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?
-
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.
-
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
- topic:timeago_earlier,11 days
-
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!
-
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
-
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
-
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.
-
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
-
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
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
-
Shifting target keyword to a new page, how do we rank the internal page?
I have been targeting one keyword for home page that was ranking between the postilion 6-7 but was never ranking on 1st as there were 2 highly competitive keywords targeted on the same page, I changed the keyword to an internal service page to rank it on 1st, I have optimized the content as well but the home page is still ranking on 11th, how do I get the internal page rank on that keyword
On-Page Optimization | Sep 12, 2019, 10:51 AM | GOMO-Gabriel0 -
Will it upset Google if I aggregate product page reviews up into a product category page?
We have reviews on our product pages and we are considering averaging those reviews out and putting them on specific category pages in order for the average product ratings to be displayed in search results. Each averaged category review would be only for the products within it's category, and all reviews are from users of the site, no 3rd party reviews. For example, averaging the reviews from all of our boxes products pages, and listing that average review on the boxes category page. My question is, will this be doing anything wrong in the eyes of Google, and if so how so? -Derick
On-Page Optimization | Sep 30, 2016, 8:28 PM | Deluxe0 -
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 | SpaMedica0 -
Stolen Content reposted on other sites. How does this affect ranking?
Visitors often copy and paste my content and post it elsewhere... on Facebook, on Tumblr, on forums and sometimes on competing websites... but they don't link to me. How does Google treat this duplicated content? What is the best way to handle it? File DCMA claims or ask them for a link?
On-Page Optimization | Sep 30, 2014, 3:02 PM | brianflannery0 -
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 | Jaybeamer2 -
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 | JoshuaLindley0 -
Duplicate Content for Men's and Women's Version of Site
So, we're a service where you can book different hairdressing services from a number of different salons (site being worked on). We're doing both a male and female version of the site on the same domain which users are can select between on the homepage. The differences are largely cosmetic (allowing the designers to be more creative and have a bit of fun and to also have dedicated male grooming landing pages), but I was wondering about duplicate pages. While most of the pages on each version of the site will be unique (i.e. [male service] in [location] vs [female service] in [location] with the female taking precedent when there are duplicates), what should we do about the likes of the "About" page? Pages like this would both be unique in wording but essentially offer the same information and does it make sense to to index two different "About" pages, even if the titles vary? My question is whether, for these duplicate pages, you would set the more popular one as the preferred version canonically, leave them both to be indexed or noindex the lesser version entirely? Hope this makes sense, thanks!
On-Page Optimization | Jul 23, 2013, 8:33 AM | LeahHutcheon0 -
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 | VinceWicks0