301 redirects tanked our site on google - what now?

[JeanYates]

We had several hundred old pages on the site with duplicate content and new pages with fresh info on the same topics.

So I redirected the old pages to the new pages. Next day, plop, we're dumped off google for almost every keyword.

Dang I thought they didn't want duplicate content and old funky pages.

What did I do wrong and what can I do to fix it?

Thanks so much for anyone who can share their expertise.

Jean

[RyanKent]

In order to offer any tangible advice, we would need to examine your site along with an example of an old article along with the new page which replaced it.

[JeanYates]

http://www.northwest-wine.com is the site.

Here's an example of an old page that has not yet been redirected:

http://www.northwest-wine.com/Beaux-Freres-Willamette-Valley-Pinot-noir-2009.html

Here's the new page we'll redirect it to when it is sold out:

http://www.northwest-wine.com/Beaux-Freres-Pinot-noir-WV-2010.html

You can see why we are redirecting - the older page has the same content as the newer one, except the newer one has the additional content for the new vintage. I'm consolidating all of the older vintage tasting notes onto one page with the newer ones.

Is this the info you need? Thanks SO much for the quick response.

Jean

[samfiora]

Hold tight and give yourself at least a week before evaluating the result of your change.

I wouldn't redirect those myself.  I'd just archive them, tack on a sold out notice, tweak the copy and offer a link to the new url.

[RyanKent]

Yes, that is the information desired, thank you.

I do notice the 2009 review is more then double the length of the 2010 review, which is thin by comparison. Otherwise the page seems fine.

I tried navigating to other pages such as Oregon > Oregon Pinot Noir > Highest Rated Pinots and selected the first link "Shea Wine Cellars Homer Pinot noir 2010" but notice the URL is http://www.northwest-wine.com/Shea-Wine-Cellars-Homer-Pinot-noir-2008.html.

The link still shows 2008. Not a big deal per se, but it leads to questions about the redirects. Are you sure they were performed properly?

More importantly, it seems there is at least some keyword cannibalization on your site. I tried searching Google.com for "Shea Wine Cellars Homer Pinot noir 2010" which is an exact title match to the above page. Your site ranks 11th for the term but a different page appears: http://www.northwest-wine.com/wine/2012/05/the-shea-vineyard-2010-homer-estate-block-31-block-7/

Further analysis is required to determine the root cause of the issue. I would suggest first checking the 301s to ensure they were performed properly. I would also check your site for similar keywords to the redirected pages. When I search your site using your search box for "Shea Wine Cellars Homer Pinot noir 2010" the only page that comes up is the 2008.html page. Clearly Google.com feels the other page is more relevant.

[JeanYates]

Thanks so much for your words of wisdom.

Re the url with 2008 in the title - the "2008" is an unfortunate consequence of the way we named the pages originally. It is the most relevant page and lists the 2010 wine. This is not a page that was incorrectly redirected, the url's name was poorly designed.

Should I rename the pages to leave off the vintage?  Ideally I'd think the url would be something like "shea-wine-cellar-homer-pinot-noir.html and not have the vintage in it at all. But, renaming all of those differently dated pages would require 301's, wouldn't it? That's a lot of 301s - a lot of the pages have the wrong vintage in the url.

Re why google is liking the blog post link that seems less on target versus the wine's own page - this has been happening since 1)I started posting good fresh content on the blog everyday; and 2) especially since the redirects - it's been more in the last few days than ever before.

I'll check, but the 301's were put i place by a very very good IT guy.

Again, thank you so much.

Jean

[JeanYates]

Thanks so much for your response - and for reminding me to be patient.

I've tried leaving the pages intact with a link to the new url and found that the five or six pages of old vintages all pointing to the new page resulted in hundreds of almost empty pages.

I thought that it was effecting my SEO, having so many pages with almost nothing on them.

I have to put the info about all the older vintages on the current product so the customer can get the full story. So I can't put the info about each past vintage on its one page and then put all of the content on the current page.

Google counts that as duplicate content.

I'm not sure what you mean by "archive them"?

Thanks again,

Jean