Very Puzzled --- 301 ReDirects Did Not Work - Lost Rankings - Any Thoughts?
-
This one has us stumped and frustrated, hopefully someone out there in SEOMoz land can give us some thoughts and/or suggestions on what's going on and how to remedy.
This is a follow-up to a post I made awhile back. Here is an excerpt from the original post --
We currently have 3 different versions of our State Business-for-Sale listings pages - the versions are:
Version 1 -- Preferred Version (Links on Homepage www.businessbroker.net)
http://www.businessbroker.net/State/Vermont-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx
Title = Vermont Business for Sale Ads - Vermont Businesses for Sale & Business Brokers - Sell a Business on Business Broker (I realize the title needs work)
Version 2: (Links on this page: http://www.businessbroker.net/listings/blistings.ihtml)
URL Prior to 301 change --- http://www.businessbroker.net/Businesses_For_Sale-State-Vermont.aspx
Title = Vermont Business for Sale | 120 Vermont Businesses for Sale | BusinessBroker.net
Version 3: (Links on this page: http://www.businessbroker.net/businessesforsale.ihtml)
URL Prior to 301 change --- http://www.businessbroker.net/listings/business_for_sale_vermont.ihtml
Title = Vermont Businesses for Sale at BusinessBroker.net - Vermont Business for Sale
While the page titles and meta data are a bit different, the bulk of the page content (which is the listings rendered) are identical.
OK, so we decided to test this on 5 of our State pages - I will use VERMONT in this discussion. We did 301 ReDirects on Version 2 and Version 3 -- they now redirect to Version 1 - we did the redirects and also changed the URL's on the pages. Prior to the change, we were ranking for keywords like "Vermont Business for Sale" and some other similar keywords -- on 1st page of Google --- now, we have lost our rankings big time.
Did we do something wrong? I thought when you did 301's the majority of link juice was supposed to be preserved (losing 10% or so) -- this didn't happen in our case.
Any help on what we can do would be appreciated. We only did 5 States as a test and also noticed big drops for Maine as well. These were both states where VERSION 2 was the page that was showing up in SERPs.
Thanks in advance for wading through this long post and any help you can provide!!
- Matt
-
I ran your new domain - the one that you redirect the others to - through OSE and there were 58 incoming links but they were from only 2 different root domains. One of them no longer linked to you when I checked it and the other one was blocked by our security software here at work. The software stated that it was a 'Verified Threat'. If the site linking to you is malicious and there are multiple links from that site to your domain Google could be penalizing you for it - once all of the link juice (well, all that WILL pass) is passed via your 301s then this should tip the ratio of good/bad links in to your favor and hopefully fix the issue. It may be a good idea to look in to the site though. It could be nothing, our software has been known to block pages that are fine although it is pretty rare... the page that is linking to your page is http://www.onlinebizdirectory.com/business/businesses_for_sale_in_vermont.html
-
not sure I follow this....can you provide a bit more detail? we did not change anything on the link front. thanks
-
The page you redirect to has 58 links from two root domains. One seems not to link to you any more and the other is blocked by Trend Micro here at work calling it a verified threat.... that may be worth looking in to while you wait for the link juice to pass....
-
Doh - I right clicked and copied URLs - I didnt notice - LOL, sorry about that
-
Hi Billy - We did not redirect the California URLs. Maine and Vermont were redirected. Thanks, MM
-
Got the same error for http://www.businessbroker.net/listings/business_for_sale_california.ihtml
-
I dont know if this is the best tool (just found it using Google) but I used http://www.webconfs.com/redirect-check.php/ and checked http://www.businessbroker.net/Businesses_For_Sale-State-California.aspx and got this:
Either http://www.businessbroker.net/Businesses_For_Sale-State-California.aspx is NOT REDIRECTING to any URL or the redirect is NOT SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY
-
It sounds that you did things correctly (especially testing a few pages first). Here are a couple of things for your consideration:
Google Takes Time on 301 Redirects
When I did a change of URLs on a site with about 200 pages last month. The rankings and traffic tanked for two weeks, then reappeared. It may be taking time for Google to move the value of your version 2 pages to the value of your version 1 page. You will just have to wait and see.
Duplicate Content Can be Addressed this Way:
If you have three same-content pages, you can keep them all and put a canonical tag on all three that reference version one as the prefered copy.
-
The 301 Redirects were done on 6/21/12 -- so about 6 weeks ago. No other changes to the pages were made.
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
-
Not ranking
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SharonEKG
so our website (www.18brandz.com) has been up for 8 months now and has not been ranking yet, we are indexing, moz crawler SEO issues are regularly fixed and we are down to about 25 non major issues, i started using google lighthouse to optimize and had made changes. we post GOOD quality in house written unique content, we follow an SEO templet of guideline i wrote for titles/meta title tags, structure, site speed has been optimized and as for the moment we rank A OR B with no major issues on all speed checking sites possible (gtmetrix/google speed insights/ webspeed... etc) but nothing. and i cant figure out why we wont rank, our field of digital marketing is a tough one and very competitive , i know, yet not ranking for so long seems odd. our only know fact major disadvantage is the lack of links and no link building strategy. any suggestions? any idea?1 -
Why have I lost my #1 ranking?
Hello! Ever since switching to a new website back in late 2014, my rankings have suffered. My webpage https://www.shwoodshop.com was always the #1 google position for the keywords "wood sunglasses" and "wooden sunglasses". For a while my site bounced back a forth between the #1 and #2 spots, but in the last 4 months I have been stuck with a #3 rank for both keywords. I hired an SEO company to help fix the problem but after a year of work, there was still no positive change. I have had multiple experts take a look at my site, but to no avail. All signs seem to point to a stronger, healthier site than my competition. My domain authority and page authority are much greater than the competition with the #1 and #2 rankings. I have used the On-Page grader and other tools to try and help, and even though I am getting an "A" grade, I'm still not improving my rankings. I ran a link metric comparison for my website versus the competition and attached it to this post. The main area I seem to be lacking is the Internal Equity-Passing Links. The top competitor has a ridiculous amount, which I think may be due to their use of breadcrumbs. Is this enough to make the difference? My other thought is that I could be suffering from duplicate page content. My website is setup to be "localized" via Subdirectories With gTLDs (.com/us, .com/eu, .com/au, .com/international). The on-page content is the exact same, but the prices for the products changes depending on your location. Moz shows a ton of duplicate pages due to this. Could I be getting penalized for this? I am an SEO novice and trying to learn as much as possible while investigation this issue. Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated! -Taylor wUiyU
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shwoodeyewear0 -
Have You 301 Redirected Domain A to Domain B ?
I only have two questions.... Approximately when did you do it (year is close enough)? Did the rankings of Domain B go up? Any other information that you care to share will be appreciated. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EGOL0 -
Restructuring/Removing 301 Redirects Due To Newly Optimized Keywords
Just to be clear, this is for one unique page on a website. Also, please see my diagram attached. Let's say that a page's URL was originally /original. So, you optimize the page for a new keyword (keyword 1), and therefore change the URL to /keyword-1. A 301 redirect would then be placed... /original > /keyword-1 However, let's say 6 months down the road you realize that the keyword you optimized the page for (keyword 1) just isn't working. You research for a new keyword, and come up with (keyword 2). So, you'd like to rename the page's URL to /keyword-2. After placing a redirect from the current page (keyword 1) to the 'now' new page (keyword 2), it would look like this... /original > /keyword-1 > /keyword-2 We know that making a server go through more than one redirect slows the server load time, and even more 'link-juice' is lost in translation. Because of this, would it make sense to remove the original redirect and instead place redirects like this? /original > /keyword-2 /keyword-1 > /keyword-2 To me, this would make the most sense for preserving SEO. However, I've read that removing 301 redirects can cause user issues due to browsers caching the now 'removed' redirect. Even if this is ideal for SEO, could it be more work than it's worth? Does anyone have any experience/input on this? If so, I greatly appreciate your time! oDvLl.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LogicalMediaGroup1 -
301 redirect hell.... How do you de-commission an old site
Hi SEO experts: We operate a vacation rental website and around 1 year ago moved to a different platform. Because our pages are arranged by location (what we refer to as Locales) we need to put 301 redirects for all the old locale pages. So for example: www.example.com/__Skeggness.cfm redirects to www.example/com/vacation-rentals/locale/skeggness But here's the problem: We can't seem to get Google to drop those old __{locale_name}.cfm pages... even after over 12-months of the new site going live! Other clues we've noticed: The old underscore URLs show up in our SERP sub-links Sometimes google shows the new page title and description but attributes it to the __{locale_name}.cfm URL (aghh!!!) One suggestion we received was to use the URL removal tool in Google WMT.... But given we have 1,000's of locales i don't see that as being affective. Questions: Any suggestions on how to get Google to drop these old URLs and use the new ones? Is this situation hurting our SEO? Or do you think its benign... and I should just take a deep breath.... and relax at little more...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AABAB0 -
301 or What?
Can someone please tell me the 100% correct way to set this up. Would I be right to set up a site this way... type in the browser..."example.com" and it re directs to "www.example.com. or, if i type in "example.com" it goes to example.com. or if I type in "www.example.com" it goes to "example.com"? or, type in "www.example.com" and it goes to "example.com" wouldn't most site link to a "www" version? PS whay isn;t the correct way set up by our HOST.? They should know what is most beneficial? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEObleu.com0 -
301 Redirect or Canonical Tag or Leave Them Alone? Different Pages - Similar Content
We currently have 3 different versions of our State Business-for-Sale listings pages - the versions are: **Version 1 -- Preferred Version: ** http://www.businessbroker.net/State/California-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx Title = California Business for Sale Ads - California Businesses for Sale & Business Brokers - Sell a Business on Business Broker Version 2: http://www.businessbroker.net/Businesses_For_Sale-State-California.aspx Title = California Business for Sale | 3124 California Businesses for Sale | BusinessBroker.net Version 3: http://www.businessbroker.net/listings/business_for_sale_california.ihtml Title = California Businesses for Sale at BusinessBroker.net - California Business for Sale While the page titles and meta data are a bit different, the bulk of the page content (which is the listings rendered) are identical. We were wondering if it would make good sense to either (A) 301 redirect Versions 2 and 3 to the preferred Version 1 page or (B) put Canonical Tags on Versions 2 and 3 labeling Version 1 as the preferred version. We have this issue for all 50 U.S. States -- I've mentioned California here but the same applies for Alabama through Wyoming - same issue. Given that there are 3 different flavors and all are showing up in the Search Results -- some on the same 1st page of results -- which probably is a good thing for now -- should we do a 301 redirect or a Canonical Tag on Versions 2 and 3? Seems like with Google cracking down on duplicate content, it might be wise to be proactive. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks. Matt M
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MWM37720 -
What passes more value, a contextual link or a 1-to-1 301 redirect?
I have a client who is running a website which just lost a significant amount of rankings and by extension organic traffic in a redesign. Call it newsite.com. The client also has an older site that will no longer be updated, but has good authority that's built up over time. It even out ranks the current site for some queries. This website has no real value to my client. We want to try to pass the authority from oldsite.com to newsite.com as efficiently as possible. Each site has pages a good amount of matching pages, ie. oldsite.com/subject1 and newsite.com/subject1 My question is, would it provide more value to put a contextual link on the old page or simply redirect the entire page to the new site? oldsite.com/subject1 contains a link to newsite.com/subject1 oldsite.com/subject1 301 redirects to newsite.com/subject1 My guess is that the 301 would pass more value, but would like a SEOMoz opinion as well! Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alder1