301 Redirects

[Seaward-Group]

Last year we merged 3 websites into 1 website and launched the new site in February.

When developing the new site I created 301 redirects for all the pages from the old sites to the new site.

Unfortunately when the new website was created the URLs were not optimised for search engines. I now need to optimised the page URLs.

In theory I need to create new 301 redirects from this existing pages to the new optimised URLS. I am concerned that in a few years I might end up with a string of 301 redirects and if I break some links I might loose some ranking. How many redirects will link juice work for?

I hope I'm clear here, if not I've attached a image showing what I'm doing.

Thank you.

unledfh.jpg

[EGOL]

Just an opinion here...

If you optimize the URLs you might get a tiny tiny gain related to rankings... and if you do another redirect you will suffer a tiny tiny loss on the amount of link benefits that you receive.  So, why do anything when the results will cancel each other out?  Do you think that it might be possible that the loss might be greater than the gain?  I can't answer that and that is why I would sit on my butt and do nothing.

[Seaward-Group]

If they cancel each other out then it's worth not changing, I wasn't sure on the actual weight of the URL. Do you know if linking power expires after time on a 301?

[AaronSchinke]

Unless policy changes 301 should continue to work indefinitely. I've never seen (noticed) this depreciating or expiring over time.

[KT684]

I agree with EGOL, unless your current URLs are absolutely driving you nuts, I'd leave as is.  Plus 301s never direct 100% of the link juice so you'd most likely be hurting yourself.