Splitting one page into two

[andrep]

Good day everyone!

If you have a page that ranks well for two highly competitive, yet mutually irrelevant, terms, but that the page will be split into two as part of a website redesign, would you 301 it to term X or term Y?

What criteria do you use? Are there any other things I should do to avoid the wrong page ranking for the wrong term?

I don't want users searching for term X to end up in page Y.

Thanks!

[Valarlf]

You should send the 301 redirect to the keyword with less traffic or the most irrelevant, so you can avoid Bounce Rates.

My advice is to plan to very well the 301 redirects, too many 404 and you could lose all your traffic on the 2 keywords

[KaneJamison]

The best solution is to redirect it to whichever keyword sends better converting traffic. There's probably a few ways to figure that out depending on your business model, but here's one simplified approach...

Let's pretend you rank 1st for both keywords:

• Keyword A sends 100 visits per month and 20% of those convert to a $200 sale
• Keyword B sends 500 visits per month and 5% of those convert to a $200 sale.

In this example, Keyword B is slightly more valuable ($5000 per month in sales), however it doesn't convert nearly as well. You'll have to decide whether keyword A or B is more profitable to your business.

If they're not both ranking #1 then you'll need to make the assessment based upon the above calculation, and then make an approximation of how much potential for growth each keyword has.

If you don't have your analytics set up properly to track those values, and it's not obvious which keyword is more relevant to your potential clients or more profitable, then the backup solution is to redirect it to the one that gets the most traffic.