301 redirect with Magento; still Page authority 0 after 6 weeks

[aznventure]

Hi Mozzers!

In December '14 I have execute a 301 redirect in the 'old' page in the admin of my Magento store. Now I was surprised to see that the Page Authority is still 0 of the new page 6 weeks after the execution.

• should I have seen the update of the PA on the new page already after 6 weeks of time? If yes, then I assume that my Magento didn't execute this properly?

Old url: http://hippemamashop.nl/mama/boeken/fotoalbum.html
New page: you will be redirected to the new page after clicking the old page

Mm4uBEl

[DirkC]

Using 301 is that standard way of proceeding if you need to change the structure of your site. If done properly, there is no impact on your rankings (always make sure to update your internal links - avoid 301's on internal links). As a rule of thumb, don't change your url's too often, because the redirects can get quite messy after a few years.

For the ranking question, I wouldn't know how long it takes, I mainly track traffic, not really page authority, so can't help you on that one.

Unrelated to your question, but could have an impact on your SEO: I was a bit surprised by your choice of Magento for a smaller shop. Magento is known for being quite hungry for resources, and normally requires a dedicated server to run on. I sometimes had difficulty accessing the pages.

When I did a speed check the final result was ok, but 'time to first byte' was quite long, which could indicate that your server is not really up to its task. Another strange finding was that a very large part of the content that is downloaded are javascriptfiles (65% of total weight of the page) and css files (20%) - you should try to regroup these files & minify them. Also try to tune your caching settings - a lot of static resources could be cached. Full details can be found here: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150204_1H_1A91/ - you should also check the Page Speed Insights tool from Google: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhippemamashop.nl%2F&tab=desktop.

On your productpages, some of the descriptions are quite short, and maybe not 100% optimised for search (and for your target audience). Additional info is not always correct 'Materiaal: Nee' (Lief sokjes). Try to find a unique tone of voice for your site - you are trying to attract young fashionable mothers - so you probably should adapt your descriptions to that target audience

rgds,

Dirk

[aznventure]

@DC1611 and Monica; thanks for your reply! In that case I should be patient to see the page authority increase (I didn't knew it will take that much time as I though the page authority will be updated instantly since it's a redirect that push the 'link juice').

-yes, the new page has been cached by Google

-unfortunately the page isn't getting traffic through Google organic yet.

For me the important thing to know is whether the redirect has been configured properly. If that's the case I think I should not have to worry at all and can leave it and checking it again after a few months? After how many months should I check it? And what about the Google ranking position; will that remain? (I am planning to implement a couple of 301 redirects as I have to, but if it will influence my rankings significantly I will doubt to proceed with the action)

Looking forward to your replies

[MonicaOConnor]

Usually the page authority doesn't increase for a couple of months. You need time to let the search traffic work. Has the new page been cached by Google yet? Do you have a way to tell if the page is getting traffic on its own yet?

The page authority starts at 0 because it is a new page. The 301 redirect helps get new traffic to the page and carry over link juice, but it will still take time for the page authority to increase. Hang in there!

[DirkC]

As far as I can see the redirect is correct - you can always check yourself using a tool like http://web-sniffer.net/ to check the headers that are returned when calling the page. Probably you just need to be patient regarding the PA.