Clarification around 301 redirects.

[RG_SEO]

I’ve come across numerous blogs recently that suggest that SEOs should NOT do bulk re-directs to a category page. This has come as something of a surprise (doh!!) and I feel like I should already know this. It does seem like there is lots disagreement here so I thought that I’d ask what people’s opinions were to make sure that I get my thinking straight. I've read all the main Moz blog posts on this topic and, although really useful, they've left me none the wiser around a few specific questions.

Here’s some more detail about the situation. We’re currently consolidating a lot of content into a main blog, which will be the focal point of new blogs posts that are created. This is different to the past, where we tended to create separate blogs for different products on separate domains. I’m currently considering how we move content across from one the older blogs to this new blog (which will soon sit on a subfolder of our main domain).

I have three (!) questions:

1)      Could you confirm that doing bulk re-directs a category page is bad? I already know that doing them all to the homepage is an error.

2)      Should I re-direct the home page of the old blog on a separate domain to the relevant category page on the new site? The category page is related, but does not cover the EXACT topic. The category page covers our replacement product offering. It I shouldn't do this, where should I re-direct the old blog domain to?

3)      I’ve recommended that we set up 301 redirects on a one-to-one basis, redirecting each piece of content to its new location on the old site. What about content that has been earmarked for removal and for which there is no obvious alternative? My previous recommendation has been to re-direct these pages to the most relevant category page on the new blog. Would it be better to let this 404 or, as an alternative, create a custom 404 for the users on the new blog highlighting the new content that we offer?

Any help would be appreciated

[propertyshark]

I'll keep it short:

1. Doing bulk redirects is bad, because you will not have relevancy between your links.

2. Redirect your old homepage to the page that is the most relevant to that on your new site. It can be the homepage on your new site or maybe it is a product page.

3. Redirect them to the most relevant pages.

[Netrepid]

1. I'm going to say it depends on the scenario. In real estate, or automotives, online auctions, retail, basically any industry that cycles through inventory with no guarantee that listing will return - I say it is good to do bulk redirects. Better to send your users to a page with closely related product offerings than a 404, right? Now, I wouldn't do all of them to the homepage or the highest level child. Instead, do them to the lowest level child folder.

So, for example, if your store no longer carries a certain product, but you do still sell products from the vendor... then redirect a URL like website.com/product-category/product-vendor/product-abc123 to /product-category/product-vendor/.

2. Did you keep any of the content from that old blog? I might suggest redirecting to a landing page with your most popular content related to the old product offering, and then also adding links to the replacement offering and its helpful content.

3. Similar to what I suggested in no. 1, I think I would redirect to the most relevant category page on the new blog. A custom 404 isn't a bad idea, either, but I think it's always best to avoid having any search engine log a 404.

[MonicaOConnor]

I agree with everyone here. But I do have some separate thoughts.

Bulk redirects aren't negative if they are done correctly. For example, I just moved a website that had about 1000 discontinued products. As opposed to losing those valuable pages, we redirected them to the corresponding category pages or to the replacement products. The 600 or so links that had to be redirected to a category aren't going to hurt my site. It will help my customers who are looking for those products, however. A client would probably rather land on a page that says "this product is no longer available, here are the replacements" than a 404 error page.

In the case of a blog, it is a lot better to redirect each blog to its new home. For blogs that no longer exist, I would redirect them to the corresponding category. No one likes to hit a 404 page, and if there is a chance that someone could land on a page that no longer exists, it is better to have them get to somewhere on your site.

As far as your blog's home page, is that a separate category on your site or is your entire site a blog? If your page was just a landing page where your blogs were listed, then you should redirect to the corresponding page on the new site, like Jonathan suggested.

[RG_SEO]

Thanks for your reply Monica. The blog is a landing page where the separate blog posts were listed, which is what I think you are suggesting so I'll go ahead and recommend that we do the re-directs to the corresponding page.

Thank you all for your replies - it's helped to get my thinking right