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
-
Reusing an already 301 redirected URL for a very important keyword
I have a question about reusing an already 301 redirected URL Till now I never reused an URLs that has been already redirected with a 301 redirect. However, I just started working on a website where in past they created a lot of 301 redirects without thinking about the future, and now certain URLs, that are currently redirected with a 301, would be very useful (exact match) and needed (for some of the most important keywords for this specific business), to maintain an optimal, homogeneous and "beautiful" URL structure. Has any of you ever reused a URL that was previously redirected with a 301 redirect? If yes what are your experiences with it? Can content on the reused URL (that was previously 301 redirected and than the redirect removed) normally rank if the page is reestablished and the redirect is removed (and you do great content, on page, internal linking, backlinking, .... ) or is such an URL risky / not recommended / "burned" forever and not recommended to be reused again... especially for very important keywords since it present the exact match ?! Thank you very much for all your help! Regards
Technical SEO | | moz46y0 -
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 -
blog url structure change affect on pagerank
We are looking to change our blog structure which will help us with the organization of the topics but the url structure will change if we do this. Right now all of the blogs are under a general news blog, which we will be breaking out articles into several blog category topics Current:
Technical SEO | | theblueprints
example of current structure
current site: https://domain/blogs/news/blog article name Proposed Change:
current site: https://domain/blogs/keyword-name-of-blog-category/blog article name We have ranked #1 for several keywords that we would like to preserve the ranking if we make this switch with 301 redirects. Looking for suggestion on the percentage of chance our ranking will be negatively affected and by how much? Also what everyones recommendation is if we should make this switch or not touch the urls. Your help is appreciated, thanks in advance.0 -
Page Rank grows, but Trust falls
Why it's happening? How to fix it? This problem is on this website http://www.skydas.lv http://www.m-lux.lv Supporta metāla durvis dzīvoklim ngm_445922407.jpg
Technical SEO | | Felter0 -
301 Redirecting http to https
In the Moz Site Crawl issue, I was seeing an error that said we were temporarily redirecting our homepage to https URLs. So I changed the code in htaccess to make it 301 redirect but I'm still getting the same error. I implemented it last week and we just had a new crawl yesterday. Here is the new code: RewriteEngine on
Technical SEO | | Heydarian
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^heritagelawmarketing.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.heritagelawmarketing.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC] Does anyone know why I'm still getting 302 redirects? Thanks0 -
Can I remove 301 redirects after some time?
Hello, We have an very large number of 301 redirects on our site and would like to find a way to remove some of them. Is there a time frame after which Google does not need a 301 any more? For example if A is 301 redirected to B, does Google know after a while not to serve A any more, and replaces any requests for A with B? How about any links that go to A? Or: Is the only option to have all links that pointed to A point to B and then the 301 can be removed after some time? Thank you for you you help!
Technical SEO | | Veva0 -
Is a 302 redirect the correct redirect from a root URL to a detail page?
Hi guys The widely followed SEO best practice is that 301 redirects should be used instead of 302 redirects when it is a permanent redirect that is required. Matt Cutts said last year that 302 redirects should "only" be used for temporary redirects. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-interview-googles-matt-cutts-on-redirects-trust-more For a site that I am looking at the SEO Moz Crawll Diagnostics tool lists as an issue that the URL / redirects to www.abc.com/Pages/default.aspx with a 302 redirect. On further searching I found that on a Google Support forum (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=276539078ba67f48&hl=en) that a Google Employee had said "For what it's worth, a 302 redirect is the correct redirect from a root URL to a detail page (such as from "/" to "/sites/bursa/"). This is one of the few situations where a 302 redirect is preferred over a 301 redirect." Can anyone confirm if it is the case that "a 302 redirect is the correct redirect from a root URL to a detail page"? And if so why as I haven't found an explanation. If it is the correct best practice then should redirects of this nature be removed from displaying as issues in the SEO Moz Crawll Diagnostics tool Thanks for your help
Technical SEO | | CPU0