301 redirects
-
One of our employees took an SEO class recently. She was told that having too many 301 redirects can hurt SEO. I have never heard of 301 redirects as having a negative impact. Any thoughts?
-
Load time isn't that much, same domain redirects only take 16-25ms. I would be more concerned with cross domain redirects.
-
I would also be concerned with load time and the effect it can have on user experience and bounces back into the serps.
-
There is no limit to the number of redirects that Google is willing to crawl within a site. However, there's a limit to the number of redirect chains that they'll crawl. A redirect chain is when one page redirects to a page that redirects to a page that redirects ... and so on.
-
It can have a negative impact if you have redirect chains. Matt Cutts discusses 301 redirects and their impact.
-
Having too many 301 redirects in a chain can have a non-positive impact. I.e. Don't 301 a page to another page that 301s to another page that 301s to another page, etc. etc. etc. Google once stated they could do 5 pages in a 301 chain before giving up. But honestly, why would you choose to redirect to a redirecting page when you could point it at something much more relevant? But as for having a bulk of 301s, I wouldn't worry. If you had 300 different pages that were all being redirected to 300 other pages, google would not devalue you for it. If your redirects are relevant and are good for the user experience, then you're fine.
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
-
Can anyone please explain the real difference between backlinks, 301 links, and redirect links?which one is better to rank a website? i am looking for the help for one of my website
Can anyone please explain the real difference between backlinks, 301 links, and redirect links? which one is better to rank a website? I am looking for help for one of my website vacuum cleaners
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hshajjajsjsj3880 -
Redirect Plugin: Redirecting or Rewriting?
Hey everybody! It's been a while since off the boards! I am reworking a site and I have been looking into their Redirection Plugin. I personally tend to lean towards just using the .htaccess because, well, why not. However, when looking deeper into the plugin I found myself a little confused with their redirection wording. RewriteRule ^/products/landing-page-october-2015/$ /products/special-education-news-october-2015/ [R=301,L] Is that the same thing as a classic Redirect 301?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
Website Redirection Issue
Hi All, Like to know is there any better way to do 301 redirection. My Client whose website name is Online Plants created with OpenCart. Over the period of time he added nearly 10,000's of products and now he is cleaning them ( by grouping similar attribute under one products) which is right way to do. For example , Product A with different size ( X,XL,XXL ) previously had 3 product entry ( A - X, A - XL, A - XXL ) , now he is moving all of them under one. So while moving he is deleting the other two entry. Now whats the best way to inform google . Putting a manual 301 redirection for each and every product is impossible as there are more products. Whats the best way to go ahead on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Verve-Innovation1 -
301 redirects within same domain
If I 301 redirects all urls from http://domain.com/folder/keyword to http://domain.com/folder/keyword.htm Are new urls likely to keep most of link juicy from source url and maintain the rankings in SERP?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bull1350 -
Canonical OR redirect
Hi, i've a site about sport which cover matches. for each match i've a page. last week there was a match between: T1 v T2 so a page was created: www.domain.com/match/T1vT2 - Page1 this week T2 host T1, so there's a new page www.domain.com/match/T2vT1 - Page2 each page has a unique content with Authorship, but the URL, Title, Description, H1 look very similar cause the only difference is T2 word before T1. though Page2 is available for a few days, on site links & sitemap, for the search query "T2 T1 match" Page1 appears on the SERP (high location). of course i want Page2 to be on SERP for the above query cause it's the relevant match. i even don't see Page2 anywhere on the SERP and i think it wasn't indexed. Questions: 1. do you think google see both pages as duplicated though the content is different? 2. is there a difference when you search for T1 vs T2 OR T2 vs T1 ? 3. should i redirect 301 Page1 to Page2? consider that all content for Page1 and the Authorship G+ will be lost. 4. should i make rel=canonical on Page1 to Page2? 5. should i let google sort it out? i know it's a long one, thanks for your patience. Thanks, Assaf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stassaf0 -
301 a PDF?
Hi Website A is moving to Website B. Website A has a number of PDFs - obviously I cant do a '301 redirect' on them. Any suggestions what to do with the PDFs? Many thanks in advance Nigel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Richard5550 -
Should i continue linking the old page after a redirect 301?
hi everybody, i'm trying to understand why my page http://poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it isn't ranked for the keyword poltrona frau brescia even if is indexed on google. the page gets authority and traffic from the page www.zenucchi.it/ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.html that is already ranked in fourth position for that keyword. should i continue linking the previous or the new page to increase the page authority? i don't know if is a good way to link a page not ranked despite a ranked one.. Please help me.... thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidoboem0 -
How to stop Google crawling after 301 redirect?
I have removed all pages from my old website and set 301 redirect to new website. But, I have verified old website with Google webmaster tools' HTML verification file which enable me to track all data and existence of pages in Google search for my old website. I was assumed that, Google will stop crawling and DE-indexed all pages after 301 redirect. Because, I have set 301 redirect before 3 months. Now, I'm able to see Google bot activity on my website with help of Google webmaster tools. You can find out attachment to know more about it. How can it possible & How Google can crawl removed pages? You can see following image to know more about it. First & Second
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0