301 Redirect back to original domain

[ang]

We have a site, domainA.com and we split part of the site off into it's own site a couple of years ago as domainB.com. All urls from DomainA were 301 redirected to DomainB, but with a different folder structure. For business reasons, we now shuttering domainB and rolling it back into domainA. For the 301 redirects for urls that were on the original domainA, should I overwrite them to the new folder structure directly from the original urls? In other words:

301 redirect domainA.com/oldstructure to domainA.com/newstructure

rather than:

Existing 301 redirect domainA.com/oldstructure to domainB.com/newstructuretopic with a new 301 redirect to domainA.com/newstructuretopictopic

[GlobeRunner]

Angela, we usually recommend looking at each page separately and determining the value of each URL. You may end up with a new site structure, but there may be pages on the site that you need to keep because they shouldn't be redirected to the new page on the new structure.

I prefer not to redirect a URL if it doesn't have to be redirected. You will need to redirect all pages from the old site to the new site, and it makes sense to redirect those to the most appropriate page. But, when it comes to a new site structure, I wouldn't necessarily redirect a page if it doesn't have to be redirected.

[BradsDeals]

I see this as three distinct steps:

1. Remove the old 301 redirects that go from A1 --> B
2. Add new 301 redirects that go from B --> A2
3. Add new 301 redirects that go from A1 --> A2

However, if there aren't any valuable links still pointing at A1, you can probably get away with skipping the last step since the only value would be for indexation guidance that would have been accomplished long ago when you first set up the 301s from A1 --> B. It won't hurt anything to do it anyway, but it might save you some time.

[LoganRay]

Hi Angela,

Yes, those redirects should be updated. For each redirect that Google passes through, you lose about 10% of the authority from the referring page. So if you have two-step redirects like that, you'll lose ~20% of the authority. Having redirect chains like that will also negatively affect your load time.