301 Redirect Best Practices

[IceIcebaby]

Hi SEOs,

Question about ranking/redirects. If I have a particular page that is already ranking for a couple KWs in top SERPs, but know there are higher volume KWs I can optimize for should I just leave it as is or change the URL key and redirect for the time being until Google re-indexes.

Example:
current URL: www.example.com/action/best-movies
new URL: www.example.com/action/best-action-movies
(the current would be ranking for "best action moves" whereas the new would include the actual "best action movies" KW)

Let me know if I can clarify, thank you!

[Andy-Halliday]

According to Matt Cutts you don't lose that much page rank for 301's.

http://www.seroundtable.com/redirects-links-pagerank-16419.html

I would probably recommend changing your url for the higher volume keywords and putting 301s in place and in theory you shouldn't lose ranking for your current rankings

[ThompsonPaul]

Having the target keyword in the URL is only one of many ranking signals, Reed, and in my experience a fairly small one. In addition, contrary to Ahalliday's claim, 301 redirects DO in fact dilute "link juice" by the same amount as regular links would (some estimate by up to 15%).

So in my opinion, you'd be on a fool's errand. Whatever you gained from having the keyword in the URL would be lost by passing through a juice-reducing redirect. I'd say you could find much more productive ways to spend your optimisation time. That's not to say you can't still tune up your other on-page factors for the "better" terms, especially If you're already ranking for the higher-volume term with that page. Even better - invest a little time getting some off-page boosts, like earning a few good links. Maybe add some additional quality content like images, video, comparison charts, etc. That'll have far greater effect.

Does that make sense?

Paul

[ThompsonPaul]

Did you even read the article you quote, Andrew? It clearly states that 301s definitely DO dissipate Pagerank. That's even the title of the article! And Matt Cutts' direct quote is

The amount of PageRank that dissipates through a 301 is currently identical to the amount of PageRank that dissipates through a link. [emphasis mine]

Clearly what he is saying is that the redirect doesn't reduce the flow more than a regular link, but does reduce it by the same amount. (which many estimate to be as high as 15%). This whole discussion was in context of not using convoluted linking methods in order to avoid using a 301 redirect which was at first thought to reduce PR flow more than a regular link did.

So the bottom line message is "use a 301 when that is the best solution". But you still shouldn't use them unnecessarily as they do "waste" flow of PageRank.

Paul

Paul

[Andy-Halliday]

It would seem I put the wrong link - the link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Filv4pP-1nw however I would still stick to my point and get the URL you are happy to rank for and then sort out the content on the page. While the URL may only be a small factor in google algorithm.

But if your unhappy with your url structure now, no matter what happens Ive found that in a year or so you will wish you had changed the url.

So I always recommend changing the url to something you are happy with, then work on content, link building and improving the page, but I would still argue that the little bit of page rank lost (and without knowing the page its going to be hard to know exactly the implications), its worth it to get the URL structure you are happy with and then work on the content.

What I wouldn't recommend is 301 a page, to another page which then 301 to another page - this is seen as bad and you will lose a lot of link power, google may follow 2 or 3 stacked 301s but after that they wont http://www.jamesburton.net/chained-301-redirects-google-search-impact/. So doing a 301 wont hurt your ranking if you have decent content and links built in, just don't start stacking 301s

[IceIcebaby]

Hey Paul, that makes complete sense. Thanks for your help.