To redirect or not to redirect, that is the question
-
I work for a software company that is redeveloping the website (same domain.) We have tons of content in the form of articles and documents for support, how to use the product better, case studies, and blog posts. I've downloaded a landing page report and many of these have low impressions and little or no clicks (some ranked high other very low.) Should I redirect all this content to the new site where some of it won't exist or forget about it because of the lack of juice?
Is there a rule-of-thumb threshold for redirecting for content?
-
I would redirect if you can as there may be duplicate content issues if you simply republish without them...
I would also check that your content hasn't been copied by any external sites as well as we neglected this and lost rankings as Google thought we'd nicked the content when we redeveloped our websites. It all worked out OK in the end, we did the DMCA request, and sent letters to the people who copied us asking for removal but it was a pain in the proverbial - and entirely unnecessary if we'd have done this before we switched to a new site hierarchy.
-
Hi there
Based on your research, if you feel it's better to repurpose than to redirect, then go for it! Especially if you feel the content does have value and it's merely some on-site optimization and making sure your content / goals / on-site factors align with your audience goals.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
I've done all of that minus the Google resource. You'll notice I mentioned that most of the content ranks very low and has very low engagement. I'll take it that my research and intuition is that our site won't be harmed by merely re-purposing the content rather than using a redirect for each one.
-
Hi there
I would first run a content audit to see if pages are worth keeping, updating, consolidating, or eliminating.
From there, I would check out this migration resource from Moz to make sure you properly move your website.
Also, take a Google's move your site resource.
All of the above will take some research and conversations, so make sure that you take an inventory, vet it, and know what to do with that content once you do your research.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
Technical 301 question
Howdy all, this has been bugging me for a while and I wanted to know the communities ideas on this. We have a .com website which has a little domain authority and is growing steadily. We are a UK business (but have a US office which we will be adapting too soon) We are ranking better within google.com than we do on google.co.uk probably down to our TLD. Is it a wise idea to 301 our .com to .co.uk for en-gb enquiries only? Is there any evidence that this will help improve our position? will all the link juice passed from 301s go to our .co.uk only if we are still applying the use of .com in the US? Many thanks and hope this isn't too complicated! Best wishes,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TVFurniture
Chris0 -
Tricky 301 question
A friend has relaunched a website but his web guys (he didn't consult me!) didn't do any 301s and now traffic unsurprisingly has tanked. The old site and database no longer exists and there are now 2000+ 404's. Any ideas how to do the 301s from old urls to new product urls WITHOUT it being a massive manual job?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean0 -
How many redirects are too many?
Hello Everyone, I currently have a dynamic site and it is my understanding that switching to a static site would be beneficial. I already have some 301's in place from when my site had a .php extension to the new extension now with ./?... etc. Is it okay to re redirect them? How many redirects are too many? Thank you in advance for suggestions. Have a Fabulous Friday! Sandra
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rankmenow0 -
Duplicate Content Question
Brief question - SEOMOZ is teling me that i have duplicate content on the following two pages http://www.passportsandvisas.com/visas/ and http://www.passportsandvisas.com/visas/index.asp The default page for the /visas/ directory is index.asp - so it effectively the same page - but apparently SEOMOZ and more importantly Google, etc treat these as two different pages. I read about 301 redirects etc, but in this case there aren't two physical HTML pages - so how do I fix this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | santiago230 -
301 redirect
I have 2 websites, lets call them Website A and Website B. Website A is a commercial website, website B is a 7 years old blog. Website B has many natural, high quality BL, including some from Nytimes, etc. I want to integrate the blog (B) into the commercial website (A). The idea behind this thought is to compress the two websites, it is easier to have everything in one place. I will do this with 301 redirect via Webmaster tools, htaccess etc. The uRL structure will remain the same: eg: websiteB/post-title/ -> websiteA/post title What will happen with my quality BLs? Is there any chance to be penalized by Google? What will happen with the PR of the 2 sites? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasmin281 -
Login redirect 302
Ok - anyone knows what to do with the temporary redirect to the login page? In our e-commerce system we have a checkout page, which requires user to be logged in - if they are not, we redirect them to the login page using simple php header("Locaiton: url"). This however has been found as a Warning as it's a temporary redirect. I can't really put there permanent redirect for obvious reasons so if someone could give me some clue on this situation that would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | coremediadesign0 -
Redirects Going to the Wrong Place
I just checked our rankings for a few of our top keywords from a previously merged domain, and we are not anywhere on the first page (we used to rank #1). I then manually typed in the url of a top product we sell from our old site that was merged into the new site. It turns out that the redirect isn't going to the right place at all (which probably explains why the page isn't ranking). Here is part of the code from our htaccess file: RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^neuroformulas.com$ [OR]
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vitasouthmktg
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.neuroformulas.com$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "http://www.vitasouth.com/brands/NeuroScience.html" [R=301,L] ErrorDocument 404 /404.html redirect 301 /products/Kavinace.html http://www.vitasouth.com/products/NeuroScience-Kavinace.html The bottom redirect (http://www.neuroformulas.com/products/Kavinace.html) should be going to the url specified. Instead, it goes to http://www.vitasouth.com/NeuroScience.html/Kavinace.html (NOT A VALID URL!). Please help! Thanks! -Matt0 -
Quick URL structure question
Say you've got 5,000 articles. Each of these are from 2-3 generations of taxonomy. For example: example.com/motherboard/pc/asus39450 example.com/soundcard/pc/hp39 example.com/ethernet/software/freeware/stuffit294 None of the articles were SUPER popular as is, but they still bring in a bit of residual traffic combined. Few thousand or so a day. You're switching to a brand new platform. Awesome new structure, taxonomy, etc. The real deal. But, historically, you don't have the old taxonomy functions. The articles above, if created today, file under example.com/hardware/ This is the way it is from here on out. But what to do with the historical files? keep the original URL structure, in the new system. Readers might be confused if they try to reach example.com/motherboard, but at least you retain all SEO weight and these articles are all older anyways. Who cares? Grab some lunch. change the urls to /hardware/, and redirect everything the right way. Lose some rank maybe, but its a smooth operation, nice and neat. Grab some dinner. change the urls to /hardware/ DONT redirect, surprise Google with 5k articles about old computer hardware. Magical traffic splurge, go skydiving. Panic, cry into your pillow. Get job signing receipts at CostCo Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EricPacifico0