Adventurous 301 redirection chain
-
Picture this - if you have a spirit for adventure!
- Client builds Alpha****Domain.com
- Then builds a number of backlinks to Alpha****Domain.com
- Client also creates a number of 301 redirects from several older domains to AlphaDomain.com
- Client then changes Alpha****Domain.com to Beta****Domain.com
- They create 301 redirects from Alpha****Domain.com to Beta****Domain.com
- But then... they 'park' Alpha****Domain.com (ie. no longer accessible)!
- About one year later, client changes a whole bunch of URLs on Beta****Domain.com without keeping track of changes. Thankfully, the hosting service (Shopify) automatically creates some redirects, but it's more by accident than design!
Questions:
- After step 6 above, are the 301 redirects created in steps 3 and 5 now totally redundant and broken? If AlphaDomain.com no longer exists, surely all redirects to and from this domain are broken? Or can they be recovered?
- What happens to all the backlinks originally created in step 2?
- Finally, can anything be done to recover lost URLs in step 7?
Yes. What a mess!
-
Phew, what an adventure a user must be going on each time! Now the horror part of the adventure - audit! - ARGH! That fun time in an SEO's life when they get elbow deep into numbers etc. The best strategy is to find all the links and rejig them rather than have link to link to link etc. just cut out the middle man and go direct. Assuming that the link is even worth doing that for!
but to directly answer:
1. The original domain is still there so the value is still there, it's just going to a dead domain, if you repoint that should still work but this is a bit of a grey area!
2. Same as if they went to a 404 on a live site, they are still there just not going anywhere, you resolve it the same way if you had a 404 page with a redirect that can benefit a user looking for a resource.
3. Yes, you just need to go to the original source and ensure it points to the correct place.
Its all a bit of a grey area and may do more harm than good especially if the links are a bit dodgy but you can still move a link that points from A to B same as you would an internal link with a 404.Hope that helps and good luck!
(formatting edit, seems to have gotten lost!)
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
-
301 redirecting a site that currently links to the target site
I have a personal blog that has a good amount of back links pointing at it from high quality relevant authoritative sites in my niche. I also run a company in the same niche. I link to a page on the company site from the personal blog article that has bunch of relevant links pointing at it (as it's highly relevant to the content on the personal blog). Overview: Relevant personal blog post has a bunch of relevant external links pointing at it (completely organic). Relevant personal blog post then links (externally) to relevant company site page and is helping that page rank. Question: If I do the work to 301 the personal blog to the company site, and then link internally from the blog page to the other relevant company page, will this kill that back link or will the internal link help as much as the current external link does currently? **For clarity: ** External sites => External blog => External link to company page VS External sites => External blog 301 => Blog page (now on company blog) => Internal link to target page I would love to hear from anyone that has performed this in the past 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Keyword_NotProvided0 -
Persistent listings or 301 redirects better for SEO?
Imagine these 2 scenarios for an ecommerce listing. 1. A listing that only closes once stock runs out 2. A listing that relists every 7 days assuming stock has run out and doing a 301 redirect to the latest version of that listing (imagine it relists several times) You might ask why on earth we would have the 2nd scenario, but we are an auction site where some listings can't be bid on. In other words those Buy Now only listings are also part of the auction model - they close after 7 days. For me it is a no-brainer that scenario 1 is better for SEO, and I have my ideas on why this is better for SEO than the second scenario such as age, SERP CTR, link equity not being diluted by 301 redirects not changing every 7 days when the listing relists multiple times etc. I was wondering if someone could articulate better than I possibly could why scenario 1 is better for SEO, and why scenario 1 would rank better in the SERPS....would it? Many thanks! Cheers, Simon
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sichristie0 -
Domain forward or 301 redirect
My company recently acquired another company including their web presence. We are soon ending their website and will be either 301 redirecting their domain to our domain or pointing their domain to our nameservers. Their domain authority is only 25 while our domain authority is 32. Their domain was created in 1998 while ours was created in 1999. So to keep our domain authority up or enhance it, should we do a 301 redirect or a domain forward. And that is if there is any difference? Thanks Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | topsailislander0 -
Too many 301 redirects?
Hey, My company currently has one chief website with about 500-600 other domains that all feature the same material as the chief website. These domains have been around for about 5 years and have actually picked up some link traffic. I have all of these identical web-pages utilizing rel=canonical but I was wondering if I would be better served, from SEO purposes, to 301 redirect all of these sites to their respective pages on our chief website? If I add 500 301 redirects, will the major search engines consider this to be black-hat link-building even though the sites are related and technically already feature the same content? For an example, the chief website is www.1099pro.com and I would 301 redirect the below sites to the chief site: 1099softwarepro.com 1099softwarepro.info 1099softwarepro.net 1099softwarepro.biz 1099softwareprofessionals.com 1099softwareprofessionals.info ...you get the point
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stew2220 -
Redirects in .htaccess file
I am using yoast seo plugin for wordpress. I have done several link changes and placed approximately 80-100 301 redirect into .htaccsses file. Is this good practice? Do they have to be there forever? Is it not slowing down site? Or should this be done in different way? Thank you very much Iris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rebeca10 -
Login redirect 302
Ok - anyone knows what to do with the temporary redirect to the login page? In our e-commerce system we have a checkout page, which requires user to be logged in - if they are not, we redirect them to the login page using simple php header("Locaiton: url"). This however has been found as a Warning as it's a temporary redirect. I can't really put there permanent redirect for obvious reasons so if someone could give me some clue on this situation that would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | coremediadesign0 -
Quoestion about 301 redirect
Hey, I have interesting questions regardin 301 redirect (At least I think it's Interesting:) ) So i have this websites that compares different lenders, url below 🙂 If you go to the homepage then the first thing you see is different loan amounts in 50-99 euro range. Also you can check out different loan amounts like 100-149€, 150-199€, 200-249€ and so on. For now i have used 301 redirect and Noindex and Nofollow for all the different "loan amounts" urls. Examples below etc Is it a good idea to use 301 on all such pages to point to the homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TauriU0 -
301 Redirect for 2500 pages
Hi, We have an existing site done in DNN and we recreated it on a new platform (EPiServer) and now we're going live. However, there are 2500+ page URLs from the old site which is not exisitng on the new site. What do you reckon is the best way we can address this? Do we create a 301 redirect individually for each of these pages? These 2500+ pages have a domain authority 34-35 and I think it's best that we retain those. We'll be using the same domain name. Suggestions for ways to approach this issue would be greatly appreciated. I have access to the server and IIS. *Also, how do I create a virtual page in IIS? and redirect it to another URL within the site? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter.Huxley590