Blog Redirects & SEO

[TVape]

We are switching to a new blog platform. Will a 301 permanent redirect of our blog URL affect our established social proof numbers from an SEO perspective? Will Google still have those social proof numbers (Facebook shares/likes, Tweets, etc. for the blog as a whole and for each individual blog post) and rank us higher or will all of those all disappear?

[Ray-pp]

Hi TorontoV,

In practice, I believe 98%+ of a page's authority is passed successfully through a 301 redirect. The page's authority is a combination of factors, like the social signals you've mentioned, so the gained authority should pass to your new domain/page URLs.

Make sure to have the 301 redirects implemented properly. The new domain will require its own social proof (get those likes, +1s, ect), but the authority that was gained from the old domain will pass to the new domain.

[EricaMcGillivray]

You do need to do some work to keep your numbers, particularly on blog posts. Mike King did a great how-to post a couple years back.

[max.favilli]

Facebook shares/likes, Google +1, Tweet counts, etc... All will stay the same, all social signals do follow 301 properly... As long as you keep the same (old) url in the social plugins. If you trade the old url with the new one you will have split count.

As for google algo, it's not open source yet, so no one knows what it is doing with these social signs exactly. Since google is pretty good at managing redirects my guess is they know what it means for social signs too.