Redirect URLS with 301 twice

[AL123al]

Hello,

I had asked my client to ask her web developer to move to a more simplified URL structure. There was a folder called "home" after the root which served no purpose. I asked for the URLs to be redirected using 301 to the new URLs which did not have this structure. However, the web developer didn't agree and decided to just rename the "home" folder "p". I don't know why he did this.

We argued the case and he then created the URL structure we wanted. Initially he had 301 redirected the old URLS (the one with "Home") to his new version (the one with the "p"). When we asked for the more simplified URL after arguing, he just redirected all the "p" URLS to the PAGE NOT FOUND.  However, remember, all the original URLs are now being redirected to the PAGE NOT FOUND as a result.

The problems I see are these unless he redirects again:

1. The new simplified URLS  have to start from scratch to rank

2)We have duplicated content - two URLs with the same content

3. Customers clicking products in the SERPs will currently find that they are being redirect to the 404 page.

I understand that redirection has to occur but my questions are these:

1. Is it ok to redirect twice with 301 - so old URL to the  "p" version then to final simplified version. Will link juice be lost doing this twice?

2. If he redirects from the original URLS to the final version missing out the "p" version, what should happen to the "p" version - they are currently indexed.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Houses]

Ideally you don't want a redirect chain. It's best to redirect the old page to the new, missing out the middle one.

Redirect the middle page to the new too.

Hope that helps

[AL123al]

Thank You Houses! Of course that is the soultion. I had been staring at the problem for too long that I couldn't see the wood for the trees!

What would I do without Moz helpers!

Thanks

[AlanMosley]

If the p pages were only there for a small amount of time, then just forget them, as they wont have any links pointing to them.

don't worry about the SERPS they will go way soon.

but I would have renamed the HOME folder to a keyword. so that you get a keyword into your url.

automobiles.com/toyota/camery

is a better url than

automobiles.com/camery

[KeriMorgret]

This type of structure also fits in nicely with your analytics package. You can look at all the visits to /toyota/ to see how popular that is compared with all the visits to /ford/, for example.