Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How effective are 301 redirects in passing page rank?
-
I have a blog which is ranking well for certain terms, and would like to repurpose it to better explain these terms it is ranking for, including updating the url to the new term the blog will be about. The plan being to 301 redirect the old url to new.
In the past, I've done this with other pages, and have actually lost much of the rankings that I had earned on the original URL.
What is your take on this? Maybe repurpose blog, but maintain original URL just to be on the safe side?
Thanks
-
Many thanks, @tom-capper for your clarification.
-
Hi Augistine
No, there's no fixed number. And sometimes redirects are the right answer to a problem - such as old or unused URLs.
As a general rule, avoid having links on your site that point to a redirecting URL. Instead, point them to the destination of that redirect. This is what tools (like Moz) are trying to help you with when they point out the number of redirects - it's just a list so you can identify links to those URLs, and update the links.
-
Hey guys,
I have a question: Is there any good(bad) number of redirects. My website has 101 URL redirects and was wondering if this will be detrimental to the website rank.
Any tips would be appreciated!
Thanks
Augustine -
My problem is solved thanks to all. I am going to share this thread https://moz.com/community/q/topic/71433/how-effective-are-301-redirects-gosloto-in-passing-page-rank with my friends and brother who faced the same problem.
Thanks again
-
Hey thanks for the super helpful reply. I'm not sure how I missed that thread. I haven't quite mastered the search function on here. I think I'll pass with him this time around. If i want any further guideline we will contact you here https://moz.com/community/q/topic/71433/how-effective-are-301-results-redirects-in-passing-page-rank/
-
Maintaining the original URL is definitely the low risk approach. On the other hand, if you're ever going to do this, it's better to do it sooner - that way you're only risking/diluting the links you've acquired so far, not any future equity.
301 redirects do pass the majority of PageRank onwards, but if the new URL is very dissimilar or has existing issues, or if the redirection doesn't go smoothly / isn't detected by Google, you can have problems.
Tom
-
@citimarinemoz Properly the bigger question is what do you mean by re purposing the blog.
If you are keeping the context of the blog the same, providing it is the same domain, the content is the same or better and you do your 301s properly it should be fine.
On the other hand if you are changing what your blog focuses on and you are rewriting the content of the pages you could well run into a problem.
My advice would be- Keep the same domain
- Keep the old blog posts if possible, maybe update them if necessary
- Create new blog posts with your new content on the same domain
- Utilise internal linking for any relevant topics and pages
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
-
Reusing an already 301 redirected URL for a very important keyword
I have a question about reusing an already 301 redirected URL Till now I never reused an URLs that has been already redirected with a 301 redirect. However, I just started working on a website where in past they created a lot of 301 redirects without thinking about the future, and now certain URLs, that are currently redirected with a 301, would be very useful (exact match) and needed (for some of the most important keywords for this specific business), to maintain an optimal, homogeneous and "beautiful" URL structure. Has any of you ever reused a URL that was previously redirected with a 301 redirect? If yes what are your experiences with it? Can content on the reused URL (that was previously 301 redirected and than the redirect removed) normally rank if the page is reestablished and the redirect is removed (and you do great content, on page, internal linking, backlinking, .... ) or is such an URL risky / not recommended / "burned" forever and not recommended to be reused again... especially for very important keywords since it present the exact match ?! Thank you very much for all your help! Regards
Technical SEO | | moz46y0 -
Is domain forwarding the same as a 301 redirect?
Hi, I have an older domain with some SEO auth for varying pages and a newer domain that is for the brand. Right now there are some 301s for about 13 pages and we are currently moving servers. I was wondering if domain forwarding is the same as writing 301 redirects for each page or is it something different (302)?
SEO Tactics | | BrandonDebison0 -
What is the difference between 301 redirects and backlinks?
i have seen some 301 redirects on my site billsonline, can anyone please explain the difference between backlinks and 301 redirects, i have read some articles where the writer was stating that 301 are not good for website.
Technical SEO | | aliho0 -
Home Page Ranking Instead of Service Pages
Hi everyone! I've noticed that many of our clients have pages addressing specific queries related to specific services on their websites, but that the Home Page is increasingly showing as the "ranking" page. For example, a plastic surgeon we work with has a page specifically talking about his breast augmentation procedure for Miami, FL but instead of THAT page showing in the search results, Google is using his home page. Noticing this across the board. Any insights? Should we still be optimizing these specific service pages? Should I be spending time trying to make sure Google ranks the page specifically addressing that query because it SHOULD perform better? Thanks for the help. Confused SEO :/, Ricky Shockley
Technical SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
301 Redirect with index.asp
I am very new to all of this so forgive the newbie questions I will get better. Ok so after starting a campaign I see that I have many issues including where some pages are being deemed as duplicate content. 1. The report says the http://lucid8.com has duplicate content on 2 other pages 2. When I look at them it shows that http://lucid8.com/index.asp and http://www.lucid8.com are duplicates. 3. Really these are the exactly the same page because the default page that is opened for www.lucid8.com http://www.lucid8.com etc always opens the index.asp page. 4. Now I read that I should do permanent redirects and how to do this via IIS and I tried to do a redirect from index.asp to www.lucid8.com but that does not work because www.lucid8.com is pointing to index.asp and so we end up in a circle. So the question is how do I get rid of these duplicate page references without causing problems. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TroyW0 -
How to create a delayed 301 redirect that still passes juice?
My company is merging one of our sites into another site. At first I was just going to create a 301 redirect from domainA.com to domainB.com but we decided that would be too confusing for customers expecting to see domainA.com so we want to create a page that says something like "We've moved. please visit domainB.com or be redirected after 10 seconds". My question is, how do I create a redirect that has a delay and will this still pass the same amount of juice that a regular 301 redirect would? I've heard that meta refreshes are considered spammy by Google.
Technical SEO | | bewoldt0 -
Where does Wordpress store the 301 redirects?
Hi, I've just created a campaign for my new wordpress blog and found 11 301 redirects which I was not aware of. It looks like wordpress has created them automatically. Does any one know how wordpress handles this issues or where are they stored so I can delete them? They are of no use for me. 9 of these redirects point to the same url with an added '/' and are in pages 1 is on a post. I've been changing the permalink and some urls several times and maybe one of these times the Wordpress has automatically created the 301 redirect. But why? I do not want to keep the old url. the last redirect is very strange it goes from http://www.mydomain.com/folder to http://www.mydomain.com where folder is the folder where I installed wordpress. But again, I want no one to type the url with the folder name or even know this folder exists. Any comment on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot, David
Technical SEO | | dballari0 -
How to Redirect all inactive Feed to a specific Wordpress page
Hi Guys, I've been doing much cleaning on my blog lately and deleted numerous categories including their posts with low quality content. After deleting the categories, Google Webmaster Tools is reporting some 404 errors about the RSS Feeds for the deleted categories. I've created a 404.php file inside my theme and placed the following code header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
Technical SEO | | Trigun
header("Location: http://www.mysite.com/My404Page/", true, 301);
exit();
?> this have catched all 404 errors and redirected them to the specific page. Unfortunately, it could not catch the inactive feed urls. Is there a way to do this so that all inactive feeds will be redirected to my 404 page? Thanks in advance....0