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
-
Page auto directing to /#/id0 but no 301 in place?
I'm a little perplexed and hope someone technically savvy can help. Wordpress site. Our page: www.curveball-media.co.uk/animation Redirects to: www.curveball-media.co.uk/animation/#/id0 I cannot see any reason for this. No 301s, nothing.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | curveballmedia0 -
Advice for structuring hotel website
Hey guys, I am currently setting up a hotel booking website and I'm not so sure how to structure it. I have landing pages for: 1. Cities
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | baresound
2. Sights
3. States The main keywords are mainly "Hotels in Cityname" or "Hotels near Sightname". What would be the best SEO friendly way of structuring the url? https://hotels-example.com/hotels/cities/cityname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels/sights/sightname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels/states/statename or https://hotels-example.com/hotels/cityname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels/sightname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels/statename or https://hotels-example.com/hotels-in-cityname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels-in-sightname
https://hotels-example.com/hotels-in-statename Or are there better ways of structuring it or am I just overthinking it? I would greatly appreciate any advice and suggestions 🙂 Best, Max0 -
A 302 Redirect Question | Events Page Updates
Hello Moz World, I have a client that has a TON, like close to a thousand pages that have a 302 redirect set up. After further investigation, I found that every month they update their events page & Demo Request page, and the old events pages still exist but, get a 302 redirect to the updated page. From what I gather, this is a default mechanism set up by the hosting provider. My questions; is this an example of when to use a Rel=canonical? Also, is there a method for integrating this without having to go into every page and integrate the code snippet? And Lastly, How should I go about ensuring this doesn't happen in the future? Thanks ahead of time, you guys rock! B/R Will H.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarketingChimp100 -
New websites
Hi Moz community, My company updated and used a new developer to build and re-design their charity websites: www.runforcharity.com, www.cycleforcharity.com and www.sportforcharity.com. This sites were "re-launched" at the beggining of December 2015 and I have now been able to get a good 6 weeks worth of data. I've been religiously using Moz.com for a couple of years and I use it simply for SEO purposes. Our websites are built upon organic traffic being driven to them and I have noticed that the PA on the new sites has taken a hammering. They all appear to have a PA of 1 and I'm at a loss why? It appears that no page has h1 text? Would this be an issue with the developer or something the content team is doing wrong? Any help of advice would be much appreciated. Many thanks Ryan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bennerya0 -
Redirecting thin content city pages to the state page, 404s or 301s?
I have a large number of thin content city-level pages (possibly 20,000+) that I recently removed from a site. Currently, I have it set up to send a 404 header when any of these removed city-level pages are accessed. But I'm not sending the visitor (or search engine) to a site-wide 404 page. Instead, I'm using PHP to redirect the visitor to the corresponding state-level page for that removed city-level page. Something like: if (this city page should be removed) { header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rriot
header("Location:http://example.com/state-level-page")
exit();
} Is it problematic to send a 404 header and still redirect to a category-level page like this? By doing this, I'm sending any visitors to removed pages to the next most relevant page. Does it make more sense to 301 all the removed city-level pages to the state-level page? Also, these removed city-level pages collectively have very little to none inbound links from other sites. I suspect that any inbound links to these removed pages are from low quality scraper-type sites anyway. Thanks in advance!2 -
New Website - Un-natural link warning with 2 weeks of going live
I have a customer who has a website, 8 years old. The business has changed, and he has launched a new website (and sub-business_ to handle a particular service. As such the main website will no longer be handling the new service. For purpose of example; The service in question had it's own are set aside on his website, so what we have done is to 301 that part of the site (a single URL) to the homepage of his new website. Old Business Site
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | makeusawebsite
Service 1
Services 2 (301 to new site)
Service 3 New Business Site This worked well, and within a week his new site was gaining traffic for the service keyword. However, we have now had a un-natural link wartning in webmaster tools. The old page on the old site had minimal links to it (around 400). It had a page authority of 42, and 142 linking domains. The new website has been live a few weeks now, and has had 3 links to it, all genuine. He was on page one for the new business name, and is now page 6. Has anyone else ever seen this happen, and how should we deal with it. We could of course remove the 301 redirect and put in a recon-request, but the 301 seems like thje right thing to have done, and is genuine. Any advice greatly appreciated.0 -
New Site Structure and 404s. Should I redirect everything?
Hi fellow Mozzers, I've recently re-released a site and also took the opportunity to change/clean up the URL structure. As a result of this Google is starting to report many 404s such as below; blog/tag/get-fit/ blog/tag/top-presents/ Most of these 404 errors are from tag or category pages which simply don't exist any more (because they were unnecessary, crap or irrelevant). Although there's also a few posts I've removed. My question is whether it's worth redirecting all these tags and pages to the root directory of the site's new blog (as there isn't really a new page which is similar or appropriate) or just to leave them as 404 errors. Bearing in mind; They don't really rank for anything There's little if any links pointing to these pages Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeterAlexLeigh0 -
Local + National seo for a new website
Hi, Look for idea for a website owner selling training courses on painting , he wants to be ranked locally first but also national on google Serp (only one physical address available). His domain name is rather a branded one (no kw in it), and the website is recent (1 year) . An audit will be focused on competitor rankings to find niche KW. I 'd advise : - For local : optimized Google address listing + local business directories + optumized page with local emphasis (shema.org ..) For national : to make unique relevant content pages with keywords geographically targeted (according audit), for instance for a specific town, to include terms related to this particular local market etc.. 1/ What 's else could i suggest to start a national ranking ? 2/ Have you heard of a tool to make distant queries on Google ? I mean , i leave in Madrid (spain) and want to see google serp as if i was in Barcelona ? (seems difficult as google uses Ip). Tks in advance for your advices...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mlc0