Are 301s advisable for low-traffic URL's?
-
We are using some branded terms in URLs that we have been recently told we need to stop using. If the pages in question get little traffic, so we're not concerned about losing traffic from broken URLs, should we still do 301 redirects for those pages after they are renamed?
In other words, are there other serious considerations besides any loss in traffic from direct clicks on those broken URLs that need to be considered?
This comes up because we don't have anyone in-house that can do the redirects, so we need to pay our outside web development company. Is it worth it?
-
If those pages are indexed by Google and Google returns them in SERPs then yes, they will 404. That is why you need to test the page first and do a header redirect 301 to either the category page or the home page.
Hope that was the This Answered My Question : )
-
Great feedback! I still just have 1 remaining question, though, which I've posted below Richard's comments. Thanks!
-
The trademark issue is with the names of the subfolders, not the domain name.
-
So can you just change the links to look at the new URL? Still best to redirect them though.
Curious about why you have to change them now though as I just assumed you were using a competitors trademark in a domain before
-
Thanks for that tool! I was not familiar with it.
-
This almost fully answers my question. Those pages don't have inbound links from other sites. We have over 10,000 pages on the site, so we can't have links to them all. So, they aren't worth keeping for traffic or links.
But you say, "I would hope that you capture your 404 errors and 301 redirect all the time anyway." So, my last remaining question is: Am I necessarily creating 404 errors by not redirecting?
Thanks, everyone!
-
Yes, these are just pages on our main site. They will be renamed, and we will be keeping the content on the site.
-
If I'm reading this right though, it is only the URLs they've got to stop using, not the content. Therefore a 404 provide alternate content suggestions isn't necessary in this case; I agree that a 301 redirect is best solution - it passes the human traffic and the link juice to the correct location.
As to whether it is worth the cost, then of course it is the famous answer of "it depends". However, I'd imagine that the cost of redirects should be pretty minimal and if the old URLs drive just a couple of conversions (whatever that may be) then it should have been worthwhile, even ignoring the link juice.
-
As Ryan was stating; if those pages have inbound links, test those links for strength and if they are worth keeping, then 301.
Either way, I would hope that you capture your 404 errors and 301 redirect all the time anyway.
-
Sites put up and take down pages all the time. Broken links are of no consequence to the overall site quality.
This is a different discussion altogether, but broken URL situations actually offer an opportunity for a 404 page that offers users alternate content.
-
Are you linking out to these sites you have to get rid of?
In fact are they even sites or just other pages on your main site? I have maybe misunderstood
EDIT - I'll go ahead and assume I've just got the wrong end of the stick and it's pages on your site that you need to get rid of.
In that case if you can't redirect them can you change the links to point to different pages or even just remove them?
-
Thanks for this reply, and for the others!
OK, so the fact that your site has broken URLs doesn't bring your site in general down in the search engine rankings? Broken URLs aren't necessarily an indicator of a poor quality site that would result in some sort of penalty?
-
Redirecting them won't help the main domain rank for these brand terms, but it will capture the type in traffic and pass most of the link juice coming into these other sites.
Ultimately it shouldn't take your web development company long (unless you have hundreds) and indeed you could maybe even do it at the registrar easily (if not efficiently), so don't pay through the nose for it.
On the other hand, unless you rely on links from those other sites it won't harm your main site in any way by letting them die.
-
There are two things I would look closely at in such a situation...
Traffic: First, you want to know if these pages are generating any traffic. If they are, you should keep them. If they aren't (which it sounds like they aren't), move on to checking links...
Links: Before you scrap pages generating little inbound traffic, you should check to see if said pages have any inbound links. If they do, you would want to evaluate the quality of those links and determine if that is greater or lessor than the cost of keeping the pages and setting up redirects. If you determine these pages have valuable links, definitely 301 redirect them to a good substitute page.
When I speak of the cost associted with setting up the redirects I'm talking about the time taken to set up the redirects (likely your time or ITs time).
We use Open Site Explorer to help us audit inbound links to pages.
-
The link doesn't need to be broken. 301 redirect the existing link to the new one and anyone that is linking or typing or clicking into the old URL will be forwarded to the new one and they wont know it. Make sense? Yes, do it!
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
-
Can I use a 301 redirect to pass 'back link' juice to a different domain?
Hi, I have a backlink from a high DA/PA Government Website pointing to www.domainA.com which I own and can setup 301 redirects on if necessary. However my www.domainA.com is not used and has no active website (but has hosting available which can 301 redirect). www.domainA.com is also contextually irrelevant to the backlink. I want the Government Website link to go to www.domainB.com - which is both the relevant site and which also should be benefiting from from the seo juice from the backlink. So far I have had no luck to get the Government Website's administrators to change the URL on the link to point to www.domainB.com. Q1: If i use a 301 redirect on www.domainA.com to redirect to www.domainB.com will most of the backlink's SEO juice still be passed on to www.domainB.com? Q2: If the answer to the above is yes - would there be benefit to taking this a step further and redirect www.domainA.com to a deeper directory on www.domianB.com which is even more relevant?
Technical SEO | | DGAU
ie. redirect www.domainA.com to www.domainB.com/categoryB - passing the link juice deeper.0 -
What's the best way to handle product filter URLs?
I've been researching and can't find a clear cut answer. Imagine you have a product category page e.g. domain/jeans You've a lot of options as to how to filter the results domain/jeans?=ladies,skinny,pink,10 or domain/jeans/ladies-skinny-pink-10 or domain/jeans/ladies/skinny?=pink,10 And in this how do you handle titles, breadcrumbs etc. Is the a way you prefer to handle filters and why do you do it that way? I'm trying to make my mind up as some very big names handle this differently e.g. http://www.next.co.uk/shop/gender-women-category-jeans/colour-pink-fit-skinny-size-10r VS https://www.matalan.co.uk/womens/shop-by-category/jeans?utf8=✓&[facet_filter][meta.tertiary_category][Skinny]=on&[facet_filter][variants.meta.size][Size+10]=on&[facet_filter][meta.master_colour][Midwash]=on&[facet_filter][min_current_price][gte]=6.0&[facet_filter][min_current_price][lte]=18.0&per=36&sort=
Technical SEO | | RodneyRiley0 -
How google bot see's two the same rel canonicals?
Hi, I have a website where all the original URL's have a rel canonical back to themselves. This is kinda like a fail safe mode. It is because if a parameter occurs, then the URL with the parameter will have a canonical back to the original URL. For example this url: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ has this canonical: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ which is the same since it's an original URL This url https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter has this canonical https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ like i said before, parameters have a rel canonical back to their original url's. SO: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter and this https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ both have the same canonical which is this https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ Im telling you all that because when roger bot tried to crawl my website, it gave back duplicates. This happened because it was reading the canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) of the original url (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) and the canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) of the url with the parameter (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter) and saw that both were point to the same canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/)... So, i would like to know if google bot treats canonicals the same way. Because if it does then im full of duplicates 😄 thanks.
Technical SEO | | dos06590 -
Will a Robots.txt 'disallow' of a directory, keep Google from seeing 301 redirects for pages/files within the directory?
Hi- I have a client that had thousands of dynamic php pages indexed by Google that shouldn't have been. He has since blocked these php pages via robots.txt disallow. Unfortunately, many of those php pages were linked to by high quality sites mulitiple times (instead of the static urls) before he put up the php 'disallow'. If we create 301 redirects for some of these php URLs that area still showing high value backlinks and send them to the correct static URLs, will Google even see these 301 redirects and pass link value to the proper static URLs? Or will the robots.txt keep Google away and we lose all these high quality backlinks? I guess the same question applies if we use the canonical tag instead of the 301. Will the robots.txt keep Google from seeing the canonical tags on the php pages? Thanks very much, V
Technical SEO | | Voodak0 -
Is there a way for me to automatically download a website's sitemap.xml every month?
From now on we want to store all our sitemap.xml over the next years. Its a nice archive to have that allows us to analyse how many pages we have on our website and which ones were removed/redirected. Any suggestions? Thanks
Technical SEO | | DeptAgency0 -
How to create site map for large site (ecommerce type) that has 1000's if not 100,000 of pages.
I know this is kind of a newbie question but I am having an amazing amount of trouble creating a sitemap for our site Bestride.com. We just did a complete redesign (look and feel, functionality, the works) and now I am trying to create a site map. Most of the generators I have used "break" after reaching some number of pages. I am at a loss as to how to create the sitemap. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks
Technical SEO | | BestRide0 -
Why are my URL's with a trailing slash still getting indexed even though they are redirected in the .htaccess file?
My .htaccess file is set up to redirect a URL with a trailing / to the URL without the /. However, my SEOmoz crawl diagnostics report is showing both URL's. I took a look at my Google Webmaster account and saw some duplicate META title issues. Same thing, Google Webmaster is showing the URL with the trailing /. My website was live for about 3 days before I added the code to the .htaccess file to remove the trailing /. Is it possible that in those 3 days that both versions were indexed and haven't been removed even though the .htaccess file has been updated?
Technical SEO | | mkhGT0