Reversing the bad effects of a problematic 301 redirect
-
I have a previously very strong ranking page that is now omitted from the SERPs, but only for one specific keyword phrase. I think I found the reason, which I'll explain, and I hope I can hear some confirmation of my theory and a way to correct it.
Let's use the following made up domain and keywords:
Political blog SiteA.com had a few news articles about "Blue Widgets" (like 10 out of 10,000 pages). They became exceedingly popular, so on SiteA.com we created a reference-type page about "Blue Widgets" and in the news articles we already had about Blue Widgets we added rich anchor text (Blue Widgets) links that pointed to this new About Blue Widgets page. (long before we wised up about keyword rich anchor texts and Google!)
After seeing how much traffic was coming to the About Blue Widgets page, we created a whole new site, SiteB.com, which was about Widgets (not just Blue Widgets), a page for each color of widget, and other pages about widgets. SiteB.com has an important and popular page, SiteB.com/blue-widgets, which is about Blue Widgets. We then 301 redirected the SiteA.com's About Blue Widgets page to SiteB.com/blue-widgets. This page in SiteB.com ranked very high (like #2, #3) for years.
Two weeks ago SiteB.com/blue-widgets fell out of the SERPs, but only for the phrase "Blue Widgets". The page still gets lots of traffic from other queries, and even the "Blue Widgets" query will bring up other pages on SiteB.com. So, the only thing hit is the specific query "Blue Widgets" for the specific page SiteB.com/blue-widgets.
It seems obvious to me that Google took the combination of a) a site that it probably no longer liked since we sold it (SiteA.com) since it's gone downhill, b) the rich keyword anchor text on SiteA.com pages pointing to the SiteA.com page optimized for that keyword, and c) then being 301 Redirected to a SiteB.com Blue Widgets page optimized for that same anchor text.
I only discovered the SiteA.com redirects last week, which I had completely forgotten about, and had them removed right away.
My question is, 1) if this indeed was the issue, now that the redirects from SiteA.com to SiteB.com are gone will my ranking eventually go back to normal? and 2) is there anything I can do to get Google to notice the change and have it go back to how it was?
-
You're right. If you removed the redirects, there's no need disavow. I assumed that was what you had done to remove the links given you said you sold Site A.
In my personal experience, it can take Google months, up to 8 months, to drop links. Hopefully in your case it won't take that long.
-
"That said, did you analyse all incoming links to determine if there have been any other suspicious adds or drops recently?" Yes.
"Surely you did other redirects from Site A to Site B?" No, I have not. That was all.
"You probably know this already given you've presumably disavowed the incoming links from SiteB, but just in case." Since I've taken the redirects off, I don't think there is a need to disavow; at least that's what I've been told.
"You can ask Google to recrawl the page using the "Fetch as Google" page in the crawl menu of Webmaster Tools. That might speed things up. No guarantee." Good idea, thank you. I hadn't thought of that.
-
(1) "if this indeed was the issue, now that the redirects from SiteA.com to SiteB.com are gone will my ranking eventually go back to normal?" Yes. If you've nailed the issue.
That said, did you analyse all incoming links to determine if there have been any other suspicious adds or drops recently? Do you want to share the specific page with us to see if anything else jumps out?
Surely you did other redirects from Site A to Site B? You've not suffered any other severe rankings loses?
What Wanatop says is also true. Sometimes there are seemingly unexplained ups and downs in the rankings. It could self-correct.
(2) "is there anything I can do to get Google to notice the change?" You probably know this already given you've presumably disavowed the incoming links from SiteB, but just in case... You can ask Google to recrawl the page using the "Fetch as Google" page in the crawl menu of Webmaster Tools. That might speed things up. No guarantee.
-
My advice would you to do 301 redirects in the siteA to the most powerful keyword page star, and there make outgoing links.
Also on site B you should create a powerful page with concrete Keyword, and make link only there.
If you work with very large semantic and mixed, though of the same theme, confuse the seeker, you have to be as consistent as possible, if a particular keyword is important not stick to it.
You know well that the SEO must be calm, big ups then downs espan small, and vice versa, give it time.
-
"f I understood correctly the redirect from siteA.com/blue-widget is gone.."
Yes, it is gone.
I understand your points, but those are not what has caused the page to disappear from the SERPs. I also have pages such as Red Widgets, Green Widgets, etc, that are still ranking on page one for their terms. The pages are structured in the same ways as is the now-SERP-missing Blue Widgets page.
-
If I understood correctly the redirect from siteA.com/blue-widget is gone..
If the above statement is correct, how is the internal architecture and anchor text structured? Are you still emphasising your efforts onto the page SiteB.com/blue-widget? Could you reduce the number of links of that other page that takes the place of the desired page?
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 Redirect in breadcrumb. How bad is it?
Hi all, How bad is it to have a link in the breadcrumb that 301 redirects? We had to create some hidden category pages in our ecommerce platform bigcommerce to create a display on our category pages in a certain format. Though whilst the category page was set to not visable in bigcommerce admin the URL still showed in the live site bread crumb. SO, we set a 301 redirect on it so it didnt produce a 404. However we have lost a lot of SEO ground the past few months. could this be why? is it bad to have a 301 redirect in the breadrcrumb.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oceanstorm0 -
HSTS Redirects
Hi Are these 307 redirects bad for SEO? They've just popped up on an audit & I haven't seen them before. I'm guessing as they're temporary they should be updated. Thanks Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
301 redirect to avoid duplicate content penalty
I have two websites with identical content. Haya and ethnic Both websites have similar products. I would like to get rid of ethniccode I have already started to de-index ethniccode. My question is, Will I get any SEO benefit or Will it be harmful if I 301 direct the below only URL’s https://www.ethniccode/salwar-kameez -> https://www.hayacreations/collections/salwar-kameez https://www.ethniccode/salwar-kameez/anarkali-suits - > https://www.hayacreations/collections/anarkali-suits
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | riyaaaz0 -
Hacked website - Dealing with 301 redirects and a large .htaccess file
One of my client's websites was recently hacked and I've been dealing with the after effects of it. The website is now clean of malware and I already appealed to Google about the malware issue. The current issue I have is dealing with the 20, 000+ crawl errors which are garbage links that were created from the hacking. How does one go about dealing with all the 301 redirects I need to create for all the 404 crawl errors? I'm already noticing an increased load time on the website due to having a rather large .htaccess file with a couple thousand 301 redirects done already which I fear will result in my client's website performance and SEO performance taking a hit as well.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPK0 -
How do I best handle Duplicate Content on an IIS site using 301 redirects?
The crawl report for a site indicates the existence of both www and non-www content, which I am aware is duplicate. However, only the www pages are indexed**, which is throwing me off. There are not any 'no-index' tags on the non-www pages and nothing in robots.txt and I can't find a sitemap. I believe a 301 redirect from the non-www pages is what is in order. Is this accurate? I believe the site is built using asp.net on IIS as the pages end in .asp. (not very familiar to me) There are multiple versions of the homepage, including 'index.html' and 'default.asp.' Meta refresh tags are being used to point to 'default.asp'. What has been done: 1. I set the preferred domain to 'www' in Google's Webmaster Tools, as most links already point to www. 2. The Wordpress blog which sits in a /blog subdirectory has been set with rel="canonical" to point to the www version. What I have asked the programmer to do: 1. Add 301 redirects from the non-www pages to the www pages. 2. Set all versions of the homepage to redirect to www.site.org using 301 redirects as opposed to meta refresh tags. Have all bases been covered correctly? One more concern: I notice the canonical tags in the source code of the blog use a trailing slash - will this create a problem of inconsistency? (And why is rel="canonical" the standard for Wordpress SEO plugins while 301 redirects are preferred for SEO?) Thanks a million! **To clarify regarding the indexation of non-www pages: A search for 'site:site.org -inurl:www' returns only 7 pages without www which are all blog pages without content (Code 200, not 404 - maybe deleted or moved - which is perhaps another 301 redirect issue).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimmiedawn0 -
Redirect advice
My website has two versions of the homepage: http://www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk/http://www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk/index.cfmI wondered if I could set up a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file so that only the http://www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk page was returned as the homepage?Colin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NileCruises0 -
Does 301 redirect to a new domain removes penguin penality
Hi, One of my client has shady link profile and has hit by penguin update. I have confirmed the penalty using Google hack. Now, seeing his link profile, most of his links comes from blog comments which are from unmoderated blogs, and there is no way, we cant remove those comments. But without removing them, we cant get rid of the Google's penguin penality. So, i am planning on 301 redirecting to a new domain. But my question is, will the penality transfers, if i 301 to a new domain? What iff, if someone buys an old domain hit by a penguin update? Please clarify me, or if there are any alternatives to get rid of penguin update, please help me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Indexxess0 -
301 Redirect question
Which is the best way to set up the 301 redirect on my main home page? http://horsebuggy.com to http://www.horsebuggy.com Or does it make a difference? Boodreaux
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0