anything like this before? Can anyone see any reason to do something like this? I believe this move would dilute the link value we currently have going to the homepage and potentially cause us to lose our #2 slot with the homepage in favor of a lower spot with the directory. I'd love to hear any thoughts on this/learn if anyone has experimented with this tactic. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamieCottle280 -
WWW vs Non-WWW/Moving a site to a new CMS/Redirect all of the previous URLs
We are working on a new design for a website, which is currently on a CMS that has non-seo-friendly URLs. There is no redirection of 'www' to non-www or vice versa, or handling of homepage redirection so there is only one instance of 'home'. To move the site in the future, all of these URLs will have to be redirected to their new, and I hope, seo-friendly counterparts. Is it prudent now to redirect the four home page links so there is only one? and to redirect all non-www to 'www' so there is only one instance of each page? Or should I leave it and redirect all of them when the time comes?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | haan_seo0