Can new content be added to a url which has a 301 redirect?
-
I am working on a site which is currently being redesigned. The home page currently ranks highly for relevant search terms, although on the new site the content on this page will be removed.
The solution I was considering, to preserve rankings, was to move the content on the home page to a new url, and use a 301 redirect to help preserve rankings for that particular page.
The question I have therefore, is am I able to add new content to the home page, and have this page freshly indexed accordingly?
Any thoughts or suggestions would be most welcome.
Thanks,
Matt.
-
If mywebsite.com is 301'ed to some other page, then mywebsite.com will no longer be reached buy requests, so the content will never be read.
The content when talking about a 301is irrelevant, all a 301 does is redirect the request. when google follows a link to your old page it is redirected to the new page and the link juice will now fall on the new page. The content on the new page is read instead,
-
Hope I am not missing something obvious but if you are 301ing mywebsite.com then your visitors are not going to see the new homepage let alone the bots.... right?
If the phrases you are ranking for now are still relevant to the site then I would try to find a way to incorporate at least some of that content on the new homepage and then link to the full old homepage content (or a modified version of it if more suitable) from the new homepage - this new page is in effect becoming a landing page for these specific keywords (assuming that the new homepage does not manage to keep the rankings itself).
-
If you are considering 301'ing the existing homepage to a new url, I would not recommend it. In most sites, the longstanding homepage is the most authoritative page. 301ing it will not pass all of that authority to the new page.
If you like the content on the old homepage, then just put it on a different url and at some point Google will figure that out. If it doesn't or takes a while, you are no worse off. Remember, the content on the existing homepage will not perform as well on a new url. But, it sounds like you've already made the choice to make the homepage content different, so that is water under the bridge.
-
Moving the content over and 301ing the old URL will do that. You'll see a dip in ranking, then a recovery period (usually weeks as opposed to months). That's your best bet when you are forced to make a move like that. Ideally, you'd find a way to keep the content where it is, but if that's not possible, then the 301 will do.
-
Thanks for your response William.
It was more the second scenario I was referring to, but to clarify.
Content from mywebsite.com would be moved to mywebsite.com/new-url, with 301 redirect added to mywebsite.com
New content would be added to mywebsite.com
Thanks for your clarification that bots would henceforth ignore mywebsite.com; naturally this is really not what I want.
So, really just wondering if there is an effective alternative I can use. As mentioned, the current home page is ranking well, but the redesign necessarily involves removing the current content.
Essentially I'm looking for a way to preserve rankings...
Thanks, Matt.
-
If you are referring to adding new content to the new homepage after the old home page is redirected, than yes. You can add additional content to pages that have 301s redirecting to them and they will update in the index.
If you are referring to adding content on the old homepage that is 301'd and have it update on the new page, that will not work. Browsers and bots read the .htaccess and move on. Bots won't crawl that old URL anymore.
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
-
How to add 301 for many urls
Hi I need to redirect many urls in a website and I was wondering if instead of doing it one by one there is a way to get it the other way round.... Redirect all pages but a few. I get a feeling this is not possible, but prefer asking just in case. Thanks for any feedback
Technical SEO | | turismodevino10 -
Duplicate Content - Different URLs and Content on each
Seeing a lot of duplicate content instances of seemingly unrelated pages. For instance, http://www.rushimprint.com/custom-bluetooth-speakers.html?from=topnav3 is being tracked as a duplicate of http://www.rushimprint.com/custom-planners-diaries.html?resultsperpg=viewall. Does anyone else see this issue? Is there a solution anyone is aware of?
Technical SEO | | ClaytonKendall0 -
Migration to New Domain - 301 Redirect Questions
My client is migrating their site to a new domain. I just did a big redesign, including URL structure change, and 301s from old URLs to new URLs. Now they want a new name, so we're moving forward with a new domain name. However, we're going to keep the site on the current domain while we ease customers into the new name. During that time, I'm going to be building links to the new domain name and 301 Redirecting that new one to the current domain name. Then, once we migrate the site to the new domain name, I'm then going to redirect the current domain name to the new domain name. So, my question(s) is/are: Is the above process the best way to use 301 redirects to to build links to the new domain while we transition everything? Should I (or can I) do 3 redirects from the oldest URLs, to the current URLs then to the new URLs? General question... I can't seem to find this anywhere online, but what is the best practice for what order URLs should be in in the htaccess file? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Kenny-King0 -
Questions about the Sandbox and 301 Redirects
Does the sandbox still exist? What if you have a brand new URL and do a 301 redirect from another website because the name of the service business changed? Thanks for any insight and help.
Technical SEO | | SDSLaw0 -
301 redirect
Hi All, I have just completed a 301 redirect on my site http://www.klinehimalaya.com and I was just starting a new campaign on SEOmoz and I got this message: Roger has detected a problem:
Technical SEO | | gorillakid
We have detected that the domain www.klinehimalaya.com and the domain klinehimalaya.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here. My only other question, is my .htaccess codeing correct and how long will it take to show it is correct in SEOmoz and online? All ".htaccess" code: AddHandler php-stable .php
**_Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] RewriteRule (.*).html$ /$1.php [R=301,L]_** Lastly, I have recently changed all of my files from .html to .php is this going to hurt my SEO and is the code "RewriteRule (.*).html$ /$1.php [R=301,L]" going to fix the issue by redirecting the .html links to the .php pages? Any suggestions or help appreciated. Paul.0 -
How can you tell if a 301 has been set up correctly?
How can you tell if a 301 has been set up correctly. We had a .co.uk site that has moved over to a .com However the .co.uk we have hasd problems with the old webmaster giving control, but he has said he has implemented a 301 redirect to the new .com site, and if you click on .co.uk it does transfer you to the .com site How can we check that it is a 301 set up and not another sort of redirect?
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Can URL re writes fix the problem of critical content too deep in a sites structure?
Good morning from Wetherby UK 🙂 Ok imagine this scenario. You ask the developers to design a site where "offices to let" is on level two of a sites hierachy and so the URL would look like this: http://www.sandersonweatherall.co.uk/office-to-let. But Yikes when it goes live it ends up like this: http://www.sandersonweatherall.co.uk...s/residential/office-to-let Is a fix to this a URL re - write? Or is the only fix relocating the office to let content further up the site structure? Any insights welcome 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
301 Redirect for homepage with language code
In my multilingual Magento store, I want to redirect the hompage URL with an added language code to the base URL. For example, I want to redirect http://www.mysite.com/tw/ to http://www.mysite.com/ which has the exact same content. Using a canonical URL will help with search engines, but I would just rather nip the problem in the butt by not showing http://www.mysite.com/tw/ to visitors in the first place. Problem is that I don't want (can't have) all /tw/ removed from URLs due to Magento limitations, so I just want to know how to redirect this single URL. Since rewrites are on, adding Redirect 301 /tw http://www.88kbbq.com would redirect all URLs with the /tw/ language code to ones without. Not an option. Hope folks can lend a hand here.
Technical SEO | | kwoolf0