301 redirects twice

[JohnHillman]

We currently have some 301 redirects set up on our site however sometimes a page will redirect twice before reaching the final location.  Is this OK from an SEO perspective to have a page redirect twice or should we concentrate on reducing it to one?

[NigelJ]

Hi Sally,

From past advice and experience I would suggest reducing this to 1. There are reasons for this, firstly; this is often likened to cloaking which is a dubious tactic which google doesn't normally look to kindly on. We also saw quite a bit of link juice bleed out by using 2 redirects on one page.

Secondly, it will probably end up affecting the user experience because the load time of the page (from their perspective) will be greater as they are sent to two separate pages before they arrive at the desired page.

Thirdly, this is more from personal experience, having a page with multiple 301s can be difficult to manage (we had a few instances of team members getting confused as to which page was the right one). This sounds simple but once you have a few pages like this and have had a long day of web design it's easy to make little mistakes.

I wouldn't take these points as gospel, just some advice from past experience.

[DaveSottimano]

Hi Sally,

This isn't ideal for SEO, and the immediate answer is: It's not OK, and you have to reduce this to one.

Each time you use a 301 redirect, you lose some "link juice" - the less you redirect Googlebot, the more value your pages will retain.

Can I ask why you're having to redirect twice?

Cheers,

Dave