How do 301 redirects affect rankings?

[akim26]

Scenario:

example.com/red-shoes gets 301 redirected to example.com/brown-boots because we have stopped selling red shoes and now only sell brown boots (which is a fairly new page with no authority).

the red-shoes page ranked well for "red shoes" and "footwear".

Will Google still index and show the red-shoes url in the SERPs? Will the "red shoes" and "footwear" keywords still rank well? Or does the redirected/new boots page need to properly support these keywords? The boots page has inherited the juice from the shoes page, but how does it help the boots page rank well? Only for keywords that both pages targeted, like a general "footwear" type keyword?

Thanks in advance!

[JoeAmadon]

You might still see the red-shoes URL for a brief period of time, but it will eventually disappear from the rankings. While the brown-boots page will receive most of the link juice from the 301, on-page ranking factors will diminish this page's ability to rank for "red shoes". This is one of the reasons, you want your 301 redirects to be to a page that delivers similar content. This redirect should help you rank for terms that are targeted in the on-page content of the brown-boots page by increasing the link juice passed but the anchor text might not always be relevant.

[AnthonyYoung]

I would suggest you implement an absolute 301 redirect from the 'red shoes' page to the category parent page as opposed to the 'brown boot' page. Although both items are 'footwear,' the category parent for 'red shoes' strikes me as more semantically relevant than a lateral redirect to a less semantically related item like 'brown boots.' Keep in mind though (I don't know your site architecture) that this could be splitting semantic hairs depending on your information architecture and navigation schema. If you ever need to revive the 'red shoes' page in the future, you can simply break the 301 although link juice and link quality diminish over time thus the page won't have the same strength as before.

[akim26]

Thanks so much, Joe and Anthony. Both answers help!

• AK