New Site (redesign) Launched Without 301 Redirects to New Pages - Too Late to Add Redirects?

[BrandBuilder]

We recently launched a redesign/redevelopment of a site but failed to put 301 redirects in place for the old URL's. It's been about 2 months. Is it too late to even bother worrying about it at this point? The site has seen a notable decrease in site traffic/visits, perhaps due to this issue.

I assume that once the search engines get an error on a URL, it will remove it from displaying in search results after a period of time. I'm just not sure if they will try to re-crawl those old URLs at some point and if so, it may be worth it to have those 301 redirects in place.

Thank you.

[BeanstalkIM]

They will recrawl it but equally important is that traffic following links to your site will get where they're supposed to go. A good rule of thumb with search engines as well as humans ... it's never too late to do the right thing.

(Of course, with a Penguin penalty you might go bankrupt before they get around to rewarding you for good behavior)

Hope that helps !

[ATP]

Short answer: No its never too late.

People rescue lost links in this way all the time. The old pages may not have been de-indexed yet especially if there are being linked to from another website.

Ideal solution: Locate all the links pointing to old pages and get them updated to point to the new page. Put the 301 in place anyway to save any you miss.

Nearly ideal solution: Slap a 301 redirect on it - BUT make sure that the 301 is to a direct replacement / relevant page.

There is no negative implications for doing the 301's this late... (as long as the pages are relevant). But not doing them... well as you have seen... rankings will suffer.

Ive seen links that are months to years old get rescued this way, so get them redirects on!

[TimHolmes]

I would suggest doing a bit of a crawl error report in GSC to establish how many error links are being pointed at your site. I would suggest it is not too late to get them in place.... remember you will possibly have lots of external links that are incorrect and need to resolve to a viable page.

Search Engine Roundtable just released a very timely article - Click to read in full

Google's John Mueller said in the Google+ Hangout from last Friday that he'd recommend you keep your 301 redirects live and in place for at least a year after you set them up. He said "I'd aim for at least a year," when it comes to keeping your 301 redirects in place.

He said it can take 6-months to a year for Google to fully recognize a site has moved. Plus you may have people finding old links and if those no longer have redirects, they may lead to a 404 page or a parked domain, which would result in a bad user experience.

[Supporting]

Regarding ..."Of course, with a Penguin penalty you might go bankrupt before they get around to rewarding you for good behavior)"

_When is the right time to just start over with a new domain name?  _

Google does not care how many internet businesses it has destroyed.

(After 2 years of hard work and not recovering from Panda, we are seroiusly thinking of just cutting over to a new domain name and giving up on a domain we have owned since 2000 just so we can stop spending money on trying to be Google approved again and stop the financial bleeding to loss of orders.)

[BeanstalkIM]

_When is the right time to just start over with a new domain name? _ Hindsight being the 20/20 that it is it's very hard to know until it's too late.  I always suggest to try to work with your current site as it's generally easier to repair that to replace (generally ... not always).

The variable at play now is that after two years your site may have recovered BUT not be ranking as the competition may well have upped their game or other algorithmic factors may be at play.  I've seen that a number of times where sites don't bounce back not because they didn't do the right thing but because while they were busy repairing their issues, their competition was busy moving their sites forward.

To know what to do I'd start with a round of competitor analysis.  Don't compare your rankings with where they were but rather compare what your site's strength is relative to the people ranking today. And of course, try not to think of your content or links as better simply because you like it - try to look at it all as a bot would.

[Supporting]

If I were you sister...

A. what exactly would you recommend to do an "immeidate"  round of competitor analysis as well as analysis our sit?

B. Or Whom to assist us.

So we can make an informed decision on how best to spend our time and what valuable funds we have left. ( If you feel more comfortable with your answer off line, I am open to that too.)

Thank you!

[BeanstalkIM]

Personally I'd start with a link analysis to answer the question, "Are they stronger than you?"  You'll want to look at their sheer volume as well as the quality and when they were built to get a feel for their current activities. After that I'd obviously look at your content.  Does your content comply with current SEO best practices in it's type and formatting and down to the technological questions such as "Do you have clean and fast code?" and "Are you formatting properly?"

If you're looking for assistance in the process Moz actually offers a list of their recommended SEOs.  It's a good list.   You'll find it at https://moz.com/community/recommended.