Will I lose traffic from Google for re-directing a page?
-
I’m currently planning to a retire a discontinued product and put a 301 redirect to a related product (although not identical). The thing is, I’m still getting significant traffic from people searching for the old product by name. Would Google send this traffic to the new pages via the re-direct? Is Google likely to display the new page in place of the old page for similar queries or will it serve other content? I’d like to answer this question so that I can decide between the two following approaches:
1) Retiring the old page immediately and putting a 301 redirect to the new related pages. This will have the advantage of transferring the value of any link signals / referring traffic. Traffic will also land on the new pages directly without having to click through from another page. We would have a dynamic message telling users that the old product had been retired depending on whether they had visited out site before.
2) Keep the old product pages temporarily so that we don’t lose the traffic from the search engines. We would then change the old pages to advise users that the old product was now retired, but that we have other products that might solve their problems. When this organic traffic decreases over time, then we will proceed with the re-direct as above. I am worried though that the old product pages might outrank the new product pages.
I’d really appreciate some advice with this. I’ve been reading lots of articles, but it seems like there are different opinions on this. I understand that I will lose between 10% - 15% of page rank as per the Matt Cutts video.
-
Thanks both - it's interesting that there is no 'standard' method, but it makes sense that this would very much depend on the situation.
-
Its a question of relevancy and user experience. If i do a search for "blue widgets" and see your blue widget link in the SERP but get taken to orange doodads instead... well, I'll be disappointed and bounce. That page will eventually stop ranking for "blue widget". So when doing a 301 you should make it as relevant as possible. If your blue widget link redirects to red widgets... well, that's closer. I might still bounce but there's a chance I'll stay to look at the widget. If the blue widget page redirected to "Blue Widget 2.0" then that's about as relevant a 301 as you can have. It will likely continue ranking (though the old link in the SERPs will likely swap out for the new one eventually).
Instead of doing redirects, there's always the option to keep the page up with a discontinued message and offer links to similar products on the page. If you don't want people bouncing because they were redirected to something they weren't expecting but really want to enhance the link equity and rankings of a specific page, you could keep "blue widgets" up with a discontinued message to "blue widget 2.0" and add a rel=canonical tag from blue widget to blue widget 2.0 to pass equity. Eventually the new page will swap for the old one in rankings, it will likely lower bounces caused by being shunted to a page you didn't expect, it gives people time to switch any direct links to the new page, and then after a few months you 301 the old page to the new page.
-
Redirecting the old URL with a 301 redirect will send the users to the new URL. All the link juice from links pointing towards the old URL will also be pointed towards your new URL.
Google will keep the old URL in the index for a while, but it will disappear from the search results in a matter of weeks.
One thing to not though, make sure that users searching for the old product end up on a page that is useful for them. If i'm looking for a blue bicycle and i get redirected to a red bicycle page than it might be a related product, but it's not what i'm searching for.
This harms the user experience and will give users a negative association to your brand.
For each product that you retire you should make a decision between- Redirecting the page to a different URL
- Giving them a custom 404 page
By customizing a 404 page you can help users in a tremendous way if done right. Depending on the situation either of these two choices can be the best one.
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
-
Do I need to remove pages that don't get any traffic from the index?
Hi, Do I need to remove pages that don't get any traffic from the index? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
Why isn't Google caching our pages?
Hi everyone, We have a new content marketing site that allows anyone to publish checklists. Each checklist is being indexed by Google, but Google is not storing a cached version of any of our checklists. Here's an example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Checkli
https://www.checkli.com/checklists/ggc/a-girls-guide-to-a-weekend-in-south-beach Missing Cache:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DfFNPP6WBhsJ:https://www.checkli.com/checklists/ggc/a-girls-guide-to-a-weekend-in-south-beach+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us Why is this happening? How do we fix it? Is this hurting the SEO of our website.0 -
Why isn't my uneven link flow among index pages causing uneven search traffic?
I'm working with a site that has millions of pages. The link flow through index pages is atrocious, such that for the letter A (for example) the index page A/1.html has a page authority of 25 and the next pages drop until A/70.html (the last index page listing pages that start with A) has a page authority of just 1. However, the pages linked to from the low page authority index pages (that is, the pages whose second letter is at the end of the alphabet) get just as much traffic as the pages linked to from A/1.html (the pages whose second letter is A or B). The site gets a lot of traffic and has a lot of pages, so this is not just a statistical biip. The evidence is overwhelming that the pages from the low authority index pages are getting just as much traffic as those getting traffic from the high authority index pages. Why is this? Should I "fix" the bad link flow problem if traffic patterns indicate there's no problem? Is this hurting me in some other way? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GilReich0 -
How would Google reach internal pages on Zales with Lazy Load?
Hi, I encountered the following page on Zales:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
http://engagementring.theprestigediamondcollection.com/NewEngagementRing/NewEring.aspx As you scroll down more items pop up (the well known Pinterest style).
Would Google bot be able to enter the product pages? I don't assume the bot "scrolls"... Thanks0 -
Merging Sites: Will redirecting the old homepage to an internal page on the new site cause issues?
I've ended up with two sites which have similar content (but not duplicate) and target similar keywords, rather than trying to maintain two sites I would like to merge the sites together. The old site is more of a traditional niche site and targets a particular set of keywords on its homepage, the new site is more of an authority site with a magazine type homepage and targets the same set of keywords from an internal page. My question is: Should I redirect the old site's homepage to the relevant internal page on the new website...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lara_dar
...or should I redirect the old site's homepage to the new site's homepage? (the old site's homepage backlinks are a mixture of partial match keyword anchor text, naked URLs and branded anchor text) I am in two minds (a & b!) (a) Redirecting to the internal page would be great for ranking as there are some decent backlinks and the content is similar (b) But usually when you do a 301 redirect the homepage usually directs to the new homepage and some of the old site's links are related to the domain rather than the keyword (e.g. http://www.site.com) and some people will be looking for the site's homepage. What do you think? Your help is much appreciated (and hope this makes sense...!)0 -
Using a 302 re-direct from http://www to https://www to secure customer data
My website sends Customers from a http://www.mysite.com/features page to a https://www.mysite.com/register page which is an account sign-up form using a 302 re-direct. Any page that collects customer data has an authenticated SSL certificate to protect any data on the site. Is this 302 the most appropriate way of doing this as the weekly crawl picks it up as being bad practise? Is there a better alternative?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ubique0 -
Google places page related places links to competitor
I noticed on a lot of Google places pages i create for my clients Google seems to put related places links at the bottom of the page which links directly to their competitors. how can i remove control or avoid these links been placed? Also any tips on improving the places page would be greatly appreciated thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bristolweb0 -
It Doesn’t Matter Where You Point Links, Google Will Pick The Page
Hi Guys, I have a site that ranks quite well in a very competitive vertical and the company is now planning to do a site relaunch. SEO is very important to them and all of the sites within in the top 10 have the primary keyword in the urls example search: key1 key2 site.com/key1-key2/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VividLime
site.com/ key1key2/
site.com/key1key2.php Our site is the only one that is positioned within the top 10 without the keyword in the url and homepage only listing so the top 10 result looks like search: key1 key2 site.com/key1-key2/ site.com/ key1key2/ site.com/key1key2.php oursite.com sitekey2.com/key1-key2/
key1site.com/key1key2.html Currently we do not have a separate landing page for the target keyword hence why link building is focused on the homepage. As part of the consultation, I recommended we create a landing page for our primary keyword so we get **oursite.com/key1-key2/ **and shift the on-page keyword balance towards this page. the hope is, we get search: key1 key2 site.com/key1-key2/ site.com/ key1key2/ site.com/key1key2.php oursite.com/key1-key2 sitekey2.com/key1-key2/
key1site.com/key1key2.html Would Google simply replace my current domain only list for the most relevant url for a term? Does anyone have any experience with this? Or would i need to build links into the new url for the change to take place. what i'm hoping for and expecting, is for somthing like this to happen http://www.seowizz.net/2011/04/it-doesnt-matter-where-you-point-links-google-will-pick-the-page.html0