301'ing over 700 internal links to the main page
-
I just got a contract for a site. After I analyzed their website, I noticed that they have over 700 pages indexed. However, their internal linking structure sucks. It's basically all 700 pages in one directory.
What do you recommend? I redirect all the internal structures to their new locations, or would it be better to redirect all those internal pages to their main domain name, and build a completely new seo-friendly structure?
Redirecting their current pages to each individual page is gonna take a lotta time, and I don't think they're gonna pay for it. :l
-
EGOL has a very important answer you need to consider, which is what I was really getting at in my second and last sentences. (but I didn't say it well)
But to answer about the redirect of every page to the root: I don't have any actual experience of this but I wouldn't think it would be a good thing because the front page is untargeted, compared to the page the visitor thought they were going to get.
If doing this was a good idea, there would be no reason for using a 404 page not found. You would instead just redirect all missing pages to the front page.
My guess is that as soon as that pattern was discovered, the value you got from it would evaporate.
Remember that the whole purpose of all those pages was to satisfy the needs of a visitor. Send them to an inappropriate place and you have failed. (by the way, google does this a lot themselves. Their own redirects leave a lot to be desired.)
-
After I analyzed their website, I noticed that they have over 700 pages indexed. However, their internal linking structure sucks. It's basically all 700 pages in one directory.
What do you recommend?
STOP!
Do not do this until you have clearly defined two things.
-
Why you are doing this.
-
The goal that you want to accomplish.
Any actions that you take without considering BOTH of those questions are shooting without taking aim and not knowing what your target should be.
You might not need the redirect because linking structure and directory structure are completely different things. Redirects could cause a significant loss of power for this site.
-
-
If the pages you are redirecting have links pointing at them and you 301 them to your home page, chances are your home page will rank higher and DA will increase.
Whatever plan you decide on, my advice would be to do it a few pages at a time and see what happens.
-
Thanks for the detailed response.
I've been analyzing the website and their pages for the past hour.
For example, lets say the keyword is "send flowers to city". The domain name is "cityflorists". And she has pages for every city. I'm gonna 410 them, and just keep pages relevant to the city, it'll being down the number of pages to below 50 for sure.
The main question I want to ask, however, without any complications is, that what happens if you 301 over 700 internal pages to the main domain? Will the website get penalized? Or will the domain authority increase?
-
700 pages is nothing.
It really depends on what you are trying to do, but if you are a programmer, it would be very simple and fast to decide how to split up the files into the final structure, then get a listing of the new locations and generate the .htaccess file from that, because you know the original location.
I would do it by taking an exact copy of the current data and do this in a different location, so as not to cause any disruption. Once it all works, then do a fast swap.
What would make this more complex is if you had to rename the pages, but I would just write a file that contains old,new and use that to generate the needed changes.
interlinking the pages is another job (in their new locations) but if you are a programmer, as noted in the previous line, it is simple.
Something else you must consider is how will the client manage the system afterwards. Be sure not to put them in the situation that they need you in order to add a new page..
At least you are thinking about this before doing it. I just heard from a friend whose client got someone else to restructure his site and they completely destroyed the fantastic #1 and page 1 ranking they spent years creating.
-
Hi,
Will do my best to understand and your answer question appropriately.
If those pages are not are not providing any value in terms of traffic, ranking or links then there's no point of keeping them on the site. You could redirect but I would just implement a 410 status code to indicate to search engines that these pages no longer exist.
For pages which are providing value, restructure the site and place them in different directories (with 301 from old to new pages). Obviously you should build out these pages in terms of content and links in the following months.
It wouldn't be too difficult to evaluate your most important pages through Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools e.t.c
However the most difficulty for this project is prioritsation and how you present this to the client, considering there are 700 pages. Take the following steps when handling this with the client:
(1) Map out and plan how you want to structure the site.
(2) In plain english, list what you want to do with the site and the steps you will be taking to do so (for the next 3-6 months). Also be prepared for alternatives and difficult questions the client might potentially ask. In addition calculate the time, resource and how much you can do based on your allocated budget.
(3) Present this to the client in a clear and honest approach- be upfront with the situation. You should try and negotiate a common ground - Maybe he can give you a bit more budget this month but you get less next month for link building. How you bargain this depends on your payment terms which I do not know. But you should also be prepared to take some of the costs from your own pocket.
Next time I would suggest before taking on a contract to clearly identify the number of pages, site issues e.t.c so that project scope creep and this difficult situation does not occur to you again.
But to end this on a calmer note, buddy it's ok and you shouldn't allow yourself to get stressed about this, its all good and take this as a positive step towards your career. Whatever happens, just know that in future effectively planning will help you anticipate these issues beforehand and behave accordingly.
Take care and hope this helps.
Vahe
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
-
Will 301 Redirects Slow Page Speed?
We have a lot of subdomains that we are switching to subfolders and need to 301 redirect all the pages from those subdomains to the new URL. We have over 1000 that need to be implemented. So, will 301 redirects slow the page speed regardless of which URL the user comes through? Or, as the old urls are dropped from Google's index and bypassed as the new URLs take over in the SERPs, will those redirects then have no effect on page speed? Trying to find a clear answer to this and have yet to find a good answer
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MJTrevens0 -
Is there a difference between 'Mø' and 'Mo'?
The brand name is Mø but users are searching online for Mo. Should I changed all instances of Mø to be Mo on my clients website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ben_mozbot010 -
International Targeting | Language > 'fa-ir' - no return tags
I see this error in search console :International Targeting | Language > 'fa-ir' - no return tagsURLs for your site and alternate URLs in 'fa-ir' that do not have return tags.and it is really increasingi do not know what is the problem and what I have done wrong? Originating URL Crawl date Alternate URL 1 /abadan/%D8%A2%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%86/browse/vehicles/?place=8,541&v01=0,1&saveLoc=1 11/16/16 http://divar.ir/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | divar0 -
Found a cache of old domain names, should I link or 301 redirect
We have found a cache of about 10 URLs, some are ranking above our main URL in Google SERPS. What is the best course of action here? a. Redirect all to the homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moconn
b. Link all domains to the homepage?
c. Link all domains to select pages on on main site, being careful not to anchor text spam
d. 301 redirect all to the main site. Is there any disadvantage to your recommendation? Is there likely to be a penalty incurred? I feel like we'll get the strongest increase in rankings by following option c but it feels like option d may be safer. Thanks in advance for your help!0 -
Pull multiple link data for multiple pages at once?
Hi guys, I was wondering if there is a tool or way to pull link data for a list of URLs/Pages at once to one single file with ahrefs or majestic. I know scrapebox can do this with OSE, but looking for a way to do this with the other backlink databases. Any ideas? Cheers. Hi guys, I was wondering if there is a tool or way to pull link data for a list of URLs/Pages at once to one single file with ahrefs or majestic. I know scrapebox can do this with OSE, but looking for a way to do this with the other backlink databases. Any ideas? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Internal links to preferential pages
Hi all, I have question about internal linking and canonical tags. I'm working on an ecommerce website which has migrated platform (shopify to magento) and the website design has been updated to a whole new look. Due to the switch to magento, the developers have managed to change the internal linking structure to product pages. The old set up was that category pages (on urls domain.com/collections/brand-name) for each brand would link to products via the following url format: domain.com/products/product-name . This product url was the preferential version that duplicate product pages generated by shopify would have their canonical tags pointing to. This set up was working fine. Now what's happened is that the category pages have been changed to link to products via dynamically generated urls based on the user journey. So products are now linked to via the following urls: domain.com/collection/brand-name/product-name . These new product pages have canonical tags pointing back to the original preferential urls (domain.com/products/product-name). But this means that the preferential URLs for products are now NOT linked to anywhere on the website apart from within canonical tags and within the website's sitemap. I'm correct in thinking that this definitely isn't a good thing, right? I've actually noticed Google starting to index the non-preferential versions of the product pages in addition to the preferential versions, so it looks like Google perhaps is ignoring the canonical tags as there are so many internal links pointing to non-preferential pages, and no on-site links to the actual preferential pages? I've recommended to the developers that they change this back to how it was, where the preferential product pages (domain.com/products/product-name) were linked to from collection pages. I just would like clarification from the Moz community that this is the right call to make? Since the migration to the new website & platform we've seen a decrease in search traffic, despite all redirects being set up. So I feel that technical issues like this can't be doing the website any favours at all. If anyone could help out and let me know if what I suggested is correct then that would be excellent. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Guy_OTS0 -
We are switching our CMS local pages from a subdomain approach to a subfolder approach. What's the best way to handle this? Should we redirect every local subdomain page to its new subfolder page?
We are looking to create a new subfolder approach within our website versus our current subdomain approach. How should we go about handling this politely as to not lose everything we've worked on up to this point using the subdomain approach? Do we need to redirect every subdomain URL to the new subfolder page? Our current local pages subdomain set up: stores.websitename.com How we plan on adding our new local subfolder set-up: websitename.com/stores/state/city/storelocation Any and all help is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO.CIC0 -
How to make Google include our recipe pages in its main index?
We have developed a recipe search engine www.edamam.com and serve the content of over 500+ food bloggers and major recipe websites. Our legal obligations do not allow us to show the actual recipe preparation info (e.g. the most valuable from the content), we can only show a few images, the ingredients and nutrition information. Most of the unique content goes to the source/blog. By submitting XML sitemaps on GWT we now have around 500K pages indexed, however only a few hundred appear in Google's main index and we are looking for a solution to include all of them in the index. Also good to know is that it appears that all our top competitors are in the exactly same situation, so it is a challenging question. Any ideas will be highly appreciated! Thanks, Lily
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edamam0