Redirect 1 specific link from a referrer, wise move?
-
This might be a bit of a complex question as it has many implications and I’d really appreciate some expert advice.
I have a client who has one specific .gov link which is absolutely amazing. It doesn’t have any anchor text and goes straight to the homepage. However it drives quite a lot of revenue! It’s lovely as SEO’s to think of links actually driving revenue rather than assisting rankings of course.
Over the last 30 days this single govt. link has driven:
418 clicks, 61 conversions, $7,500 revenue
Not bad I hear you say! J
I really want to extract maximum value from this and I’ sure it would perform far better if it went to a really tightly focused landing page rather than the homepage. It really is hyper-targeted buyer traffic (as the stats show) but could perform even better in my opinion.
I can’t change the link, that’s not possible unfortunately. However I can do some server side stuff to redirect traffic from just this link to a desired new page.
However, what are the SEO implications of this in the opinion of some of the experts here?
Obviously the link itself is valuable from an SEO perspective and I don’t want to lose that. I’m not sure how Google would treat the link if this were to be done.
Also I really want to A/B test the homepage versus a landing page to ensure that it really does give an improvement. I’m not even sure how to achieve that given the difficulty in this situation.
Any advice would really be useful!
Thanks J
-
Exactly, it would mean that you're minimizing the risk of having the site penalised as well. Let me know how it goes!
-
Thanks Sebastian.
Yes I already have VWO code installed on the clients site so that's good news. I didn't realise I could set up a test for just traffic from a specific referrer URL.
So basically I can split test the homepage versus a completely new landing page in VWO to prove the concept. Thanks!
-
Thanks yes, i'm only investigating options right now of course.
As you say it's a very valuable link (I wish i had one of those!).
I'm certainly not going to make major changes until more research is done. However if we could double the conversion rate (which I think is possible in this case), it would really be a big win!
-
Hi Harvey,
Good job on the gov link
Answering your A/B test, although there are a few posts out there that have shown a reduction in visibility as a result of cloaking etc, but assuming you correctly implement the test there shouldn't be an issue.
I know most multivariate testers offer a/b testing based on referral URL so that shouldn't have an effect on the link or Google's opinion of it.
Ultimately Google engages in the same kind of tests and if you visit the Google homepage in I.E you get a little box asking you to install Chrome, so a minor test like this shouldn't have any negative implications.
VisualWebsiteOptimizer definitely offers referal URL testing and I believe Optimizely does as well - if you're a pro member you can get 3 months free of VWO or 25% off Optimizely packages
-
Not an expert here but redirects are never as good as straight forward links IMO.
In your position I would probably make the landing page more easily accessible from the top of the homepage and direct users to visit the page that way.
It's a very valuable link, so probably best not to test the waters when they are unknown.
Just my opinion of course and one of the ways we learn about seo is of course to experiment, but do consider all aspects before making any redirect changes, pros/cons etc.
All the best!
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
-
I just bought a SSL Key, do I need to redirect all my links?
I just bought a SSL Key, do I need to redirect all my links? Example http://mysite.com redirect 301 to https://mysite.com Otherwise, I will lose all my ranking I guess?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gab-SEO0 -
Location Links in Footer
Our business is in 10 cities. We offer identical services in each city, there's absolutely nothing different about the services we offer based on location. We have a contact page for each city with a bit of unique content (phone, address, photo of city, list of counties we service). It really would be a grey area to create subsites for each city and try to rewrite the service description content 10 times. However, we want to improve organic results. We of course have Google Places listings for each city. From an on-page SEO perspective, wouldn't it only have the possibility of benefiting, not hurting local SEO but add the city name linked to that city's contact page in the footer? I've seen arguments against it, and could see maybe if you were in like 50 cities instead of 10, but is there really any observed downside to doing that in the footer for every page? We can't title the difference service pages with the city name in the headings or page title, so at least we'd have anchor text in the footer.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wizkids9640 -
To Redirect or Not
I have a strange situation and looking for advice on how well a permanent redirect of url will work. I have an eCommerce site called twpstain.com. This site sells TWP Deck stain and the URL/Content is fully owned by me. We do not however own the TWP brand and have always operated with permission from the manufacturer as an Authorized dealer. Circumstance have come up where they now want to be in control of all URLS that have the name "TWP" in them. Not sure if they legally can do this but they can cut me off with product if I do not comply. My options are: 1. A permanent redirect of entire site to new URL that does not have the word "TWP" in the url. 2. Give them the URL but they are willing to have me use the URL as I have in the past. A contract for this would be drawn up to cover me for years to come and possibly offer compensation if they decide not to renew. My concerns are numerous but the question for the Moz community is to how well the 301 redirect will work and will I lose my rankings? I currently dominate the rankings for my site and I very concerned that there will be major loss of sales and traffic. Any help or opinions on this would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dogtopiamichigan0 -
Fetch as Google - Redirected
Hi I have swaped from HTTP to HTTPS and put a redirect on for HTTP to redirect to HTTPS. I also put www.xyz.co.uk/index.html to redirect to www.xyz.co.uk When I fetch as Google it shows up redirect! Does this mean that I have too many 301 looping? Do I need the redirect on index.html to root domain if I have a rel conanical in place for index.html htaccess (Linix) - RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^xyz.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia
RewriteRule (.*) https://www.xyz.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^$ index.html [R=301,L]0 -
Advice on Link Building?
I know webmasters shouldn't focus on link building but unfortunately there are some types of content that doesn't get shared as much as other. And for content to go viral, it ain't that easy and it's almost impossible in some smaller niches where you don't have the volume to go "viral". That said I know about the common link building techniques. I know I can submit guest posts but when you're competing with websites that have over 10,000 backlinks, there is no way I'm going to get close to this with guest posting and commenting on other blogs. One way I found for getting backlinks is to publish interviews. Most of the time, people/businesses you interview like to link to this type of content. Publishing value-added content about other businesses' products or services may get some backlinks in return but not that often. So other than that, can some of you share some "out-of-the-box" link building strategies? Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740 -
After the 301 redirect
Hi all, A quick question, after you have setup your 301 re-directs in .htaccess - is it necessary to keep your content in the original domains directory? My thinking is that requests do get as far as referencing the directory, thus it should be safe to delete all the files on the old domain? Thanx!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gazza7770 -
Too many links?
I've recently taken over a site from another agency, which has hundreds of linking root domains. These domains are of very low quality and, in my opinion, are being ignored by Google. Is it best to 'clean up' some of these links, or leave them and start building quality links? I just don't want to waste time cleaning link profiles if there's no need.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | A_Q0 -
Links from tumblr
I have two links from hosted tumblr blogs which are not on tumblr.com. So, website1 has a tumblr blog: tumblr.website1.com And another site website2.com also uses the a record/custom domains option from tumblr but not on a subdomain, which is decribed below: http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/custom_domains Does this mean that all links from such sites count as coming from the same IP in google's eyes? Or is there value in getting links from multiple sites because the a-record doesn't affect SEO in a negative way? Many thanks, Mike.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | team740
