Advice on whether we 301 redirect a page or update existing page?
-
Hi guys,
any advice would be really appreciated. We have an existing page that ranks well for 'red widgets'. The page isn't monetised right now, but we're bringing in a new product onto our site that we optimised for 'blue widgets'. Unfortunately, not enough research was done for this page and we've now realised that consumers actually search for 'red widgets' when looking for the product we're creating as 'blue widgets'.
The problem with this is that the 'red widgets' page is in a completely different category of our site than what it needs to be (it needs to be with 'blue widgets').
So, my question is; Should we do a 301 redirect from our 'red-widgets' page to our 'blue-widgets' page which we want to update and optimise the content on there for 'red-widgets'. Or, should we update the existing red-widgets page to have the right products and content on there, even thought it is in the wrong place of our site and users could get confused as to why they are there.
If we do a 301 redirect to our new page, will we lose our rankings and have to start again, or is there a better way around this?
Thanks!
Dave
-
Without seeing the pages, url structure and how similar/different the products are its a bit hard to advise.
However in general if you already have a page ranking, and it is possible to overcome the confusion issues (which can probably be done through design?) I would probably leave the page there, and tweak the content to include your 'blue widget' (but remember part of the reason you are ranking for the term 'red widget' is due to the content on your page so it will still need to be optimised for this.
I've done 301 redirects a few times and when done internally they usually don't cause any long-term drops, however they may cause short-term (which can last a while) your page to disappear while Google re-ranks the new page (and the exact ranking will depending on the new page URL structure, content, page hierarchy etc).
Hope that helps and makes sense
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
-
I need help with redirecting chain to another page and 301, I don't understand on how to fix
Redirect Chain <label>What it is:</label> Your page is redirecting to a page that is redirecting to a page that is redirecting to a page... and so on. Learn more about redirection best practices. <label>Why it's an issue:</label> Every redirect hop loses link equity and offers a poor user experience, which will negatively impact your rankings. <label>How to fix it:</label> Chiaryn says: “Redirect chains are often caused when multiple redirect rules pile up, such as redirecting a 'www' to non-www URL or a non-secure page to a secure/https: page. Look for any recurring chains that could be rewritten as a single rule. Be particularly careful with 301/302 chains in any combination, as the 302 in the mix could disrupt the ability of the 301 to pass link equity.” This is not helping me I don't understand about the 301 do I use the www.jasperartisanjewelry.com or the /jasperartisanjewelry.com I'm confused
Technical SEO | | geanmitch0 -
Unexpected Rank Down After Page Update
Hello Team, I have a post on my blog which was ranking on #1 in SERP. I always tried to update it with new content.On 31-Mar-2017, I made a big update in it. Like, it was a list of 20 tips and I made it to 50+. I thought it will help me to increase it's CTR. And, I changed its URL and redirect old one to new one.But when I checked today, it was totally disappeared from SERP 😞 it's nowhere. But it is indexed I have checked but not ranking now. I did this thing (Content Upgrade) before and it always gave good results but I don't know what happened now.Any suggestions or help?Old URL: http://excelchamps.com/blog/2015/12/21-useful-macro-codes-for-vba-newcomers/New URL: http://excelchamps.com/blog/2017/03/useful-macro-codes-for-vba-newcomers/-With love and respect,Puneet Gogia
Technical SEO | | ManAPR0 -
301 Redirecting http to https
In the Moz Site Crawl issue, I was seeing an error that said we were temporarily redirecting our homepage to https URLs. So I changed the code in htaccess to make it 301 redirect but I'm still getting the same error. I implemented it last week and we just had a new crawl yesterday. Here is the new code: RewriteEngine on
Technical SEO | | Heydarian
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^heritagelawmarketing.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.heritagelawmarketing.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC] Does anyone know why I'm still getting 302 redirects? Thanks0 -
If I want clean up my URLs and take the "www.site.com/page.html" and make it "www.site.com/page" do I need a redirect?
If I want clean up my URLs and take the "www.site.com/page.html" and make it "www.site.com/page" do I need a redirect? If this scenario requires a 301 redirect no matter what, I might as well update the URL to be a little more keyword rich for the page while I'm at it. However, since these pages are ranking well I'd rather not lose any authority in the process and keep the URL just stripped of the ".html" (if that's possible). Thanks for you help! [edited for formatting]
Technical SEO | | Booj0 -
To 301 redirect or not...
Hi guys i'd like to get your opinion on this. We currently have two sites, site A is the old one with PA44 and DA33. Site B is the new one which is going to replace site A it currently has PA37 and DA24 Our plan for the future is to shut down site A and redirect all pages using 301 to the relevant pages on side B. Currently we have some links in place for a couple of keywords on site A to site B which seems to be working great for our ranking. Now i'm wondering if this is maybe a good option, to give back links from A to B or will i pass through more link juice when redirecting everything? (ps. both are e commerce sites hosted and registred with different companies)
Technical SEO | | Immanuel0 -
A script to automatically write 301 redirect rules to htaccess?
I was wondering if anyone could help provide some resources on how to automatically write 301 redirect rules to htaccess. Allow me to explain... I'm building a new website and the primary users are businesses. They have their own profile pages on the site. The URL is based off of their Company Name. In the event that they decided to change their name... reasons being, perhaps they mispelled it the first time, or they're removing LLC or adding Inc, I want to also change the URL and redirect the old URL to the new URL. Since the URL is based off of their Company Name, making a change to the company name would make a change to the URL. I know it doesn't have to work this way, but for our purpose this works best. In case the old URL had any links to it, I wanted to see if there was an way to automatically update an htaccess file with a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. Could anyone point me in the right direction of how to do this? Perhaps a sample script. I've done a lot of searches on Google and can't seem to find anything. e.g. Original:
Technical SEO | | bimmer540
Name: XYZ Widgets
URL: website.com/xyz-widgets New - business changes their company name in their profile:
Name: XYZ Widgets, Inc.
URL: website.com/xyz-widgets-inc Upon the user saving the changes in their profile, I'd like to write a 301 redirect to an htaccess file:
Redirect 301 /xyz-widgets http://www.website.com/xyz-widgets-inc I know how to manually write redirects and I've got a pretty smart web developer. We've just never triggered a script to automatically write to an htaccess file before. Is this possible? Any resources are appreciated. Any security risks? Thanks!0 -
301-redirect
Hi My website is fairly new and i wasnt aware of the difference btw 'website.com' and 'www.website.com' when i started up. It doesnt matter which one i use as long as i am consistent right ? Most of my ingoing links are to mainpage on 'website.com'. I have som ingoing links to 'www.website.com' but also some to 'www.website.com/brandname'. is it enough to 301-redir 'www.website.com' to 'website.com' or does it need to be done on several levels ? I need to have someone do the redirect for me - how can i check its working when its done ? Dan Lærum
Technical SEO | | danlae0 -
Does 301 redirect pass "freshness?"
Greetings! I work for an online retailer, and we recently launched a voting tool that allows customers to voice their opinion whether or not we should carry a new item. It's been a huge success and we've been generating thousands of comments. As a result, it's helped our SEO, and our products are showing up on the first page for some keywords without having any external links pointing to these pages. Our plan is to sell a product if it does well during the voting period. Unfortunately, we're not able to process the sale on the voting page, and need to redirect users to another page on our site. I understand that a 301 redirect transfers "linkjuice" to the new destination URL. But does it also transfer "freshness?" I ask because our new landing pages will not be updated as frequently as the voting pages. Example of our Voting Page:
Technical SEO | | znotes
http://www.uncommongoods.com/voting/product/50012/infant-fortune-cookie-booties Example of Redirected Item Page (where sale can be processed):
http://www.uncommongoods.com/product/baby-tube-socks-set-of-4 Any help/comments would be appreciated. Thank you!0