Site Merge Strategy: Choosing Target Pages for 301 Redirects
-
I am going to be merging two sites. One is a niche site, and it is being merged with the main site.
I am going to be doing 301 redirects to the main site. My question is, what is the best way of redirecting section/category pages in order to maximize SEO benefits. I will be redirecting product to product pages. The questions only concerns sections/categories.
Option 1:
Direct each section/category to the most closely matched category on the main site. For example, vintage-t-shirts would go to vintage-t-shirt on main site.
Option 2:
Point as many section/category pages to larger category on main site with selected filters. We have filtered navigation on our site. So if you wanted to see vintage t-shirts, you could go to the vintage t-shirt category, OR you could go to t-shirts and select "vintage" under style filter. In the example above, the vintage-t-shirt section from the niche site would point to t-shirts page with vintage filter selected (something like t-shirts/#/?_=1&filter.style=vintage).
With option 2, I would be pointing more links to a main category page on the main site.
-
I would likely have that page rank higher, because more links are pointing to it.
-
I may have a better overall user experience, because if the customer decides to browse another style of t-shirt, they can simply unselect the filter and make other selections.
Questions:
-
Which of these options is better as far as: (1) SEO, (2) User experience
-
If I go with option 2, the drawback is that the page titles will all be the same (i.e vintage-t-shirts pointing to the page with filter selected would have "t-shirts" as page title instead of a more targeted page with page title "vintage t-shirts." I believe a workaround would be to pull filter values from the URL and append them to the page title. That way page title for URL t-shirts/#/?=1&filter.style=vintage_ would be something like "vintage, t-shirts." Is this the appropriate way to deal with it?
Any thoughts, suggestions, shared experiences would be appreciated.
-
-
Typically, no. You can see a discussion on this on another Moz Q&A here. There are exceptions to this rule, like when you're using AJAX and have a #!, but in your case, I'm pretty sure Google would ignore the filtered version of the page.
-
When a filter is selected, a # is added right after the .html. You're saying that this page won't even be indexed?
-
Hello there!
This isn't a question that we can answer for you definitively, but I think I can help you figure out the best method here.
(Before we start, I want to clear something up: if you use a # in your URLs, Google only indexes the page as it's loaded with the URL before the #. So, if you make the page title change for t-shirts/#/?=1&filter.style=vintage_, Google won't even see that.)
To restate your question, and make sure I'm understanding you correctly: you're migrating a smaller site into a larger site. Your options are:
- The standard option, redirect pages to the most similar page on the bigger site
- A (slightly sneaky) SEO option, where you redirect pages to pages that are similar enough for good user experience, but are pushing link equity to the pages that need it.
My answer is: go with option #1 unless you can prove that option #2 will have an impact on rankings for the right pages.
To determine if you can make an impact, map out which pages you'd like to redirect where. For simplicity sake, assume that all inbound links to oldsite.com/vintage-tshirts and oldsite.com/hipster-tshirts will transfer full equity to biggersite.com/tshirts. Add those links to the current count of inbound links to biggersite.com/tshirts. Then, go through the top keywords you want to rank for, and see if this new number of links will cause your rankings to increase. (I like to use the Mozbar and actually search for whatever keyword I'm targeting, and look at the number of inbound links and the total DA of competing sites.)
Be sure to look for potential increases in traffic if you send oldsite.com/vintage-tshirts to biggersite.com/vintage-tshirts too - typically, you get more conversions for pages that are already better targeted to the query.
There's definitely some wiggle room here. If you think that the new inbound links are significant but they won't actually get you up a ranking, go ahead and go with option #2. If you find that you don't have a whole lot of inbound links to oldsite.com/vintage-tshirts, though, this probably isn't worth you time.
Hope this helps!
Kristina
-
Hi there
I would check out Moz's migration resource as it has a lot of great tips for you to consider and check off.
I would also check out Google's Move your site resource, as they have best practices for you to follow as well.
Lastly, I would check out Rand's Whiteboard Friday regarding this topic called Should I Rebrand and Redirect My Site? Should I Consolidate Multiple Sites/Brands?
Whatever you do, focus on the user and what would work best for them. SEO and appeasing the search engines is super important as well, but if you figure out what works best for your audience and their experience on your website, then the search engines are usually cool with what you do, as long as your actions fall within their best practices in the resources above. Usually redirecting pages to their most relevant new page is the best way to go.
I would also make sure you conduct a proper backlink audit and figured out if there are any backlinks to update, remove, or disavow.
Hope this all helps! Good luck!
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 Redirection problems
A couple of days ago we did a restructure of our e-commerce site (wordpress + woocomerce) where some product categories needed to change names. I used Yoast SEO plugin to do 301 redirects in the .htaccess file.Today I noticed that we had two hits in the SERP on the phrase "dildos med vibrator". See the attached screenshot (first two results).One goes to http://www.oliverocheva.se/kategori/sexleksaker/dildos/dildos-med-vibrator/ which is the right URL. One goes to http://www.oliverocheva.se/kategori/sexleksaker/dildosdildos-med-vibrator-dildos-for-honom/ which is a corrupt URL that has never been in use. The old one we did a redirect from was /kategori/for-honom/dildos-for-honom/dildos-med-vibrator-dildos-for-honom/The command in the .htaccess file was: Redirect 301 /kategori/for-honom/dildos-for-honom/dildos-med-vibrator-dildos-for-honom/ http://www.oliverocheva.se/kategori/sexleksaker/dildos/dildos-med-vibratorWhat has happened here? Why does the 301 create entirely new URL:s in the SERP?Tz0TULT.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kisen0 -
Google penalized site--307/302 redirect to new site-- Via intermediate link—New Site Ranking Gone..?
Hi, I have a site that google had placed a manual link penalty on, let’s call this our
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Robdob2013
company site. We tried and tried to get the penalty removed, and finally gave up and purchased another name. It was our understanding that we could safely use either a 302 or 307 temporary redirect in order to redirect people from our old domain to our new one.. We put this into place several months and everything seemed to be going along well. Several days ago I noticed that our root domain name had dropped for our selected keyword from position 9 to position 65. Upon looking into our GWT under “Links to Your site” , I have found many, many, many links which were pointed to our old google penalized domain name to our new root domain name each of this links had a sub heading “Via this intermediate link -> Our Old Domain Google Penalized Domain Name” In light of all of this going on, I have removed the 307/302 redirect, have brought the
old penalized site back which now consists of a basic “we’ve moved page” which is linked to our new site using a rel=’nofollow’ I am hoping that -1- Our new domain has probably not received a manual penalty and is most likely now
received some sort of algorithmic penalty, and that as these “intermediate links” will soon disappear because I’m no longer doing the 302/307 from the old sight to the new. Do you think this is the case now or that I now have a new manual penalty place on the new
domain name.. I would very much appreciate any comments and/or suggestions as to what I should or can do to get this fixed. I need to still keep the old domain name as this address has already been printed on business cards many, many years ago.. Also on a side note some of the sub pages of the new root domain are still ranking very
well, it’s only the root domain that is now racking awfully.. Thanks,0 -
HTML5 one page website on-site SEO
Hey guys, If for example, I'm faced with a client who has a website similar to: http://www.symphonyonline.co.uk/ How should I proceed with the on-site optimization? Should I create new pages on the website? Should I create a blog for the site to increase my reach? Please give me your tips on how to proceed with this kind of website. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BruLee0 -
How do you find all of your 301 redirects?
I would like a full list of 301 redirects that we have on our site. Is there a way to export it? I tried Bing Webmaster tools and the list was incomplete. We use IIS. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
redirect 404 pages to homepage
Hello, I'm puting a new website on a existing domain. In order to not loose the links that point to the varios old url I would like to redirect them to homepage. The old website was a mess as there was no seo and the pages didn't target any keywords. Thats why I would like to redirect all links to home. What do you think is the best way to do this ? I tried to ad this in the .htaccess but it's not working; ErrorDocument 404 /index.php Con you tell me how it exacly look? Now the hole file is like this: @package Joomla @copyright Copyright (C) 2005 - 2012 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved. @license GNU General Public License version 2 or later; see LICENSE.txt READ THIS COMPLETELY IF YOU CHOOSE TO USE THIS FILE! The line just below this section: 'Options +FollowSymLinks' may cause problems with some server configurations. It is required for use of mod_rewrite, but may already be set by your server administrator in a way that dissallows changing it in your .htaccess file. If using it causes your server to error out, comment it out (add # to beginning of line), reload your site in your browser and test your sef url's. If they work, it has been set by your server administrator and you do not need it set here. Can be commented out if causes errors, see notes above. Options +FollowSymLinks Mod_rewrite in use. RewriteEngine On Begin - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits. If you experience problems on your site block out the operations listed below This attempts to block the most common type of exploit attempts to Joomla! Block out any script trying to base64_encode data within the URL. RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode[^(]([^)]) [OR] Block out any script that includes a
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | igrizo0 -
How long until 301 passes juice to new site?
We put up a new site for an attorney and changed his url along with total redevelopment. We used a 301 for the old to the new and it does resolve to the new. It has been one month and the old site in OSE still shows DA of 37 with PA for homepage of 15. The new site has come up.....to a DA of 6 with homepage at 1 still. For any who might wish it, the referring site is theHollandLawFirm.com and the new site is Houston-Bankruptcy-Attorney.info. Would love to know of any experience with the timing on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertFisher0 -
Regarding 301 Redirect!
Hello, I heard that 301 redirect can be good for newly registered domain names can i buy a old domain name and put 301 redirect on it to my newly registered niche market domain name. Shall i buy only 1 domain name and put 301 redirect to my newly registered domain names or i can do this for more than 1 old domains i purchased?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anand20100 -
Why does this site rank on the 1st page
i dont mean to be calling any site out im just scratching my head on this one.- I can't see any signal that would make it worthy of ranking on the first page for keyword loose diamonds. page http://www.jewelryexchange.com/DiamondResults.aspx Am i missing something all tools seem to say the site isn't worthy- All help appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidKonigsberg0