301 redirect every pages?

[EnigmaSolution]

Good evening,

my question might sound stupid but please forgive me, I am still learning SEO.

If I build a new site that will replace an existing site. Is there any point to do a 301 redirect for pages that had no inbound link so, no juice to pass?

I kind of think that it would be a better practice to 301 redirect each pages to a page that make sense on the new web site  .... but here is why I think that.

Why I say that

If I am lucky, many of my old web site pages will be indexed, many of them having no inbound links. So once the new web site online, until all my new web sites pages are indexed, I could imagine Google would send  people to the index pages (the old ones that do not exist anymore)... I am right?

So in that case, if I do a 301 redirect only for pages that have inbound links, the user would end up on a 404 page.

Could you tell me if it make sense  how I think?

Thanks a lot !!

Nancy

P.S. I would not redirect if it make no sense to the user. I fully understand that we must always keep the user experience in mind in any 404 and 301 redirect decisions. But to simplify the question, just suppose it is ok from a user perspective to map every old site pages to a page in new web site.

[wissamdandan]

Hello Nancy,

hmmm no let me explain why

true your inner pages have no inbound links to them but do remember that you have links pointing to your homepage.

That authority you have on you homepage are passed to your inner pages, either threw navigational links or contextual.

Currently, each page you have on your site have an actual Page authority that got inherited from the your homepage

so implementing a good 301 from page to page will partially preserver this authority and of course your rankings you have right now with each page.

[AlanBleiweiss]

You and Wissam are both correct in reasons to want to get 301 redirects set up for every page.  Regardless of a lack of inbound links to a page, that page is part of an existing ecosystem.  Since that ecosystem is changing, any overall ranking or authority the site has will potentially be damaged.  And any of those pages, even without links, that were indexed, do have weight (even if it's low).  So from a purely technical SEO perspective, 301 redirects ensure maximum possible transfer of whatever value each page had, and retention of as much of the total ecosystem's weight as possible.

And from a user experience perspective, it's always better to redirect someone to a new relevant page than to have them encounter a 404 "not found" page, or be redirected to an irrelevant page.

[EnigmaSolution]

Thanks to boh of you !!

In your pass experience,have you seen that practice causing performance issue?

[EnigmaSolution]

Also what would you think about that answer I have found in one of the Q&A: (4) Be careful with a massive number of 301s. I would not 301 100s of pages at once. There's some evidence Google may view this as aggressive PR sculpting and devalue those 301s. In that case, I'd 301 selectively (based on page authority and back-links) and 404 the rest.' What do you think about that?

[wissamdandan]

In your pass experience,have you seen that practice causing performance issue?

one single redirect No (its negligable)

Also what would you think about that answer I have found in one of the Q&A: (4) Be careful with a massive number of 301s. I would not 301 100s of pages at once. There's some evidence Google may view this as aggressive PR sculpting and devalue those 301s. In that case, I'd 301 selectively (based on page authority and back-links) and 404 the rest.' What do you think about that?

It never happened to me, we always had multiple experience renovating sites and implementing 301 (from small to 10000 page site) and no problem.

[EnigmaSolution]

Thanks Wissam !!

But what do you mean by 'one single redirect'? I would redirect many pages ... not sure what you mean ...

[wissamdandan]

one single redirect means

Old page.html ----> new page.html

multiple "chain" redirect

oldpage1.html--->oldpage2.html--->oldpage3.html-->newpage.html