Removing 301 Redirects

[hfranz]

Is it safe to remove old 301 Redirects from an SEO standpoint and can 301s dramatically affect seo?

Prior to switching our old domain over to our new domain, we had (and currently still do) tons of 301 redirects, because of optimizing our file names and structure.

Then our old domain was redirected to our new domain in the same redirect file.

So that being said, now that our new domain has been up and running for about 3 months, would it be safe for me to get rid of the old 301 redirects and redirect anything that was on our old domain to our new domains home page? This would clean up our redirects tremendously and I hope would help with SEO.

[hfranz]

This is what I would like to do, as we do not currently sell online. We were not getting a lot lot of traffic from them. So you think it is safe to do 1 redirect from the old domain?

[irvingw]

Correct, but a mass 301 redirect from all URLs on the site to the homepage will still pass PR and the pages will not 401.

The only reason I would keep them there is if there is significant traffic to internal pages that are generating revenue. For instance, if you are getting a lot of traffic from a Nike sneaker page you would want that to redirect to your new Nike sneaker page, not a homepage where they would then have to search for Nike.

[malachiii]

Definitely need to keep the 301 redirects in place if there are any backlinks going to your old URL structure.  Depending on your website, there could be many websites linking to the OLD URL to this day.  if you remove the 301's you will lose the juice and anyone who clicks those links would now get a 404 or just go the the top level of the new domain (depending on how you have it setup)