Very Puzzled --- 301 ReDirects Did Not Work - Lost Rankings - Any Thoughts?
-
This one has us stumped and frustrated, hopefully someone out there in SEOMoz land can give us some thoughts and/or suggestions on what's going on and how to remedy.
This is a follow-up to a post I made awhile back. Here is an excerpt from the original post --
We currently have 3 different versions of our State Business-for-Sale listings pages - the versions are:
Version 1 -- Preferred Version (Links on Homepage www.businessbroker.net)
http://www.businessbroker.net/State/Vermont-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx
Title = Vermont Business for Sale Ads - Vermont Businesses for Sale & Business Brokers - Sell a Business on Business Broker (I realize the title needs work)
Version 2: (Links on this page: http://www.businessbroker.net/listings/blistings.ihtml)
URL Prior to 301 change --- http://www.businessbroker.net/Businesses_For_Sale-State-Vermont.aspx
Title = Vermont Business for Sale | 120 Vermont Businesses for Sale | BusinessBroker.net
Version 3: (Links on this page: http://www.businessbroker.net/businessesforsale.ihtml)
URL Prior to 301 change --- http://www.businessbroker.net/listings/business_for_sale_vermont.ihtml
Title = Vermont Businesses for Sale at BusinessBroker.net - Vermont Business for Sale
While the page titles and meta data are a bit different, the bulk of the page content (which is the listings rendered) are identical.
OK, so we decided to test this on 5 of our State pages - I will use VERMONT in this discussion. We did 301 ReDirects on Version 2 and Version 3 -- they now redirect to Version 1 - we did the redirects and also changed the URL's on the pages. Prior to the change, we were ranking for keywords like "Vermont Business for Sale" and some other similar keywords -- on 1st page of Google --- now, we have lost our rankings big time.
Did we do something wrong? I thought when you did 301's the majority of link juice was supposed to be preserved (losing 10% or so) -- this didn't happen in our case.
Any help on what we can do would be appreciated. We only did 5 States as a test and also noticed big drops for Maine as well. These were both states where VERSION 2 was the page that was showing up in SERPs.
Thanks in advance for wading through this long post and any help you can provide!!
- Matt
-
I ran your new domain - the one that you redirect the others to - through OSE and there were 58 incoming links but they were from only 2 different root domains. One of them no longer linked to you when I checked it and the other one was blocked by our security software here at work. The software stated that it was a 'Verified Threat'. If the site linking to you is malicious and there are multiple links from that site to your domain Google could be penalizing you for it - once all of the link juice (well, all that WILL pass) is passed via your 301s then this should tip the ratio of good/bad links in to your favor and hopefully fix the issue. It may be a good idea to look in to the site though. It could be nothing, our software has been known to block pages that are fine although it is pretty rare... the page that is linking to your page is http://www.onlinebizdirectory.com/business/businesses_for_sale_in_vermont.html
-
not sure I follow this....can you provide a bit more detail? we did not change anything on the link front. thanks
-
The page you redirect to has 58 links from two root domains. One seems not to link to you any more and the other is blocked by Trend Micro here at work calling it a verified threat.... that may be worth looking in to while you wait for the link juice to pass....
-
Doh - I right clicked and copied URLs - I didnt notice - LOL, sorry about that
-
Hi Billy - We did not redirect the California URLs. Maine and Vermont were redirected. Thanks, MM
-
Got the same error for http://www.businessbroker.net/listings/business_for_sale_california.ihtml
-
I dont know if this is the best tool (just found it using Google) but I used http://www.webconfs.com/redirect-check.php/ and checked http://www.businessbroker.net/Businesses_For_Sale-State-California.aspx and got this:
Either http://www.businessbroker.net/Businesses_For_Sale-State-California.aspx is NOT REDIRECTING to any URL or the redirect is NOT SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY
-
It sounds that you did things correctly (especially testing a few pages first). Here are a couple of things for your consideration:
Google Takes Time on 301 Redirects
When I did a change of URLs on a site with about 200 pages last month. The rankings and traffic tanked for two weeks, then reappeared. It may be taking time for Google to move the value of your version 2 pages to the value of your version 1 page. You will just have to wait and see.
Duplicate Content Can be Addressed this Way:
If you have three same-content pages, you can keep them all and put a canonical tag on all three that reference version one as the prefered copy.
-
The 301 Redirects were done on 6/21/12 -- so about 6 weeks ago. No other changes to the pages were made.
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
-
Keyword keeps fluctuating between a high rank and no rank?
I've searched around and I can't seem to find anyone else describing the issue I'm seeing. Basically for a very long time our website (snappages.com) has always ranked in the tens and twenties for "create a website". It's a high volume keyword and we get a lot of traffic from it. Around May 16th it suddenly disappeared completely from search results on Google and now it will sporadically show back up with a SERP in the twenties every 5-10 days for a few hours and then completely disappear again. This pattern has continued to this day. I've checked and there are no manual penalties and nothing has really changed dramatically from a content perspective or anything like that. I would understand if we got penalized and our ranking dropped, or even if it just completely disappeared? This is the only keyword that this is happening for, all the others remain unaffected. Anyone know how I can find out why this is happening or have suggestions on how to fix it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stestone0 -
Can I know which keywords lost their top rankings on google a year ago if the client didn't checked the keyword rankings in his website?
Hi, Can I know which keywords lost their top rankings on google a year ago if the client didn't checked the keyword rankings in his website? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
301 Redirecting from domain to subdomain
We're taking on a redesign of our corporate site on our main domain. We also have a number of well established, product based subdomains. There are a number of content pages that currently live on the corporate site that rank well, and bring in a great deal of traffic, though we are considering placing 301 redirects in place to point that traffic to the appropriate pages on the subdomains. If redirected correctly, can we expect the SEO value of the content pages currently living on the corporate site to transfer to the subdomains, or will we be negatively impacting our SEO by transferring this content from one domain to multiple subdomains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris81980 -
Need advice on 301 domain redirection
Hello friends, We have two sites namely spiderman-example.com & avengers-example.com which sells the same product listed out under similar categories, since we are about to stop or put down the site “avengers-example.com” because we just want to concentrate in bringing up a single brand called spiderman-example.com. “Spiderman-example” has comparatively more visitors and conversion rates than ''avengers-example'' ie. 90 % more traffic and conversion. Avengers-example has a small fraction of loyal customers who still search for the brand-name & there are a hand-full of potential keywords those ranking on its own. So is it advisable to redirect Avengers-example to spiderman-example using 301-redirect? Will this help to gain any link-juice from Avengers-example? If so how can we effectively redirect between two domain’s with minimal loss in page authority & linkjuice to enhance ''spiderman-example''? Off beat:These names "Avengers" and "Spiderman" were just used as an example but the actual site names has no relation to the ones mentioned above.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | semvibe0 -
Can some brilliant mozzer out there teach a moron/newbie like me how to 301 redirect several URL's I have?
Okay - I am a supermodel. I look pretty. My legs are amazing. My cheekbones are high. But when it comes to 301 redirects I am the ugliest supermodel on the block. Crap, here is the truth: I am not even a supermodel. I am just a middle-aged, goofy looking dude who is a newbie to fixing websites. I have inherited several sites from a friend and I have been helping by creating solid contextual links internally and externally for a while. But, when Roger the wondrous SEOMoz robot talks to me, he says, "oops, it looks like your foolish freak self has a site that has both a www. and a non-www, which can create competition for yourself." What do I do when he says that? I just whisper a "thank-you" but gently press the skip this step button and go on with my life because I do not know how to make my non-www.'s redirect into the www. sites... Now, I have sort of asked this question on the site before, but I was answered by someone who does not understand my level of ignorance. any use of the word canonical or just put this lfwjkshj.htp/php inside the left ear of your mom, does not tell me anything so, is there any willing and kind soul who can walk me through redirecting several of my sites to their proper home - kind of like Carl Chubbs Weathers did for Happy Gilmore in that Academy Award winning classic? Thanks for the help in advance best, dumbhead
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | creativeguy0 -
How do I 301 Redirect a complete folder?
Hi, I am want to delete a folder and all the contents. I then need to redirect anyone that is trying to reach a file in that folder to another page on my site. example: www.mydomain.com/folder/ (contains 50 pages) I want to delete the folder and all 50 pages. So if someone tries to reach www.mydomain.com/folder/page1.php the redirect would take them to a specific page on my site. Doing this to clean up old content. How would I do this on the .htaccess? I have redirected a page but not a folder. Thanks in advance! Force7
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Force70 -
Canonical or 301 redirect, that is the question?
So my site has duplicate content issues because of the index.html and the www and non www version of the site. What's the best way to deal with this without htaccess? Is it a 301 redirect or is it the canonical, or is it both?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
How To 301 Redirect .html pages
I need to redirect a page/URL that is purely .html to a new location. I don't know how to do this. All the redirects I can find are for server side code pages .php/.aspx etc. From my understanding I can't put a server side redirect in a .html file. I am hosting on a microsoft server, however the new page I am redirecting to is .php. I am running some WordPress (.php) files on the server. I need to make it redirect before the old page loads so visitors don't start reading something that is about to get redirected Can someone please help me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyNet0