undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. On-Page Optimization
  4. Will "internal 301s" have any effect on page rank or the way in which an SE see's our site interlinking?

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.

Will "internal 301s" have any effect on page rank or the way in which an SE see's our site interlinking?

On-Page Optimization
5
8
1.4k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • TinkyWinky
    TinkyWinky last edited by Aug 23, 2013, 12:34 PM

    We've been forced (for scalability) to completely restructure our website in terms of setting out a hierarchy.

    For example - the old structure :

    country / city / city area

    Where we had about 3500 nicely interlinked pages for relevant things like taxis, hotels, apartments etc in that city :

    We needed to change the structure to be :

    country / region / area / city / cityarea

    So as patr of the change we put in place lots of 301s for the permanent movement of pages to the new structure and then we tried to actually change the physical on-page links too.

    Unfortunately we have left a good 600 or 700 links that point to the old pages, but are picked up by the 301 redirect on page, so we're slowly going through them to ensure the links go to the new location directly (not via the 301).

    So my question is (sorry for long waffle) :

    Whilst it must surely be "best practice" for all on-page links to go directly to the 'right' page, are we harming our own interlinking and even 'page rank' by being tardy in working through them manually?

    Thanks for any help anyone can give.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • TinkyWinky
      TinkyWinky @Everett last edited by Sep 6, 2013, 10:50 AM Sep 6, 2013, 10:50 AM

      Thanks Everett - sorry about delay in coming back to your response.

      This 301 issue was one if the things we were worried about (along with a ton of others) so we can at least be a little self-assured that we're prgressing on all fronts and not leaving a gaping problem that will continue to dog us.

      Cheers

      W

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • topic:timeago_earlier,11 days
      • Everett
        Everett last edited by Aug 26, 2013, 3:02 PM Aug 26, 2013, 3:02 PM

        I'm just going to answer your question directly. This was your question:

        "Whilst it must surely be "best practice" for all on-page links to go directly to the 'right' page, are we harming our own interlinking and even 'page rank' by being tardy in working through them manually?"

        Short Answer: As long as you are working to update those internal links, and you have 301 redirects in place during the meantime, you should be fine.

        Technically speaking, it is best practice to link directly to the page internally, rather than relying on 301 redirects. Yes, it is true that a very small (very, VERY small so as to be virtually undetectable) amount of pagerank is lost when redirecting, it only becomes an issue when you begin adding redirect on top of redirect. Keeping your house clean, so-to-speak, by not relying on redirects to fix your broken internal links will keep this from happening, and is exactly what the tiny amount of pagerank loss is said to be created for (to discourage webmasters from relying on redirects to fix broken internal links) - if you believe Matt Cutts.

        With that said, you may indeed have many other issues to deal with, as do most sites that have a geotargeted, deep URL structure like the one you have outlined. Panda slammed a lot of sites like that pretty hard. But all of that is beyond the scope of this question.

        I hope you find whatever is wrong and get your traffic back. Good luck!

        TinkyWinky 1 Reply Last reply Sep 6, 2013, 10:50 AM Reply Quote 1
        • TinkyWinky
          TinkyWinky @GPainter last edited by Aug 23, 2013, 1:17 PM Aug 23, 2013, 1:17 PM

          Hi Chris

          Thanks - I 'love' the loose MC videos - "it is - but it isn't an issue".

          That was my gut that there may be a temporary loss of link juice, but it would re-adjust after a period. Which means we have other issues.

          Cheers

          W

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • TinkyWinky
            TinkyWinky @mbulox last edited by Aug 23, 2013, 1:15 PM Aug 23, 2013, 1:15 PM

            Thanks for your advice - amended the question so it is simpler to read. sorry about that.

            Well that's what I thought - but anecdotal evidence ( as well as past experience ) is making me wonder whether we're losing a significant passing of link juice. We put the 301s in place about 6 or 7 months ago so any loss of link juice between pages should have come back by now.

            Maybe we have some other issues?

            W

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • CleverPhD
              CleverPhD @GPainter last edited by Aug 23, 2013, 1:05 PM Aug 23, 2013, 1:05 PM

              Agree with Chris, thumbs up. I would just add that "ideally" you would have manually gone through all the links ahead of time and had the 301s in place prior to launch.    That way there is no downtime/confusion to Google on what they are supposed to do with these pages.  If you think about it you have 600 pages that are in limbo and so after a while Google will just say, well, I guess those pages are dead and start to crawl them less often and eventually drop them.

              I would make it a priority to go through those pages and setup the new 301s ASAP.  Google will keep trying a old page for a while (few months) if it 404s or even if you have a 301.  It knows that mistakes happen.  So in the case of the 301, it will still crawl the old URL for a while even after it sees the 301 the first time, just to make sure that the 301 is really permanent.  You have a bit of a grace period so take advantage of it to get things cleaned up quickly.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • GPainter
                GPainter last edited by Aug 23, 2013, 12:50 PM Aug 23, 2013, 12:50 PM

                Hiya,

                First off let me post this video from Matt Cutts regards to 301 redirects  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Filv4pP-1nw

                As long as the 301 is pointed towards either the same page or a page of equal value (content wise) you should be good. Whilst going through them manually may loose you a bit of rank over time at least you can know you are directing to the correct pages.

                short answer

                manual - Short term rank loss long term benifit

                Auto - visa vesa

                Hope this helps 🙂

                CleverPhD TinkyWinky 2 Replies Last reply Aug 23, 2013, 1:17 PM Reply Quote 1
                • mbulox
                  mbulox last edited by Aug 23, 2013, 12:52 PM Aug 23, 2013, 12:45 PM

                  Hello,

                  I don't quite understand your question, if you are adding more category pages, you should have more pages instead of less, just make sure to 301 redirect every single old page and you shouldn't have a problem.

                  I had to do something similar to one of my sites like 3 months ago and I did loose pagerank on some pages but ranking got better so I wouldn't worry much about pagerank.

                  Cheers 🙂

                  TinkyWinky 1 Reply Last reply Aug 23, 2013, 1:15 PM Reply Quote 0
                  • 1 / 1
                  1 out of 8
                  • First post
                    1/8
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • 21centuryweb

                    Duplicate 'meta title' issue (AMP & NON-AMP Pages)

                    how to fix duplicate meta title issue in amp and non-amp pages? example.com
                    example.com/amp We have set the 'meta title' in desktop version & we don't want to change the title for AMP page as we have more than 10K pages on the website. ----As per SEMRUSH Tool---- ABOUT THIS ISSUE It is a bad idea to duplicate your title tag content in your first-level header. If your page’s <title>and <h1> tags match, the latter may appear over-optimized to search engines. Also, using the same content in titles and headers means a lost opportunity to incorporate other relevant keywords for your page.</p> <p><strong>HOW TO FIX IT</strong></p> <p>Try to create different content for your <title> and <h1> tags.<br /><br />this is what they are recommending, for the above issue we have asked our team to create unique meta and post title for desktop version but what about AMP page?<br /><br />Please help!</p></title>

                    On-Page Optimization | Sep 24, 2018, 7:24 AM | 21centuryweb
                    0
                  • CalicoKitty2000

                    Reducing number of site pages?

                    Hi, I am looking through my site structure and I have a lot of pages left over from the days of article keywords.  Probably 7 or 8 years ago, someone sold my husband on article key word pages.  I have slowly gotten rid of a lot of them as they have fallen out out of the ranks.  I would like to get rid of the rest, probably 5 or 6 pages.  Will it hurt my rankings to delete pages and redirect them?  My customers really like the simplicity of our site and I want to keep it that way, plus clean up flags that Moz is telling me is a problem. I think its easier to keep less pages top notch than have to worry with a lot of them.  Especially since my customers aren't viewing them. Thanks in advance!

                    On-Page Optimization | Jul 9, 2018, 12:16 PM | CalicoKitty2000
                    0
                  • SpaMedica

                    Duplicate Content with ?Page ID's in WordPress

                    Hi there, I'm trying to figure out the best way to solve a duplicate content problem that I have due to Page ID's that WordPress automatically assigns to pages. I know that in order for me to resolve this I have to use canonical urls but the problem for me is I can't figure out the URL structure. Moz is showing me thousands of duplicate content errors that are mostly related to Page IDs For example, this is how a page's url should look like on my site Moz is telling me there are 50 duplicate content errors for this page. The page ID for this page is 82 so the duplicate content errors appear as follows and so on. For 47 more pages. The problem repeats itself with other pages as well. My permalinks are set to "Post Name" so I know that's not an issue. What can I do to resolve this? How can I use canonical URLs to solve this problem. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

                    On-Page Optimization | Sep 23, 2014, 11:21 PM | SpaMedica
                    0
                  • isaac663

                    Why does Google pick a low priority page on my site?

                    Hi Guys. One of my pages ranks quite well for "mid year diaries 14-15" on Google.  The problem is it's a really specific product page (A4, Hardback, day-to-a-page diary I think). It would be much better for the user to land on our mid-year diaries category, not really deep into the site.  Why is Google prioritizing this product page over our general 'mid year diaries' category? Especially when the category would relate to the search more accurately? I work for TOAD diaries and I think our page rank is 10 for this search. Eagerly awaiting some insight 🙂 Thanks in advance everyone! Isaac.

                    On-Page Optimization | Jun 24, 2014, 4:04 PM | isaac663
                    0
                  • Jaybeamer

                    Two URL's for the same page

                    Hi, on our site we have two separate URL's for a page that has the same content. So, for example - 'www.domain.co.uk/stuff' and 'www.domain.co.uk/things/stuff' both have the same content on the page. We currently rank high in search for 'www.domain.co.uk/things/stuff' for our targeted keyword, but there are numerous links on the site to www.domain.co.uk/stuff and also potentially inbound links to this page. Ideally we want just the www.domain.co.uk/things/stuff URL to be present on the site, what would be the best course of action to take? Would a simple Canonical tag from the '/stuff' URL which points to the '/things/stuff' page be wise? If we were to scrap the '/stuff' URL totally and redirect it to the 'things/stuff' URL and change all our on site links, would this be beneficial and not harm our current ranking for '/things/stuff'? We only want 1 URL for this page for numerous reasons (i.e, easier to track in Analytics), but I'm a bit cautious that changing the page that doesn't rank may have an affect on the page that does rank! Thanks.

                    On-Page Optimization | May 26, 2014, 1:25 PM | Jaybeamer
                    2
                  • GRIP-SEO

                    How will it effect SEO to have multiple h1 tags on a page?

                    I have a client who recieved this advice from his marketing consultant: "If there are multiple h1 tags on a page, this can confuse Google and it may have a negative impact on the keyword rankings. If you could ask your web developer to go in and remove the h1 tags on the header images that would be helpful. This way it will be easier for Google to index your site and will help your keyword rankings." How will it effect SEO to have multiple h1 tags on a page?

                    On-Page Optimization | Mar 6, 2014, 8:11 AM | GRIP-SEO
                    0
                  • JoshuaLindley

                    Inches or " Feet or ' Does Google translate the symbols?

                    I have a client who sells things that the size is important.  In their industry some people say "15 Inch Blue Widget" and others say "15" Blue Widget" using the symbol " for inches.  On the page I know we could say both to cover all the bases but I want to get the title right.  In their industry there is not one more preferred than the other.  Does anybody know if Google translates ' to feet and " to inches.  Should I work both into the title for a product or only one?

                    On-Page Optimization | Sep 30, 2013, 6:45 AM | JoshuaLindley
                    0
                  • VinceWicks

                    How to properly remove pages and a category from Google's index

                    I want to remove this category http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/ and all the pages in that category (e.g. http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/7386.html ) from Google's index. I used the following string in the "Reomval URS" section in Google Webmaster Tools: http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/* is that correct or I better use http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/ ? Thanks in advance.

                    On-Page Optimization | Sep 20, 2012, 9:43 AM | VinceWicks
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.