Can to many 301 redirects damage my Ecommerce Site - SEO Issue
-
Hello All,
I have an eCommerce website doing online hire. We operate from a large number of locations (100 approx) and my 100 or so categories have individual locations pages against them
example - Carpet Cleaners (category) www.mysite/hire-carpetcleaners
carpet cleaner hire Manchester www.mysite/hire-carpetcleaners/Manchester
carpet cleaner hire london
carpet cleaner hire Liverpoolpatio heater (category)
patio heater hire Manchester
patio heater hire London
patio heater hire LiverpoolAnd so on.....
I have unique content for some of these pages but given that my site had 40,000 odd urls, I do have a large amount of thin/duplicate content and it's financially not possible to get unique
content written for every single page for all my locations and categories.Historically, I used to rank very well for these location pages although this year, things have dropped off and recently , I was hit with the Panda 4.0 update which i understand targets thin content.
Therefore what I am int he process of doing is reducing the number of locations I want to rank for and have pages for thus allowing me to achieve both a higher percentage of unique content over duplicate/thin content on the whole site and only concerntrate on a handful of locations which I can realistically get unique content written for.
My questions are as follows.
- By reducing the number of locations, my website will currently 301 redirect these location page i have been dropping back to it's parent category.
e.g carpet cleaner hire Liverpool page - Will redirect back to the parent Carpet cleaner hire Page.
Given that I have nearly 100 categories to do , this will mean site will generate thousands of 301 redirects when I reduce down to a handful of locations per category.
The alternative Is that I can 404 those pages ?...
What do yout think I should do ?..
Will it harm me by having so many 301's . It's essentially the same page with a location name in it redirecting back to the parent. Some of these do have unqiue content but most dont ?.
-
My other question is - On a some of these categories with location pages, I currently rank very well for locally although there is no real traffic for these location based keywords (using keyword planner). Shall I bin them or keep them?
-
Lastly , Once I have reduced the number of location pages , I will still have thin content until , I can get the unique content written for them. Should I remove these pages until that point of leave them as it is? It will take a few months
to get all the site with unique content.
Once complete, I should be able to reduce my site down from 40,000 odd pages to say 5,000 pages
Any advice would be greatly appreciated
thanks
Pete - By reducing the number of locations, my website will currently 301 redirect these location page i have been dropping back to it's parent category.
-
Hi PeteC12,
(1) I wouldn't 404 those pages. I'd 301 or canonicalize them. Canonicalize if you want to keep the location pages live for useability. If you're set on or well down the path to remove redundant location pages, then 301 redirect.
Even though there's no limit to the number of redirects you can create for a site, they can slow it down (because 301's trigger an extra HTTP request and cause latency). Given the size of your site, I'd recommend doing some analysis to figure out which pages actually have incoming links. If there's no evidence of incoming links, then I wouldn't bother 301ing them but rather monitor your analytics closely to put 301s in place only if page-not-found errors start showing up because of personal bookmarks.
For performance reasons, I'd also be careful to eliminate any interim redirects. By that I mean, for example, if Liverpool-Suburb (A) points to Liverpool (B) and Liverpool (B) points to parent-carpet-cleaner (C), skip the middle step and redirect Liverpool-Suburb (A) directly to parent-carpet-cleaner (C).
I'd also make sure my 404 page notes your redesign and explains that some pages have been removed from the site and point visitors to a user-friendly sitemap.
-
Should you keep location pages that rank well but show no evidence of traffic (using keyword planner)? Don't rely on Google Planner. If you have analytics in place, look at actual page traffic to see how many organic entrances you're earning to these pages. Base your decision on that.
-
Should you remove thin pages until you have time to flesh out the content a bit more? Well that problem may have been solved given it's been a few months since you asked the question. If not, and you're worried about penalties, noindex or 302 (temporarily redirect) rather than remove them.
Sorry you had to wait 3 months to get an opinion. So many questions get answered, sometimes yours can get buried. I apologize if I'm too late.
-
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
-
Multiple service area pages that rank well. However the primary keyword page tends to bounce around between the pages. How can I stabalise the ranking to the primary page
We have multiple service area pages attached to the primary keyword for the site which arent in the navigation and we have the primary page which is in the navigation. Currently Google is choosing different service area pages to rank for the primary keyword so the rankings bounce around a lot for the keyword when it doesn't have a service area target in it. Eg work shirts vs work shirts brisbane.
Local Website Optimization | | jonathan.k0 -
I've submitted my site to google search console, and only 6 images of 89 images have been indexed in 2 weeks. Should I be worried?
I've submitted my site to google search console, and only 6 images of 89 images have been indexed in 2 weeks. Should I be worried? My site is http://bayareahomebirth.org Images are a pretty big part of this site's content and SEO value. Thanks for your help!
Local Website Optimization | | mattchew0 -
Is there an SEO benefit to using tags in WordPress for my blog posts?
We have locations across the US and are trying to develop content so that we rank well for specific keywords on a local level. For instance, "long tail keyword search in state" or "long tail keyword search near 76244", etc. The goal is to develop those content pages via blogs to rank for those keywords. We are using Yoast and will be optimizing each post using that tool. My questions are: 1. Are there any benefits to adding a long list of tags to each post?
Local Website Optimization | | Smart_Start
2. If yes, do I need to limit the number of tags?
3. Do we need to block the indexing of yoast to those tags and categories for duplicate content issues? Any insight on the best way to optimize these blog posts with the use of tags or other avenues would be greatly appreciated.0 -
Local SEO Best Practise?
We are planning to localize our website by launching CCTLD. But there is a little confusion about some aspects, which are: Should we track location and take our visitors to their native domain? Or do we need to take our visitors to .com domain and show a Popup, if they want to visit the native region website? What is the best case study for localization?
Local Website Optimization | | UmairGadit0 -
Does multiple sites that relate to one company hurt seo
I know this has been asked and answered but my situation is a little different. I am a local electrical contractor. I specialize in a service and not a product. Competition is high in the local market due to the other electrical contractors that have well seasoned sites with very good DA/PA. Although new to the web I am not new to the trade. Throughout years almost back to the AOL dialup days I have been collecting domain names for this particular purpose. Now I want to put them to good use. Being an electrical contractor, there are many different facets of work and services we provide. My primary site is empireelec.com A second site I threw online overnight with minimal content is jacksonvillelightingrepair.com. Although it is a fresh site, there is minimal content and I have put almost zero effort in to it. It appears to be ranking for keywords a lot quicker. That leads me to believe I should utilize my other domain jacksonvillefloridaelectrician.com and target just the keyword Jacksonville Florida Electrician. It leads me to believe I should use jacksonvillebeachelectrician.com for targeting electricians in jacksonville beach. And again with jacksonvilleelectricianservice.com I can provide a unique phone number for each site. Am I going about this all wrong? Everything I read says no,no,no but I feel my situation is a little more unique.
Local Website Optimization | | empireelec1 -
Which is the best, ".xx" or ".com.xx" in general and for SEO?
Hi, I'm working for a digital marketing agency and have traffic from different countries. We are planning to make different websites for each country. What is the best SEO practice to choose the domain between ".xx" or ".com.xx" from Spain, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru?
Local Website Optimization | | NachoRetta
I think that the ccTLD is better always, for example ".es" better than ".com.es"0 -
How best to clean up doorway pages. 301 them or follow no index ?
Hi Mozzers, I have what is classed as doorway pages on my website. These have historically been location specific landing pages for some of our categories but from speaking to a number of different webmasters , then general consensus is that they are not in google guidelines so I will be getting punished by having them. My options are : I can 301 the pages back to their original category pages . This will conserve some link juice to pass back to the respective category page. I can set these as Follow No index. Not sure what will happen here with regards to link value etc. What would be best ?... Some of the pages do currently rank "fairly well" for some of the locations so I am getting traffic from them but I also know I will be getting a algorithmic penalty for having them so how best I clean these up ?. Also , by cleaning up the site structure , would I see any benefit here ? or will I have to wait for a new panda update/ refresh ? I thought the panda refresh won't use a new dataset thanks Pete
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Recommended blogs and sites about local seo
HI.
Local Website Optimization | | corn2015
Can you please tell me some great blogs/sites to read daily about local seo? I'm really wanting to beef up my knowledge in this area to assist local businesses. Corn1