What will happen if we 302 a page that is ranking #1 in google for a high traffic term?
-
We're planning to test something and we want to 302 a page to another page for a period of time. The question is, the original page is ranking #1 for a high traffic term.
I want to know what will happen if we do this? Will we lose our rank? Will the traffic remain the same?
Ultimately I do not want to lose traffic and I do not want to 301 until it has been properly tested.
-
Then why redirect at all? Why not just update the page with the new content / layout (whatever) and keep a record of when you changed it. If you keep the old layout / content you can always switch back if the test proves the old worked better than the new...
-
Thank you both.
Yes we did however for the complexity of the test and what we are trying to achieve it made more sense to do a real world production test with 100% of the traffic and compare to historical data.
-
Hi David,
I was going to say the same as Patrick. A/B test.
We use Google analytics experiments and it has never affected our rankings.
Good luck
Amelia
-
Hi David
Have you considered A/B testing? I am assuming here that you are going to be testing design or layout changes and want to see how users take on these changes.
If so, have you considered trying:
Google Experiments
VWO
Optimizely You can test layouts without having to do redirects via a Javascript snippet that is put on the page in the code.If not, a 302 could potentially hurt your page's search engine visibility. The redirected page will still retain its PageRank, MozRank, Page Authority and Traffic Value – and the detour page will not accumulate any (source); thus, you won't rank until you bring that page back (and even then, it's not promised). That being said, if you do use a 302 redirect, be EXTREMELY careful and have a backup plan. Don't use this redirect extensively. It should also be noted that 302 redirects that are in place for a certain amount of time WILL be treated as 301s by Bing. If you are testing out page elements, remember you have options above. Here is more information on redirects.
Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions or comments! Good luck!
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
-
Will 301 Redirects Slow Page Speed?
We have a lot of subdomains that we are switching to subfolders and need to 301 redirect all the pages from those subdomains to the new URL. We have over 1000 that need to be implemented. So, will 301 redirects slow the page speed regardless of which URL the user comes through? Or, as the old urls are dropped from Google's index and bypassed as the new URLs take over in the SERPs, will those redirects then have no effect on page speed? Trying to find a clear answer to this and have yet to find a good answer
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MJTrevens0 -
Will Reducing Number of Low Page Authority Page Increase Domain Authority?
Our commercial real estate site (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) contains about 800 URLs. Since 2012 the domain authority has dropped from 35 to about 20. Ranking and traffic dropped significantly since then. The site has about 791 URLs. Many are set to noindex. A large percentage of these pages have a Moz page authority of only "1". It is puzzling that some pages that have similar content to "1" page rank pages rank much better, in some cases "15". If we remove or consolidate the poorly ranked pages will the overall page authority and ranking of the site improve? Would taking the following steps help?: 1. Remove or consolidate poorly ranking unnecessary URLs?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
2. Update content on poorly ranking URLs that are important?
3. Create internal text links (as opposed to links from menus) to critical pages? A MOZ crawl of our site's URLs is visible at the link below. I am wondering if the structure of the site is just not optimized for ranking and what can be done to improve it. THANKS. https://www.dropbox.com/s/oqchfqveelm1q11/CRAWL www.nyc-officespace-leader.com (1).csv?dl=0 Thanks,
Alan0 -
How to rank my website in Google UK?
Hi guys, I own a London based rubbish removal company, but don't have enough jobs. I know for sure that some of my competitors get most of their jobs trough Google searches. I also have a website, but don't receive calls from it at all. Can you please tell me how to rank my website on keywords like: "rubbish removal london", "waste clearance london", "junk collection london" and other similar keywords? I know that for person like me (without much experience in online marketing) will be difficult task to optimize the website, but at least - I need some advices from where to start. I'm also thinking to hire an SEO but not sure where to find a trusted company. Most importantly I have no idea how much should pay to expect good results? What is too much and what is too low? I will appreciate all advices.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gorubbishgo0 -
Any tips on how tp get reddit or pinterest posts rank high on google images?
Hello I have noticed that for a keyword that has high competition it has on top image searches not that popular pinterest post & a reddit post, explorergram , youtube etc., the keywork is "24k gold iphone" and I am wondering if I could create somehow myself a pinterest or reddit post or something similar that would have images with my product rank high on that keyword, since my website does not rank well in mage search for some reason... https://www.google.fi/search?q=24k+gold+iphone+6&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAWoVChMI1f2LkpTxxgIVhI8sCh1SGwjy&biw=978&bih=550#tbm=isch&q=24k+gold+iphone thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bidilover0 -
Many pages small unique content vs 1 page with big content
Dear all, I am redesigning some areas of our website, eurasmus.com and we do not have clear what is the best
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eurasmus.com
option to follow. In our site, we have a city area i.e: www.eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla which we are going
to redesign and a guide area where we explain about the city, etc...http://eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla/guide/
all with unique content. The thing is that at this point due to lack of resources, our guide is not really deep and we believe like this it does not
add extra value for users creating a page with 500 characters text for every area (transport...). It is not also really user friendly.
On the other hand, this pages, in long tail are getting some results though is not our keyword target (i.e. transport in sevilla)
our keyword target would be (erasmus sevilla). When redesigning the city, we have to choose between:
a)www.eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla -> with all the content one one page about 2500 characters unique.
b)www.eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla -> With better amount of content and a nice redesign but keeping
the guide pages. What would you choose? Let me know what you think. Thanks!0 -
Page A Best for Users, but B Ranks
This is real estate MLS listings related. I have a page "B" with lots of unique content (MLS thumbnails mixed with guide overview writing, pictures etc) which outranks "A" which is a page simply showing MLS thumbnails with map feature included. I am linking from "B" to "A" with anchor "KEYWORD for sale" to indicate to search engines that "A" is the page I want to rank, even though "B" has more unique content. It hasn't worked so far.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi5
Questions: Should I avoid linking from "B" to "A" as that could impact how well "B" ranks? Should I leave this setup and over time hope search engines will give "A" a chance to rank? Include some unique content on "A" mostly not viewable without clicking "Read more" link? I don't foresee many users will click "Read more" as they are really just looking for the properties for sale and do rarely care about written material when searching for "KEYWORD for sale". Should I "no index, follow" A as there are limited to none unique content and this could enhance chance of ranking better for B? When I write blog posts and it includes "KEYWORD for sale" should I link to "A" (best for users) or link to "B" since that page has more potential to rank really well and still is fairly good for users? Ranking for "B" is not creating a large bounce rate, just that "A" is even better. Thank you,
Kristian0 -
Google Generating its Own Page Titles
Hi There I have a question regarding Google generating its own page titles for some of the pages on my website. I know that Google sometimes takes your H1 tag and uses it as a page title, however, can anyone tell me how I can stop this from happening? Is there a meta tag I can use, for example like the NOODP tag? Or do I have to change my page title? Thanks Sadie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dancape0 -
Home page sudden drop in rank, but not others.
Over the weekend, I noticed "www.thematstore.com" drop out of the search results for "chair mats", where previously it was between 10-12 ranked. The other pages on the domain have remained the same in regards to rankings for their intended keywords. The only thing I changed (on Nov 29th) is the title tag from "Chair Mats - Commercial Quality Chair Mats, Custom Made", to "Chair Mats - Best Custom Chair Mats, Commercial Quality". I know there is a lot that needs to be done on the site, and the site architecture is a bit of a mess (I recommended building a new site)... but I was hoping to gradually fix these issues without gambling with a rank drop. Not sure why the home page all of the sudden dropped out, any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Joes_Ideas0