Internal 301 Re-directs

[babblemouth]

What is the best practice for internal 301 re-directs when say a product or service you supply is no longer available or the page is no longer relevent?

Leaving the page 'live' isn't the best option for customer experience so re-directing them rather than them arrive at a 404 error page would be preferable but I was thinking, "is there such a thing as too many internal 301 re-directs?"

A search on the subject brings up many old (2007-2008) articles which I guess are pretty dated now.

 

[JonathanSEO]

If it's a product that has gone for good and won't be sold again then 301 redirect it to the next closest product or the category it was in. Same for when a page is no longer relevant.

If it's simply out of stock for a while, keep the page live and just put an out of stock sign on there. May as well keep the rankings if it has some.

There's likely no such thing as too many internal redirects, obviously if your whole site is one big 301 then that's a problem but just think about sites with millions of pages and how many redirects they will have in place. Yours wont be anywhere near that number so nothing to worry about.

 

[babblemouth]

That's very helpful Jonathan.

I wonder if there is a length of time that it's beneficial to keep a 301 re-direct in place or just leave it there indefinately and forget about it?

 

[JonathanSEO]

That's very helpful Jonathan.

I wonder if there is a length of time that it's beneficial to keep a 301 re-direct in place or just leave it there indefinately and forget about it?

If the old page that has been 301'ed has any links pointing to it then I'd keep it in place indefinitely.

Good question though, hard to put a timeframe on when Google "forgets" about the old page. You'd think as soon as it updates the index and drops the old page but I don't think that's the case.

I've taken 301 redirects down on personal sites and got 404 errors come up on pages that haven't existed for donkeys. (But I think they had links I didn't know about)

Google does say if you are moving to a new domain then you should keep the 301 in place for at least 180 days.

I usually just leave them for good.

Maybe OldWelshGuy has the answer if he's around, he is good with stuff like this....

 

[fisicx]

Why kill the old page off?

Youi could leave it in place with a: 'sorry we no longer sell this item. But we do have these which are better quality/price/whatever' message along with some piccies of the shiny new version of the product.

 

[Clicky Leap]

Sometimes, if selling seasonal items, you may have a high product turnover and then I think it good to redirect (301) the page to the nearest available product.

 

[JonathanSEO]

Why kill the old page off?

Youi could leave it in place with a: 'sorry we no longer sell this item. But we do have these which are better quality/price/whatever' message along with some piccies of the shiny new version of the product.

Or just 301 redirect to the most relevant product and save the user having to click.

If you have lots of redundant pages in your inventory it's going to be annoying to manage.

 

[JonathanSEO]

Sometimes, if selling seasonal items, you may have a high product turnover and then I think it good to redirect (301) the page to the nearest available product.

If it's seasonal. e.g. deck chairs and you will be selling them again next summer after this one (if it ever starts ).

You should do the exact opposite to what you just suggested.

You should keep the page so it's ready for next year and still ranks.

If the product will never be stocked again, is discontinued, or isn't selling, then 301 redirect it.

If it's something cyclical, like a product related to a sporting event or something then it's more difficult to judge.

 

[Normansmith]

You might want to watch this :
On May 21 John Mueller from Google confirmed that from now on Google will treat 301 internal redirects in a different way: Google will treat 301 redirects that redirect to a home page as a 404 error page (http://www.youtube.com/embed/WsDeu5PUx2A).

 

[JonathanSEO]

You might want to watch this :
On May 21 John Mueller from Google confirmed that from now on Google will treat 301 internal redirects in a different way: Google will treat 301 redirects that redirect to a home page as a 404 error page (http://www.youtube.com/embed/WsDeu5PUx2A).

Someone has been reading Link Research Tools Sign up for my Tools Penguin 2.0 analysis

It's at 21 minutes or so for anyone who is interested in hearing some more PR talk.

I would like to see someone test this as I don't think you can simply say if you 301 a page to homepage it has to be treated as a 404, what if the homepage is the most related page to the one that no longer exists?

Say you have 2 office locations, and 1 closed. (Ok maybe contact page is most relevant there) but homepage could just be as relevant.

 

[Normansmith]

Someone has been reading Link Research Tools Sign up for my Tools Penguin 2.0 analysis

It's at 21 minutes or so for anyone who is interested in hearing some more PR talk.

I would like to see someone test this as I don't think you can simply say if you 301 a page to homepage it has to be treated as a 404, what if the homepage is the most related page to the one that no longer exists?

Say you have 2 office locations, and 1 closed. (Ok maybe contact page is most relevant there) but homepage could just be as relevant.

When has logic or common sense entered Google's thought processes ?
Just sending everybody around in circles again.

 

[JonathanSEO]

301 redirect does not lead to any kind of penalty. There can be some fluctuations in rankings and traffic but it is temporary. I would suggest to redirect only those URLs tha have PageRank, good number of backlinks or other authoritative pages. Redirecting all the pages may not ba a smart move if some of them are not useful.

Yeah that's rubbish.

If a page is getting traffic from organic search then you should obviously redirect it regardless of how many links it has or it's "PageRank".