Will "internal 301s" have any effect on page rank or the way in which an SE see's our site interlinking?
-
We've been forced (for scalability) to completely restructure our website in terms of setting out a hierarchy.
For example - the old structure :
country / city / city area
Where we had about 3500 nicely interlinked pages for relevant things like taxis, hotels, apartments etc in that city :
We needed to change the structure to be :
country / region / area / city / cityarea
So as patr of the change we put in place lots of 301s for the permanent movement of pages to the new structure and then we tried to actually change the physical on-page links too.
Unfortunately we have left a good 600 or 700 links that point to the old pages, but are picked up by the 301 redirect on page, so we're slowly going through them to ensure the links go to the new location directly (not via the 301).
So my question is (sorry for long waffle) :
Whilst it must surely be "best practice" for all on-page links to go directly to the 'right' page, are we harming our own interlinking and even 'page rank' by being tardy in working through them manually?
Thanks for any help anyone can give.
-
Thanks Everett - sorry about delay in coming back to your response.
This 301 issue was one if the things we were worried about (along with a ton of others) so we can at least be a little self-assured that we're prgressing on all fronts and not leaving a gaping problem that will continue to dog us.
Cheers
W
-
I'm just going to answer your question directly. This was your question:
"Whilst it must surely be "best practice" for all on-page links to go directly to the 'right' page, are we harming our own interlinking and even 'page rank' by being tardy in working through them manually?"
Short Answer: As long as you are working to update those internal links, and you have 301 redirects in place during the meantime, you should be fine.
Technically speaking, it is best practice to link directly to the page internally, rather than relying on 301 redirects. Yes, it is true that a very small (very, VERY small so as to be virtually undetectable) amount of pagerank is lost when redirecting, it only becomes an issue when you begin adding redirect on top of redirect. Keeping your house clean, so-to-speak, by not relying on redirects to fix your broken internal links will keep this from happening, and is exactly what the tiny amount of pagerank loss is said to be created for (to discourage webmasters from relying on redirects to fix broken internal links) - if you believe Matt Cutts.
With that said, you may indeed have many other issues to deal with, as do most sites that have a geotargeted, deep URL structure like the one you have outlined. Panda slammed a lot of sites like that pretty hard. But all of that is beyond the scope of this question.
I hope you find whatever is wrong and get your traffic back. Good luck!
-
Hi Chris
Thanks - I 'love' the loose MC videos - "it is - but it isn't an issue".
That was my gut that there may be a temporary loss of link juice, but it would re-adjust after a period. Which means we have other issues.
Cheers
W
-
Thanks for your advice - amended the question so it is simpler to read. sorry about that.
Well that's what I thought - but anecdotal evidence ( as well as past experience ) is making me wonder whether we're losing a significant passing of link juice. We put the 301s in place about 6 or 7 months ago so any loss of link juice between pages should have come back by now.
Maybe we have some other issues?
W
-
Agree with Chris, thumbs up. I would just add that "ideally" you would have manually gone through all the links ahead of time and had the 301s in place prior to launch. That way there is no downtime/confusion to Google on what they are supposed to do with these pages. If you think about it you have 600 pages that are in limbo and so after a while Google will just say, well, I guess those pages are dead and start to crawl them less often and eventually drop them.
I would make it a priority to go through those pages and setup the new 301s ASAP. Google will keep trying a old page for a while (few months) if it 404s or even if you have a 301. It knows that mistakes happen. So in the case of the 301, it will still crawl the old URL for a while even after it sees the 301 the first time, just to make sure that the 301 is really permanent. You have a bit of a grace period so take advantage of it to get things cleaned up quickly.
-
Hiya,
First off let me post this video from Matt Cutts regards to 301 redirects http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Filv4pP-1nw
As long as the 301 is pointed towards either the same page or a page of equal value (content wise) you should be good. Whilst going through them manually may loose you a bit of rank over time at least you can know you are directing to the correct pages.
short answer
manual - Short term rank loss long term benifit
Auto - visa vesa
Hope this helps
-
Hello,
I don't quite understand your question, if you are adding more category pages, you should have more pages instead of less, just make sure to 301 redirect every single old page and you shouldn't have a problem.
I had to do something similar to one of my sites like 3 months ago and I did loose pagerank on some pages but ranking got better so I wouldn't worry much about pagerank.
Cheers
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
-
Content that's behind CSS..
For content that's been loaded onto the page.. but it requires a click for it to be revealed.. as in a slider, or a tab, to save space or for a page's organization.. what are your thoughts on Google counting or weighting this content? It would make sense for Google to give it partial or no weighting as if Google attributes the content to being there, its confusion for the user to land on the page and have to find it/click around to find it.. Sorry if this is an obvious question to SEOs.. I've always assumed as long as it was loaded, it'd be mostly counted.. but I'm beginning to doubt my assumption. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | speedcommerce0 -
For an e-commerce product category page that has several funnels to specific products, for SEO purposes does it matter whether the category page's overview content is above or below those funnels?
We manage an e-commerce site. On a category page, there are several funnels to specific products. We moved the category overview content below those funnels to make it easier for users to quickly get to products. Seems more user friendly to me, but could that move of the main content to the lower part of the page be a negative ranking factor?
On-Page Optimization | | PKI_Niles0 -
Will pushing a visitor to a conversion page hosted on a 3rd-party domain hurt the landing page ranking
Had an interesting question from a client. The client has a page that is optimized for a specific term. The goal of the page is to push users to sign-up for a trial. The trial registration (conversion) page is hosted by a third-party. Will pushing users to the conversion page cannibalize the SEO authority of the landing page. My reflexive answer is to say no, but now am not so sure.
On-Page Optimization | | infoblue0 -
Does keyword usage in the footer have an effect on how high a page ranks?
My client has a lot of text about their company in their footer. Is the text in the footer associated with the on page keyword usage and density for all pages or none of the pages?
On-Page Optimization | | Santaur0 -
The "100 links/page recommendation" - Do Duplicate Links Count?
We have way too many links on our homepage. The PageRank Link Juice Calculator (www.ecreativeim.com/pagerank-link-juice-calculator.php) counts them to 300. But all of them are not unique, that is some links point to the same URL. So my question: does the "100 links/page recommendation" refer to all anchors on the page or only to unique link target URLs? I know "100" is just a standard recommendation.
On-Page Optimization | | TalkInThePark0 -
Will a new domain name help rankings
If I purchase a domain name that links to my site with the new domain name being keyword specific....will that help boost rankings in Google? Reason I ask is that a particular website always ranks higher than ours because of their domain name (keyword specific). They are currently not even "open" and they still manage to rank high. I checked for links with the seomoz tools but did not see any high links etc.. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | teachcsg0 -
Best way to do a 301 redirect when the incorrect page has rank and FB likes
Due to a site structural problem with our CMS we have alot of duplicate content pages (1 page, with multiple urls). We are in the process of setting up 301 redirects to correct the problem. Meanwhile; one of the pages with the "incorrect" URL happens to be the page google favors and also has about 100 FB "likes". The question is: Are we better off keeping the "incorrect" URL for that particular page and redirect the other url to it? Both have a page rank of 3. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | foodsleuth0 -
How to design a site map page for users (not for Google)
I would like to design a site map for my visitors so they can have a quick view on the whole content of the website. 2 questions : 1 - is this kind of site map can help in terms of SEO ? 2 - if so, what are the best practices to design it ? Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | betadvisor0