301 Clean-Up - Best Practices & Procedure?

[ATP]

Hello Again,

I have taken over managing a website for about 2 months and have fixed a whole heap of problems. Im now turning my attention to the URL rewrites as there are ALOT of them. I have fixed the most problematic offenders that were blocking products and all sorts of mischief but I now want to clean them up.

The website is on Magento, and there are 240 custom URL rewrites.

Question 1: Am i correct that I should edit the links on my website so that they link directly to the new page instead of utilising the re-direct for best SEO results.

Question 2: If my website doesn't utilise the URL rewrite (fixed in question 1) its only purpose is to transfer link juice from any external link the page had before. If this page didnt have any external inbound links then I can delete the URL rewrite as it serves no purpose.

Question 3: If Q1 and Q2 are correct, what is the quickest way to check the inbound links to a page quickly so I can make a quick decision on if i should remove the re-write.

Many Thanks in advance!

[adamdankhazi]

Thank you ATP for your answer +1 thumbs up

[Everett]

Answer 1 - Yes, you are correct. Update internal links. This is best practice.

Answer 2 - No, this is not correct. If users have a URL stored in a bookmark or someone is linking to it with javascript, in an email, or some way that would not show up in a backlink report the redirect would get them to the right page. Redirects are for more than just passing page-rank.

Answer 3 - Use the Moz toolbar for this on a page-by-page basis, or use OSE for the site as a whole. You should also check Google Webmaster Tools, as they have a fresher database than OSE and may know of new links, or ones that OSE didn't catch.

[ATP]

From my understanding it is a disadvantage Adam,

Although a 301 passes link juice it only passes a percentage of it, a little is lost along the way. Also redirects increase the amount of time needed for a page to load after the click as it has to walk down a longer path to reach its destination. Im sure I read somewhere (cant find the source sorry) that too many redirects and redirect "chains" can negatively impact your ranking but it likes redirects that genuinely offer replacement relevant content.

If it were me I would at the very least

Redirect: /this-is-it/  -> /how-nice/    removing a step in that path
Keep: /yep-yep/ -> /how-nice/

Then change all links on your website point to /this-is-it/ and /yep-yep/ to /how-nice/
If possible get any backlinks changed to the new url also.

[adamdankhazi]

I would like to add a question to the previous ones I hope that ATP won't mind, Is it a disadvantage in a SEO perspective to have 301-s that for example set for 3 pages and the previous 1 has been deleted already?

Example: /this-is-it/ (deleted old original page) --301--> /yep-yep/ --301--> /how-nice/ (current page)

Cheers,
Adam

ATPInstrumentation

[DelMarFans]

Hi There,

If I understand the first question correctly, Yes you should point all of your links to your new URL/page.  301 the old page and if there are any backlinks ask the webmaster of that page to point to the new URL.  There are a few websites that allow you to check backlinks.  I like MOZ Open Site Explorer but i've also used Ahrefs.

I hope this helps!  Let me know if you have anymore questions.

Be well,
Alex Brown
Del Mar Fans and Lighting