Redirect effecting ranking?
-
I manage the SEO for several different regions which are also based on the same site e.g. example.com/au, example.com/us
The /us site has pretty good rankings and changes I'm making to the site are having an impact. The /au site has really bad rankings, even though much of the content is the same. (The /uk site is also awful but we had an issue with 4,500 duplicate pages which were only resolved last week). Crawl diagnostics are only showing 1 major error for a 404 response, I'm receiving a domain authority of 43 and A grade page ranking for some of our targeted keywords. I could believe that this isn't necessarily going to get us a top 10 rating but I would have thought we would be in the top 50, especially for branded keywords.
Could the lack of ranking be to do with how our domain redirects? If you go to example.com.au you are taken to the home page rather than being redirected to example.com/au. Once you head to an internal page the URL changes to example.com/au/page
-
Which leads me stumped as to whats stopping these two subfolders being ranked.. we're no.1 for branded keywords in the US for some pages on example.com/us and not even ranked in the UK for example.com/uk for the same keywords.
-
If you had any type of duplicate content penalty - or other Panda related "slap" - it would effect the entire domain's rankings, not just the one subfolder where the duplicate content problems existed. I've never heard of an algorithmic penalty that only effected one area of a website… it almost always slaps the entire domain.
-
While the duplicate content issues were on the same domain, they were for a sub-folder. It doesn't seem to have effected another sub-folder on the site (example.com/us) so my feeling is that this is a different issue.
-
In general, redirects dilute the link "juice" - or authority - a page has accrued from links and other search-related metrics. When you redirect that page to another, all of the authority does not flow to the new page. A portion of that page's link value/authority does flow to the new page. The majority is lost.
However, in your case, it sounds like there are many other things affecting your website's performance in SERPs. I'd expect your duplicate issues - even if recently resolved - to hold your website back for a time longer, but if all those other issues clear, yes, the redirect could be the main reason for the effected ranking.
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
-
301 Redirects Backlinks?
I am wondering how many people still getting results from 301 redirects from high authority expired domains..? I read few case studies on detailed dot com where the shared some people still making big bucks from this strategy which i think 10beast also implemented few years back.? Is it worth it to test out 301 redirects to money sites.? How many people on the moz community here have implemented this strategy in practical and can share some insights and pros and cons of doing 301 redirects? Many Thanks.
Technical SEO | | asifseo0980 -
I have lose my ranking Via 301 Redirection - How To Recover?
Hey, Folks! I Have Used 301 Redirection Method to Increase My Rankings but When i applied this Method My Website Ranked Down To 55 Numbers. Can anyone Suggest me How to Recover it?
Technical SEO | | SumitJiGupta0 -
301 Redirect Expert
I have hired two website people from odesk and had bad experience in 301 redirects. One never got it done and the other cause my website to crash on a 500 error code, he load all the redirects in a script on .htaccess on my wordpress site on godaddy, there were 1400 redirect.Can somebody recommend a expert for my redirect problem.
Technical SEO | | tjacquet0 -
Eligible To Rank For Few Queries
I can't figure out why this site (www.liveathomeseniors.com) is eligible for so few search queries on Google Webmaster Tools. I know there is a lot of work to be done, but this is my biggest puzzle right now. What am I not seeing? 379 pages are indexed and yet the site is has only been deemed eligible to rank for 3 queries over the past 3 months. Is it all the repetition in the way the content has been structured? I'd appreciate people's thoughts on this. I can't see the forest for the trees. Donna
Technical SEO | | DonnaDuncan0 -
My Alexa ranking dropped after a 301 redirect is that bad?
I had all of my non www pages redirect to the www versions. My alexa ranking dropped and keeps dropping after I did this. I'm guessing its because its tracking the non www version. Does anyone know if this is correct and should I worry?
Technical SEO | | CandleCam0 -
Domains redirect influence search rankings
Hi seomoz, I'm currently optimizing a website which is www.photobookworldwide.com and the ranking is on 2nd page, but looking at the result this morning, instead of showing photobookworldwide.com, it show other result which is www.photobooklaos.com on 2nd page for the keyword photobooks. Our web developer using virtual domain, and redirected photobooklaos.com to photobookworldwide.com. Any solution for this? need you guys to help me on this. Cheers Gerald
Technical SEO | | greathokage0 -
PR Ranks
Do they really have a lot of value on how a site performs on Google? What is the best way to raise your PR Rank?
Technical SEO | | CalgaryRealtor390 -
Domain Redirect Issues
Hi, I have a domain that is 10 years old, this is the old domain that used to be the website for the company. The company approximately 7 years ago was bought by another and purchased a new domain that is 7 years old. The company did not do a 301 redirect as they were not aware of the SEO implications. They continued building web applications on the old domain while using the new domain for all marketing and for business partner links. They just put in a server level redirect on the folders themselves to point to the new root. I am on Tomcat, I do not have the option of a 301 redirect as the web applications are all hard coded links (non-relative) (hundreds of thousands of dollars to recode) After beginning SEO; Google is seeing them as the same domain, and has replaced all results in Google with the old domain instead of the new one..... My questions is.... Is it better to take the hit and just put a robots.txt to disallow all robots on the old domain Or... Will that hurt my new domain as well since Google is seeing them as the same? Or.... Has Google already made the switch without a redirect to see these as the same and i should just continue on? (even the cache for the new site shows the old domain address) Old Domain= www.floridahealthcares.com New = www.fhcp.com *****Update after writing this I began changing index.htm to all non relative links so all links on the old domain homepage would point to fhcp.com fixing the issue of the entire site being replicated under the old domain. I think this might "Patch" my issue, but i would still love to get the opinion of others Thanks Shane
Technical SEO | | Jinx146780