Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
301 Redirect - Rank Recovery Examples?
-
Hi All,
I recently did a 301 redirect. Page to Page and the notified google via its console. Its been 6 days since. The home page and one other high traffic page swopped out with the new domain on google search index with 3-4 drops in ranking for each. The rest of the sites pages have been indexed but still reflect the old domain when searched. Recently today my home page dropped even further to the second page of google index for the specific keyword.
Can you share similar experiences and how long it took you to recover rank fully? and how long for all pages to swop out on google search's index?
Regards
Mike
-
Hey Mike,
I would publish content right away on the new site. You can also share in social to help get more inbound links and shares to the new site.
Thanks!
John
-
Hi John,
One last question.
All going well the rank stabilises within 30 days. When would it be safe to start publishing new website content? As it seems one shouldn't have anything different from the old domain/url to the new in order to have rank pass through effectively in terms of new vs old site structure/ sitepmap etc...
Regards,
Mike
-
Thanks John, sound like I'm on the right track. Will paste links if have any unresolved issues need checking but for now think I am ok.
Will have to wait it out and get stuck into link building as suggested.
-
Hey Mike,
It sounds like you've done all the right things. If you are seeing 404's for elements or pages that you don't believe have value, then you can request them be removed from the Google index via the search console. You may want to do that. You are welcome to paste them in here for me to see just in case.
It's more or less a waiting game now. The good news is that you've done all the right things. If you have time, I would start building links or social shares (anything natrual and not fabricated) to the new site to help with SEO while the redirects fully kick in.
Thanks!
-
Hi John,
Thanks for responding. Thats correct, ''new site at a different URL and 301 redirected everything (page to page).''.
Everything has stayed exactly the same with the new site including the 'sub-directory' (think thats what u call it) part of the url.
e.g. www.olddmain.com/page1 redirected www.newdomain.com/page1
404 errors: The site is made with wix and basically I can only page to page all the main urls as the example above. What I have noted is that sometimes photos get automatically indexed with long tailed urls. These cannot be 301'd and have caused some 404's here and there. I do not need these photos 301'd...Will these 404's impact as leaked link power?
Other than that as mentioned the home page and another main page have 'swopped' out with the old domain but are jumping up and down in the search results... Noted regarding 30 days, seems its a waiting game. Just hope that this rank loss/instability is not permanent.
Regards
Mike
-
Hey! Can you provide a bit more detail and even share the URL of the site? It sounds like you launched a new site at a different URL and 301 redirected everything (page to page). You'll typically see a drop in traffic/rank for 30 days - how dramatic of a dip will vary from site to site. A few things to review:
1. 404 errors in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
2. Going through each of the 301 redirects to make sure they work (tedious but necessary)
3. Submit sitemap from new URL
If you can provide any more details on things you've reviewed that will be helpful. I'll keep an eye on this thread.
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
-
Using a Reverse Proxy and 301 redirect to appear Sub Domain as Sub Directory - what are the SEO Risks?
We’re in process to move WordPress blog URLs from subdomains to sub-directory. We aren’t moving blog physically, but using reverse proxy and 301 redirection to do this. Blog subdomain URL is https://blog.example.com/ and destination sub-directory URL is https://www.example.com/blog/ Our main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL site. This is on Windows server. Due to technical reasons, we can’t physically move our WordPress blog to the main website. Following is our Technical Setup Setup a reverse proxy at https://www.example.com/blog/ pointing to https://blog.example.com/ Use a 301 redirection from https://blog.example.com/ to https://www.example.com/blog/ with an exception if a traffic is coming from main WWW domain then it won’t redirect. Thus, we can eliminate infinite loop. Change all absolute URLs to relative URLs on blog Change the sitemap URL from https://blog.example.com/sitemap.xml to https://www.example.com/blog/sitemap.xml and update all URLs mentioned within the sitemap. SEO Risk Evaluation We have individual GA Tracking ID and individual Google Search Console Properties for main website and blog. We will not merge them. Keep them separate as they are. Keeping this in mind, I am evaluating SEO Risks factors Right now when we receive traffic from main website to blog (or vice versa) then it is considered as referral traffic and new cookies are set for Google Analytics. What’s going to happen when its on the same domain? Which type of settings change should I do in Blog’s Google Search Console? (A). Do I need to request “Change of Address” in the Blog’s search console property? (B). Should I re-submit the sitemap? Do I need to re-submit the blog sitemap from the https://www.example.com/ Google Search Console Property? Main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL website, and blog is all about content. So does that impact SEO? Will this dilute SEO link juice or impact on the main website ranking because following are the key SEO Metrices. (A). Main website’s Avg Session Duration is about 10 minutes and bounce rate is around 30% (B). Blog’s Avg Session Duration is 33 seconds and bounce rate is over 92%
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joshibhargav_200 -
301 Redirects to relative URLs not absolute a problem?
Hi we recently did a migration and a lot of content changed locations see: https://d.pr/i/RvqI81 Basically, the 301 goes to the correct location but its a relative URL (as you can see from the screenshot) rather than absolute URL. Do you think this is a high priority issue from an SEO standpoint, should we get the developer to change the redirects to absolute? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cathywix0 -
Default Wordpress 301 Redirects of JS and CSS files. Bad for SEO & How to Fix?
Hi there: We are developers with some digital marketing expertise, but a current issue has us perplexed. An outside SEO firm has asked us to clean up a large number of 301 redirects. Most of these are 'default' Wordpress behavior that relate to calling the latest version of a JS or CSS file. For instance, a JS file is called with this: https://websitexyz.com/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js?ver=4.9.1 but ultimately redirects to this: https://websitexyz.com/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js. We are being asked to prevent the redirect from happening by, presumably, calling the ultimate file to begin with. The issue is that, as far as we know, there's no easy way to alter WP behavior to call the ultimate file to begin with. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
Switching from HTTP to HTTPS: 301 redirect or keep both & rel canonical?
Hey Mozzers, I'll be moving several sites from HTTP to HTTPS in the coming weeks (same brand, multiple ccTLDs). We'll start on a low traffic site and test it for 2-4 weeks to see the impact before rolling out across all 8 sites. Ideally, I'd like to simply 301 redirect the HTTP version page to the HTTPS version of the page (to get that potential SEO rankings boost). However, I'm concerned about the potential drop in rankings, links and traffic. I'm thinking of alternative ways and so instead of the 301 redirect approach, I would keep both sites live and accessible, and then add rel canonical on the HTTPS pages to point towards HTTP so that Google keeps the current pages/ links/ indexed as they are today (in this case, HTTPS is more UX than for SEO). Has anyone tried the rel canonical approach, and if so, what were the results? Do you recommend it? Also, for those who have implemented HTTPS, how long did it take for Google to index those pages over the older HTTP pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Steven_Macdonald0 -
301 Redirect from ASP.NET to PHP...Is it possible?
Hi all, I'm trying to migrate my current website over to wordpress however my current website is ASP.NET and obviously Wordpress uses PHP. Is it possible to perform a 301 redirect from a asp.net to a php? Or do you need to convert the asp.net language into php? Or something different? I welcome your thoughts? Regards, Thomas Rochford
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CoGri0 -
How to set up 301 redirect for URL with question mark
I have encountered some issue with 301 redirect and htaccess file. I need to redirect the following url: http://www.domain.com/?specifications=colours/page/3 to: http://www.domain.com/colours The 301 redirect command I wrote in htaccess file is as follow: Redirect 301 /?specifications=colours/page/3 http://www.domain.com/colours And it doesn't work at the moment. What is the correct way to set up 301 redirect here? Your help will be sincerely appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robotseo0 -
DNS or 301 Website Redirect
We are running a marketplace site, so we have thousands of vendors selling their products on our site. Each vendor has a Profile page and we are soon to launch a premium store-front that is white label. Many of these vendors will want to point a custom url to their premium store-front (which is a sub domain of the marketplace) and we are trying to get an understanding of how we should instruct them to point their url in a way that will give the main marketplace site the seo juice. We also want to understand what will show up in the address bar. Will it be their url or our sub domain? Will any of the marketplace seo juice boost their url local listing status?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bloomnation0 -
Are there any negative effects to using a 301 redirect from a page to another internal page?
For example, from http://www.dog.com/toys to http://www.dog.com/chew-toys. In my situation, the main purpose of the 301 redirect is to replace the page with a new internal page that has a better optimized URL. This will be executed across multiple pages (about 20). None of these pages hold any search rankings but do carry a decent amount of page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visually0