Maintaining Link Value Of Old URLS With 301 Redirects

[RMATVMC]

Large ecommerce site that has been around for a long time (15+ years.) During that time technology has changed a lot and we are running into issues maintaining 301 redirects for very old urls. For example we have a good amount of links to product and category pages. Some of the old links are to products that still exist and will exist for many years to come.(of note little to no traffic comes via these links. Most of them are close to 9 years old so they are buried deep within articles, forums, or websites) However as we make changes to the site and URL structure these old urls are taking up more resources to continue to maintain 301 redirects. I am Leary of no longer supporting them because I do not want it to impact rankings however there is concern on how much development time and technology resources it takes to continue to support as time goes on.

Does anyone have experience handling redirects 3 or 4 url structures old? Looking for insight from someone who has crossed this bridge before.

[RMATVMC]

We have changed the URLS a few times over the past decade. It is just maintaining some of the super old backlinks to category and product pages that are getting harder to maintain.

I appreciate you taking the time to answer.

[EricaMcGillivray]

Okay, got it. To figure out how much value you're getting from that traffic, you need to figure out what you want customers to do once they hit those pages. If the customers do the thing you want them to do (buy, lead gen, consume more content, etc), then you still want to keep those redirects. If they don't, you can probably kill them without any repercussions to the brand/site. You can also reach out to those sites that are hosting your old links and ask them to put in new, more relevant links, if those links are still valuable in that the traffic from that link drives customers to do the action you want them to do.

I also wanted to add something that, I know you may fully realize, but no one has said yet, for every page that you're 301'ing to the new structure, you can take that old page and those old assets off your server. All you need is the 301 redirect code.

[ColeLusby]

So you have old URLs; have they been changed already?

I'm assuming not since you're getting great traffic from organic. If that's the case, why change them? There appears to be no problem unless I'm missing something (assuming you haven't changed the URL).

This may be a question for developers that have more knowledge.

Thanks!

[RMATVMC]

Erica,

Thank you so much for the response. To clarify so that i understand your recommendation correctly. The pages do still get traffic, some get a lot of traffic from organic search. They just do not get a lot of referral traffic from other websites. For example I have a lot of cases where a customer links to one of our products in a tutorial they did on their website. Because the tutorial is old the link to us is from many years ago and the url has a super old url structure. And maintaining the system that helps figure out where that old url should point to on our site is causing the problem. Because it is hard to know how to judge how much value is coming from that link from an SEO perspective I am having a hard time determining if we should continue to maintain these very old urls linking to us from external domains.

Does that help clarify?

[EricaMcGillivray]

If you don't get any traffic to these very old pages, there's really no reason to keep the redirects. When we rebranded from SEOmoz.org to Moz.com, we killed a lot of very old pages that didn't get any traffic anymore. We didn't redirect them, just tossed them away. We only redirected out-dated pages that were still getting traffic.

[RMATVMC]

Cole,

First thanks for the response.

I probably should have added a bit more detail for clarification. The simple 301 redirect example.com/product-a-123-xyz.html is 301 redirected to example.com/product-a            can be handled easily.

However because some of the Old urls had dynamic aspects to them our system has to run code to handle the redirect logic so that the 301 redirect takes sends them the to correct place. For example we sell tires for motorcycles. Because of old technology the url 10 years ago included vehicle specific elements like the year, model brand. Right now we have redirect logic that recognizes that the link is coming in from an old dynamic url and 301 redirect the customer to that specific tire on our site. Then at the product level they can then choose which vehicle they have, all dynamic aspects are taken care of now with ajax. But maintaining that old logic is eating up resources and I am debating if it is worth doing so.

[ColeLusby]

Let me make sure I understand your question. You have migrated several (old) URLs into one (new) URL.

I would simply 301 redirect any old URL to a new URL that relates. For example, example.com/product-a-123-xyz.html is 301 redirected to example.com/product-a

You don't have to worry about what articles, bookmarks, etc. have the wrong URL because they are now redirected to the correct URL to maintain link value.

Do not 301 redirect page A to Page B that does not relate.

If you have any other 404s that come up via GWT or Moz and you have a relevant page for that 404, then go ahead and place a 301 redirect in. I would monitor this weekly (every Monday for example). It shouldn't be more than 20-30 to go through at most and that way you continue monitoring link value.

Does this answer your question? I hope this helps.