Boatload of 301 Redirects Question

[anthonytjm]

We have a client that came to us and they recently did a site makeover. Previously they had all their pages in root directory including 75+ spammy article pages. On their makeover, they moved all the article pages into a directory and added 301 redirects. In going over their site we noticed they have redundant articles, like an article on blue-marble-article.htm and blue-marbles-article.htm Playing on singular and plural with dulpicate content for most part with exception to making it plural.

If they have 75 articles, Id say 1/3 are actually somewhat original content. I would like to 301 redirect 2/3's of the articles to better re-written article pages but that would add a whole lot more 301 redirects.

We would then have a 301 redirect from root directory to article directory, then another 301 redirect from spam article to new re-written article.

• My question is, would this be too many redirects for googlebot to sort through and would it be too confusing or send bad signals?
• Or should I create a new directory with all good articles and just redirect the entire old articles directory to the new one?
• Or just delete the redirects and old spammy directory and let those fall on a 404 error page.

Id hate to lose 50-75 pages but I think its in fact those spammy pages that could be why the site fell from top of first page google to third page and now 10th page in a years time.

I know, Im confused just typing this out. Hope it makes sense for some good feedback and advise. Thanks.

[MikeRoberts]

If the pages have traffic, rankings, etc. then its better to have a relevant one to one redirect instead of letting them 404. Its always better to 301 redirect directly to the relevant page instead of having a chain of redirects to redirects. Having 75 new redirects won't slow down googlebot. It can handle quite a lot.