If you remove a 301-re-direct, will there be a corresponding drop in traffic?
-
We built a better version of a search results page and re-directed from the old search results page to the landing page, and are seeing a huge uptick in traffic. Wondering if we remove the re-direct and 404 the original search results page if we'll see a drop in traffic.
I ran the search results page through open site explorer and Google Webmaster tools, and there aren't many links, but the search results page used to see quite a bit of of traffic over the past couple of years.
-
If you are seeing a large increase in traffic as the result of the redirects, then removing them will reverse that shift in traffic.
If it's SE referrals from long tail keywords going through the redirect, then you're going to definitely feel the hit from moving to 404's. Sure, your newly created pages may replace that traffic eventually, but the 301's are helping them do that now. Just the traffic standpoint is one reason, but passing any and (dang near all) of the link equity through to the new pages in the process.
-
I understand the "don't fix it if its broken" -but, I am wondering if there is any documentation about removing 301 re-directs after the proper URL is indexed.
-
I would imagine that you would see drop n traffic if you began to receive traffic immediately a upon creating the 301. I would leave it in place unless theres a really compelling reason (that I can't think of) to remove it.
-
Why fix it if it isn't broken?
Meaning, why do you want to remove the redirects? I see little benefit from serving a 404 page in stead of redirecting to a better suited landing page.
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
-
301 redirect recovery
Hello Please understand that English is poor. I used to run a site called A This time, I am running a site called B. I need to set up a temporary 302 redirect from A to B
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jinseok
I accidentally set a 301 redirect Site A has many spam links
For now I have removed the 301 redirect source to B. Will A's spam links affect site B?
For your reference, Site B is putting a lot of effort into SEO. Help me.0 -
Redirecting traffic to https
Hey! i was wondering, should i force all traffic to https address? i know that overall a better secured website will rank better since it earns more trust from users which means less bounce rate and the list of benefits is endless..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SharonEKG
but should i FORCE ALL traffic to a https? or maybe only force a http to https? or not at all?2 -
Will these 301's get me penalized?
Hey everyone, We're redesigning parts of our site and I have a tricky question that I was hoping to get some sound advice about. We have a blog (magazine) with subcategory pages that are quite thin. We are going to restructure the blog (magazine) and feature different concert and have new subcategories. So we are trying to decide where to redirect the existing subcategory pages, e.g. Entertainment, Music, Sports, etc. www.charged.fm/magazine Our new ticket category pages ( Concert Tickets, NY Yankees Tickets, OKC Thunder Tickets, etc) are going to feature a tab called 'Latest News' where we are thinking of 301 redirecting the old magazine subcategory pages. So Sports News from the blog would 301 to Sports Tickets (# Latest News tab). See screenshot below for example. So my question is: Will this look bad in the eyes of the GOOG? Are these closely related enough to redirect? Are there any blatant pitfalls that I'm not seeing? It seems like a win/win because we are making a rich Performer page with News, Bio, Tickets and Schedule and getting to reallocate the link juice that was being wasted in an pretty much useless page that was allowed to become to powerful. Gotta keep those pages in check! Thoughts appreciated. Luke Cn6HPpH.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | keL.A.xT.o0 -
Ranking EMD to 301 for branding is it better to leave it as or 301 it?
We have a client about to enroll with us for SEO. The client has about 50 EMD sites, out of which 9 are ranking. An EMD has [Exact] match anchoring naturally, the sites in question are all EMDs the link profiles show it. The client wants to 301 the EMDs to a brand page.. We would want to 301, 9 EMD sites to the new site. Here is the thing, if the site domain has an exact match to the anchor text profile, when we 301 the page to www.brand.com/EMD will the link profile matter? One of the EMDs is on page one spot 2 if we do this change, will Google look at the new brand page (www.brand.com/EMD) as an unnatural link profile?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
How do you find all of your 301 redirects?
I would like a full list of 301 redirects that we have on our site. Is there a way to export it? I tried Bing Webmaster tools and the list was incomplete. We use IIS. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Google Re-Index or multiple 301 Redirects on the server?
Over a year ago we moved a site from Blogspot that was adding dates in the URL's (i.e.. blog/2012/08/10/) Additionally we've removed category folders (/category, /tag, etc). Overall if I add all these redirects (from the multiple date options, etc) I'm concerned it might be an overload on the server? After talking with the server team they had suggested using something like 'BWP Google Sitemaps' on our Wordpress site, which would allow Google some time to re-index our site. What do you suggest we do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seointern0 -
Drop in Traffic on Friday April 20th.
Just curious if anyone noticed a drop in traffic last friday. I got hammered with about a 20% drop overall. Didn't know if there was an update or what. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | astahl110