Use existing page with bad URL or brand new URL?
-
Hello,
We will be updating an existing page with more helpful information with the goal of reaching more potential customers through SEO and also attaching a SEM campaign to the specific landing page.
The current URL of the page scores 25 on Page Authority, and has 2 links to it from blog articles (PA 35, 31).
The current content needs to be rewritten to be more helpful and also needs some additional information. The downsides are that it has an "bad" URL- no target keyword and uses underscores.
Which of the following choices would you make?
1. Update this old "bad" URL with new content. Benefit from the existing PA.
-or-
2. Start with a new optimized URL, reusing some of the old content and utilizing a 301 redirect from the previous page?
Thank you!
-
Thank you Nicholas!
-
Thank you Gaston!
-
I would go with option 2, just update the URL, and then add a 301 redirect from old URL to new URL, so it doesn't cause any broken links. We have done this on our website and seen great results with updating it to include a target keyword.
For example, we had a URL- https://seo-kansas-city.com/services/google-adwords-campaigns/, and then around December of this past year we decided to update it to https://seo-kansas-city.com/services/ppc/, in order to help rank for "ppc kansas city". We added a 301 redirect of course, to avoid any broken links or loss of page authority.
Our results from making this change (and added a little more content to the page) led us to move from position 16-19 on page 2 of Google, to now ranking in position 3-5 on page 1 of Google.
Nick White
SEO Services KC
https://seo-kansas-city.com/ -
Hi XLMarketing,
I'd go with the option 2.
Keep into consideration that Google said redirects 3xx does not loose any PR, linkjuice or whatever ranking power. Also there are some experiments performed by great people that stated there is a 10-15% loss in the redirect.
Why am I saying this? Just for you to know it in other situations.More info:
Google: Any 3xx Redirect Does Not Lose PageRank At All - SearchEngine Round Table
301 Redirects Rules Change: What You Need to Know for SEO - MozBlogHope it helps.
Best luck.
GR.
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
-
How to 301 trailing URLs to new domain home page - wildcard?
How would I add a redirect rule so all old domain URLs redirect to a new domain? All the old pages no longer exist on a new website. The domains have been through several CMS platforms, so it would be unnecessary to recreate them. Problem is, they're indexed in search engines from the past 10 years, so it's causing a lot of 404s. Example: search "NARI Tampa Bay" and you'll find 2 old domains: nari-tampabay.com & nari-tampabay.org. The new domain is naritb.org Those 2 old domains are now pointed to the same nameservers as the new and listed as parked domains. Here's the current rules in htaccess: <code>RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^nari-tampabay.org [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.nari-tampabay.org [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.naritb.org/$1 [L,R=301] RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^nari-tampabay.com [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.nari-tampabay.com [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.naritb.org/$1 [L,R=301]</code>
Technical SEO | | CartoMark0 -
Strange URL redirecting to my new site
Hi all, I recently relaunched a site on a brand new URL - www.boardwarehouse.co.uk. I've spent the last couple of weeks building some backlinks as well as developing a basic content strategy. We've started ranking for a few of our less competitive keywords which is great, however there's a strange site which either redirects or is mirroring our content. I'm at a complete loss as to what's causing this to happen and what i can do to stop it. On the attachment - my content is top and second. The fourth result is the offending site. Any help/ advice would be most helpful! Thanks in advance, Alick 0BSyNn6
Technical SEO | | Alick3000 -
Want to change URL for a page
Hey there Mozzers. I want to change the url of a certain page on my website. Example: www.example.com/poker-face I want to change this www.example.com/poker-faces Should I create a new page and make the old one 301? Does 301 pass all the link juice in the new page or do i have to make a rel=canonical also ?
Technical SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis0 -
New EMD update effected my mom's legit author page? From page 1 in SERP to nowhere for her name
I think my mom's site, MargaretTerry.com was hit by this update for her name "Margaret Terry". Went from bouncing around the first page on google.com and .ca all the time to nowhere on the index. The results are now very strange, a mix of Youtube, linked in, and small book stores that she has done events at recently to promote her first book. I was checking after some of my SEO buddys were freaking out about their EMD's getting hit on Sunday. She is an aspiring author with a book coming out this month. There is obviously no ads or spam content on the site... I have never done SEO for it either except a bit of on page I guess. It sucks that people might be grabbing her book soon and when they Google her name nothing shows up. This couldn't have really happened at a worse time. Not to mention the hours spent building the site to her liking, free of charge of course 🙂 Is there anyone I can contact there to help me out? Shouldn't and EMD that is someones name still rank when you search their name?
Technical SEO | | Operatic0 -
Why is an error page showing when searching our website using Google "site:" search function?
When I search our company website using the Google site search function "site:jwsuretybonds.com", a 400 Bad Request page is at the top of the listed pages. I had someone else at our company do the same site search and the 400 Bad Request did not appear. Is there a reason this is happening, and are there any ramifications to it?
Technical SEO | | TheDude0 -
If you only want your home page to rank, can you use rel="canonical" on all your other pages?
If you have a lot of pages with 1 or 2 inbound links, what would be the effect of using rel="canonical" to point all those pages to the home page? Would it boost the rankings of the home page? As I understand it, your long-tail keyword traffic would start landing on the home page instead of finding what they were looking for. That would be bad, but might be worth it.
Technical SEO | | watchcases0 -
New Domain Page 7 Google but Page 1 Bing & Yahoo
Hi just wondered what other people's experience is with a new domain. Basically have a client with a domain registered end of May this year, so less than 3 months old! The site ranks for his keyword choice (not very competitive), which is in the domain name. For me I'm not at all surprised with Google's low ranking after such a short period but quite surprsied to see it ranking page 1 on Bing and Yahoo. No seo work has been done yet and there are no inbound links. Anyone else have experience of this? Should I be surprised or is that normal in the other two search engines? Thanks in advance Trevor
Technical SEO | | TrevorJones0 -
Is there a great tool for URL mapping old to new web site?
We are implementing new design and removing some pages and adding new content. Task is to correctly map and redirect old pages that no longer exist.
Technical SEO | | KnutDSvendsen0