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    4. 301 Redirects Relating to Your XML Sitemap

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    301 Redirects Relating to Your XML Sitemap

    Technical SEO
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    • Emory_Peterson
      Emory_Peterson last edited by

      Lets say you've got a website and it had quite a few pages that for lack of a better term were like an infomercial, 6-8 pages of slightly different topics all essentially saying the same thing.  You could all but call it spam.

      www.site.com/page-1

      www.site.com/page-2

      www.site.com/page-3

      www.site.com/page-4

      www.site.com/page-5

      www.site.com/page-6

      Now you decided to consolidate all of that information into one well written page, and while the previous pages may have been a bit spammy they did indeed have SOME juice to pass through. Your new page is:

      www.site.com/not-spammy-page

      You then 301 redirect the previous 'spammy' pages to the new page.  Now the question, do I immediately re-submit an updated xml sitemap to Google, which would NOT contain all of the old URL's, thus making me assume Google would miss the 301 redirect/seo juice.  Or do I wait a week or two, allow Google to re-crawl the site and see the existing 301's and once they've taken notice of the changes submit an updated sitemap?

      Probably a stupid question I understand, but I want to ensure I'm following the best practices given the situation, thanks guys and girls!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • BradyDCallahan
        BradyDCallahan @Keszi last edited by

        I think that - adding the new URL while keeping the old ones in XML sitemap for a bit - is your best idea. You can manually add your new URL to index using GWT tools, as well, but I think it's best practice to wait for your site to be crawled again before removing old links from XML sitemap.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • Keszi
          Keszi @Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

          There was a Google Webmaster Central office-hours hangouts where John Mueller was talking about this.

          The idea was, that you should let googlebot crawl the old pages also, so they can pick up the redirects.

          Regarding my previous answer: Might be an idea to include the new page to the sitemap, without removing the old ones. (so they can crawl the old versions and pick up the 301 redirects).

          BradyDCallahan 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • anikilator
            anikilator last edited by

            I agree. Do it as soon as you can. You don't have 50 pages of duplicate content so i wouldn't worry too much.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Martijn_Scheijbeler
              Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

              I disagree, the new page is the most important one so I would do everything I can that one gets indexed as fast as possible including making sure the sitemap with the new page gets to Google. Only 1 page on a Web site won't get you in trouble probably for duplicate content.

              Keszi 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Keszi
                Keszi last edited by

                Hey,

                When we had made to merge pages, we have been waiting for a few days after the new page went live, before updating the xlm sitemaps. It is always better to give time to Google to recrawl the old versions.Gr. Keszi

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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