How effective are 301 redirects in passing page rank?
-
I have a blog which is ranking well for certain terms, and would like to repurpose it to better explain these terms it is ranking for, including updating the url to the new term the blog will be about. The plan being to 301 redirect the old url to new.
In the past, I've done this with other pages, and have actually lost much of the rankings that I had earned on the original URL.
What is your take on this? Maybe repurpose blog, but maintain original URL just to be on the safe side?
Thanks
-
Many thanks, @tom-capper for your clarification.
-
Hi Augistine
No, there's no fixed number. And sometimes redirects are the right answer to a problem - such as old or unused URLs.
As a general rule, avoid having links on your site that point to a redirecting URL. Instead, point them to the destination of that redirect. This is what tools (like Moz) are trying to help you with when they point out the number of redirects - it's just a list so you can identify links to those URLs, and update the links.
-
Hey guys,
I have a question: Is there any good(bad) number of redirects. My website has 101 URL redirects and was wondering if this will be detrimental to the website rank.
Any tips would be appreciated!
Thanks
Augustine -
My problem is solved thanks to all. I am going to share this thread https://moz.com/community/q/topic/71433/how-effective-are-301-redirects-gosloto-in-passing-page-rank with my friends and brother who faced the same problem.
Thanks again
-
Hey thanks for the super helpful reply. I'm not sure how I missed that thread. I haven't quite mastered the search function on here. I think I'll pass with him this time around. If i want any further guideline we will contact you here https://moz.com/community/q/topic/71433/how-effective-are-301-results-redirects-in-passing-page-rank/
-
Maintaining the original URL is definitely the low risk approach. On the other hand, if you're ever going to do this, it's better to do it sooner - that way you're only risking/diluting the links you've acquired so far, not any future equity.
301 redirects do pass the majority of PageRank onwards, but if the new URL is very dissimilar or has existing issues, or if the redirection doesn't go smoothly / isn't detected by Google, you can have problems.
Tom
-
@citimarinemoz Properly the bigger question is what do you mean by re purposing the blog.
If you are keeping the context of the blog the same, providing it is the same domain, the content is the same or better and you do your 301s properly it should be fine.
On the other hand if you are changing what your blog focuses on and you are rewriting the content of the pages you could well run into a problem.
My advice would be- Keep the same domain
- Keep the old blog posts if possible, maybe update them if necessary
- Create new blog posts with your new content on the same domain
- Utilise internal linking for any relevant topics and pages
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
-
Subdirectory site / 301 Redirects / Google Search Console
Hi There, I'm a web developer working on an existing WordPress site (Site #1) that has 900 blog posts accessible from this URL structure: www.site-1.com/title-of-the-post We've built a new website for their content (Site #2) and programmatically moved all blog posts to the second website. Here is the URL structure: www.site-1.com/site-2/title-of-the-post Site #1 will remain as a normal company site without a blog, and Site #2 will act as an online content membership platform. The original 900 posts have great link juice that we, of course, would like to maintain. We've already set up 301 redirects that take care of this process. (ie. the original post gets redirected to the same URL slug with '/site-2/' added. My questions: Do you have a recommendation about how to best handle this second website in Google Search Console? Do we submit this second website as an additional property in GSC? (which shares the same top-level-domain as the original) Currently, the sitemap.xml submitted to Google Search Console has all 900 blog posts with the old URLs. Is there any benefit / drawback to submitting another sitemap.xml from the new website which has all the same blog posts at the new URL. Your guidance is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HimalayanInstitute0 -
Subsite Navigation Changes Global Navigation
I have a client that is a national brand with 400+ local brick and mortar businesses. Like any site, you navigate to “find a location” and then click on the business location closest to you. I’m going to call these local businesses “subsites”. When you’re on the subsite, the global navigation goes away, and the new subsite navigation replaces it. The subsite navigation does not link back up to the main global navigation (except for the homepage when you click on logo).
Technical SEO | | RiseSEO
I’ll try to give you a simple visual: Structure of global navigation:
-Domain.com/service1 (high volume KW)
-Domain.com/service2(high volume KW)
-Domain.com/service3(high volume KW)
Once you go to the subsite of Dallas, TX, the navigation changes to:
-domain.com/location/tx/dallas/service1 (same service as above but localized)
-domain.com/location/tx/dallas/service2 (same service as above but localized)
-domain.com/location/tx/dallas/service3 (same service as above but localized) I told my client that because the subsite does not link back up to the national pages of the site, the page rank does not get to recirculate through the website. Once the page rank is passed down to the subsites, it just recirculates within the subsite like it is its own little website on a website.
I believe this is causing a lot of problems with the ranking of the national pages because there are 400+ subsites (with 15 service pages = ~6,000 pages) that don’t let the pagerank flow back up to the main global navigation, recirculating the PR throughout the website.
It is a big ask for the client to change their website navigation without proof that this is happening. So that is what I’m looking for. Has anyone had this problem before or can point me to something to show to my client that we need to keep that global navigation on the subsites?0 -
Put a 301 from /main to home page, now I'm panicking
Hi, Our website is 10 years old, but I only noticed last night we had a https://curveball-media.co.uk/main page which has some badly formatted copy on. I redirected (301) to the home page https://curveball-media.co.uk/ Then I had a slight panic that maybe this was the wrong thing to do and it should be like it was with the home page and the /main page. Should I have left it or did I do the right thing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | curveballmedia0 -
301 redirects without .htaccess
I have a client that recently moved from an old ZenCart e-commerce site to Volusion. The domain name did not change. We need to redirect a bunch of the old URLs; however, Volusion's redirect tool does not work for URLS with "?" . The old ZenCart structure is: http://www.mydomain.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=563 Volusion is a hosted platform and we do not have access to the .htaccess file. Any suggestions on a workaround? Thanks!Nancy <colgroup><col width="960"></colgroup>
Technical SEO | | NancyVPS
| |0 -
My Alexa ranking dropped after a 301 redirect is that bad?
I had all of my non www pages redirect to the www versions. My alexa ranking dropped and keeps dropping after I did this. I'm guessing its because its tracking the non www version. Does anyone know if this is correct and should I worry?
Technical SEO | | CandleCam0 -
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 -
301 redirect to new website
We are migrating to a new website that will be using entirely new URLs under the same domain as the old website. The old website is a custom PHP script and the new website uses Drupal. I know that I should use individual 301 redirects to the corresponding new pages. My question is just how to set up the hundreds of 301 redirects from the old website to the new one? Here is the process I've come up with. Please let me know if there is an easier and better way for this. Before actually changing to the new website: download an advanced report with all pages on this domain from OSE. Find corresponding pages on the new website Make the hundreds of 301 redirect lines in an .htaccess file with the following code: redirect 301 /oldurl.html http://domain.com/the-full-url Thanks in advance for your help!
Technical SEO | | qbeeker0 -
301 Redirect
Need a little bit of help on this one. I have a product page which actually has 3 products on the page in question: www.example.com/products I thought it would be best for each product to have a page on its own: www.example.com/product-1 www.example.com/product-2 www.example.com/product-3 however my question is: The page with the 3 products www.example.com/products where should the 301 go to? Can you do a 301 to all the new product pages? Hope that makes sense Kind Regards,
Technical SEO | | Paul780