60% Internal Redirects
-
A new client I am working with has a site with over 9,000 internal 301 redirects. These are as a result of old links not being updated and the number of internal 301 redirects far outweighs the number of 'correct' links on the site.
My personal opinion is that creates the risk of crawl errors/issues and whilst a 301 redirect is correct in this case, it does not negate the need to update internal links.
The problem I have is that when I explain this to the client, they reply with an Matt Cutts video from 2008 that talks about 301 redirects being correct for site migrations. Even though the video is not entirely relevant to the point, I can not get the client to move from his position.
Ideally, what I am looking for help with is the following:
- Am I right in my position that having this many redirects is a potential issue and that internal links should be updated?
- Does anyone know of any articles from 'notable/reputable' sources that I can use in order to support my position?
Thanks in advance for your help.
-
Hello Matt,
Two things:
#1 - "The amount of pagerank that is lost through a redirect is currently the same as the amount of pagrank that dissapates through a link". So they are exactly the same. Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Filv4pP-1nw
It was thought that more pagerank was lost through a redirect because Google does not want webmasters relying on redirects instead of actually updating internal links. At least that's what Matt told us at a search conference many years before denying it in this video. So.... That's sort of a non-issue - for now. Until Matt changes his mind about how he wants to explain it again.
#2 - It is still "best practice" to update your internal links after a site migration instead of relying on the 301 redirects. The reason is that you don't just migrate once. Think long-term and you will see there is always going to be a possibility of changing the URLs again at some point in the future. If you do not update your internal links you're going to be sending users through multiple redirect hops, which will THEN probably lose more page rank than what is lost in a normal links because it will be happening multiple times.
-
Hi Matt,
I agree that it's a potential issue, but not a highly likely to be one. Another argument in in favor to restructuring the internal links is the internal link juice that can be lost through re-directs. Saying that, your client could be right in thinking time could be better spent on other tasks.
-
Hi Matt,
Unfortunately the point of a 301 is to point the user / bot to the correct location. Having said that there is nothing wrong with tweaking the site structure so it is more accessible to users however the 301 redirects would still be a valid point. It does sound like long term a restructure would be more beneficial.
As long as they are making the user experience better they are doing their job, make the user happy make Google happy.
Best of luck though.
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
-
To 301 redirect or not...
Hi guys i'd like to get your opinion on this. We currently have two sites, site A is the old one with PA44 and DA33. Site B is the new one which is going to replace site A it currently has PA37 and DA24 Our plan for the future is to shut down site A and redirect all pages using 301 to the relevant pages on side B. Currently we have some links in place for a couple of keywords on site A to site B which seems to be working great for our ranking. Now i'm wondering if this is maybe a good option, to give back links from A to B or will i pass through more link juice when redirecting everything? (ps. both are e commerce sites hosted and registred with different companies)
Technical SEO | | Immanuel0 -
301 redirect new site design
Hi I'm just setting up some 301 redirects for a new site design about to go live. The old site structure had some 'overview' pages in the urls (without any content) that just 302'd to a sub page. Do i need 301 redirect these overview page urls or since they had no content theres no need and I probably shouldn't or should i ? Also for pages that have no direct equivalent replacement is it still best to 301 to nearest relevant page or just leave it. For example a thank you page that currently shows after user submits email form wont be on new site (since message shows on form page after submission rather than new page). Should i 301 to form page or just leave it ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Internal Links
In OSE, it is reporting that i don't have any internal links to my homepage. In the header on every page is my logo in the top left hand corner which links back to my homepage. Shouldn't this mean then that every page should link to the home page? Similarly, internal pages which link from my main nav aren't showing up as having any internal links in OSE. Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | Santaur0 -
Temporary Redirect Warnings
How big of an seo issue is this. I provide downloadable results for fitness events and after I pull the data I "redirect" it to a plain text file that is actually created on the fly. Is this a problem and, if so, is there a modification that I can implement to avoid having my site suffer for this? Thanks~
Technical SEO | | bobbabuoy0 -
301 redirect or 302
A client of mine has an international company named www.taxglobalizers.com if you come from Holland they 302 redirect you to the www.taxglobalizers.com/en version of the site and if you come from Holland they redirect with a 302 to www.taxglobalizers.com/nl version. I think it is best to change this in a 301 redirect. Am i correct in this? Kind Regards, Ruud
Technical SEO | | RuudHeijnen0 -
Multiple redirects a problem?
When product is sold out I will 301 redirect to a category page if a similar product is not available, but now our web developer has changed all the url's of the category pages so I need to redirect them all to the new category pages but that means there are some products that are first being redirected to the no longer existent category and then being redirected again to the new category page. This seems like it might me be a problem having two 301 redirects so I wanted to find out for sure if it is. Unfortunately our system for redirecting pages is archaic so it will be difficult and time consuming to go back and redo all the redirects that are going to pages that no longer exist so I wanted to get some additional opinions before I do that.
Technical SEO | | KentH0 -
301 Redirect Issue
I'm having an issue with 301 redirects: Let's see if I can verbalize my thoughts on this one... So we just recently moved our site to Wordpress. One of our new 301 commands is redirecting oursite.com/news to oursite.com/blog . However there are other links from our previous site that look like oursite.com/news/XYZ and the issue is that, because wordpress structures its links differently, that URL is not equivalent to oursite.com/blog/XYZ. Instead, it might look something more like oursite.com/blog/yaddayadda/XYZ or something. Does that make sense? The issue is that when I find an old link of ours on google that looks something like "oursite.com/news/XYZ" or "oursite.com/news/ABC" it is automatically replacing "news" with "blog". When I try to go in manually and redirect anything that says "/news/XYZ" to "/blog/yaddayadda/XYZ" it still doesn't work. It still just replaces "news" with "blog." Wow I realize that might not make sense to anyone but if it does - please advise!! Thanks!!!!
Technical SEO | | EntrustSEO0 -
301 redirect
We have just had an outside SEO agency report on our site: One of things brought up were arounf broken links, and how they class them as broken links. Could any body tell me whether this statement holds true please, as I am not aware of this "Our latest intelligence shows that google are downgrading ranking from sites that feature 301 redirects within the internal link structure". Any help would be greatly appreciated Regards
Technical SEO | | Yozzer0