301'd an important, ranking page to the wrong new page, any recourse?
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Our 1,300 page site conversion from static html to Wordpress platform went flawlessly with the exception of 1 significant issue....an old, important, highly ranking page was 301 redirected to the wrong corresponding new page. The page it was redirected to is about a similar product, but not the same. This was an oversight that slipped through. It was brought to my attention when I noticed this new page was still holding the old page's rankings but the bounce rate skyrocketed (clearly because the content on the wrong new page was not relevant).
Once identified, we cleaned up the redirect. My fear is that all the juice built up on the old .html page that ranked well has now permanently been passed to an irrelevant, insignificant page.
-Is there any way to clean up this mistake?
-Is there anything I can do to assist Google in associating the correct 'new' page with correct 'old' page after the wrong redirect was initially set-up?
-Am I going to have to start from scratch with the new page in terms of trust, backlinks, etc. since google already noted the redirect?
Thanks!
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The applicable bounce rate would be more along the lines of time spent on your site between Google Organic clicks, still you could see some benefit from more visits to the page in general so the adwords sourced traffic won't hurt. If applicable you could also run a campaign targeting SEO value as an outcome. See: http://moz.com/blog/advertisement-investments-organic-roi-whiteboard-friday. Cheers!
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Couple things I tried....
-did a fetch in webmaster tools after proper url was set up using the old url to try to re-educate Google on the correct, revised 301 destination. Not sure if that will work.
-sending highly relevant adwords traffic to respective pages to try to improve bounce rate. Not sure how much sharing Google does between adwords and organic.
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It sounds like you already fixed the issue by sending the redirect to the correct location. The old page's value should eventually associate with the correct page.
New links to the new page could help speed up the process either internally or from some external sources. If it's the type of page that makes sense to have its product featured on the home page for a bit of time that links back to the correct page that could help as well.
You shouldn't be starting from scratch, but you will experience the time delay involved in applying a redirect because of the change. The more things line up better with the correct page based on your own internal links, navigation, and external signals (maybe tweet a discount to the product for a few weeks to generate buzz), the quicker Google will get it.
Cheers!
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