301 redirect

[Yozzer]

We have just had an outside SEO agency report on our site: One of things brought up were arounf broken links, and how they class them as broken links.

Could any body tell me whether this statement holds true please, as I am not aware of this

"Our latest intelligence shows that google are downgrading ranking from sites that feature 301 redirects within the internal link structure".

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Regards

[Dan-Petrovic]

The question is why use 301s for internal navigation? If it's for moved pages then it's appropriate.

Google in fact encourages 301 as a most robust solution for sorting out moved pages (apart from fixing it on the core level). Secondary to that would be use of canonical, some webmasters even go for meta redirect or good old 404.

By my observations there is nothing that can harm you, even chained 301s work - unless you manage to do something really exotic!

[goodnewscowboy]

Hey Sean: The only thing about 301'a and Google that I'm aware of is that 301's do lose a little "link juice" But this would be from any link, external or internal. I've not heard of a difference in ranking between the two.

Ask them to show you what that "latest intelligence" is and have them explain their rationale. If it's the real deal, they should be able to back it up with something.

[Yozzer]

Thanks for the prompt reply Dejan, greatly appreciated.  As far as I'm aware we haven't used 301's on internal linking. I have checked this in OSE and it doesn't show any?

My thoughts are the same as yours Dejan. We have recently had a redeisgn of the site { a couple of weeks ago} and to be fair I was looking at 301 ing some of the old content which held small amounts of link juice.

Thanks for our time again

[Yozzer]

Hello again Goodnewscowboy. I have just done exactly what you have said. I need to know obviously for future reference.  I  guess I was a little put out with some of the stuff they had put in there, which I thought didn't hold true.

Thanks for your time again, great to hear from you also.

Kind Regards

Sean

[Dan-Petrovic]

Yes Matt Cutts also said that the anchor text value does not always go across or that Google does not guarantee it will work 100%.

[Getz.pro]

Hi Sean,

As already mentioned Matt Cutts does talk about this and confirms that some link juice is lossed. You can catch his videos on YouTube at GoogleWebmasterHelp

I have personally not noticed any degregation in rankings due to using 301s. I will say that you should be careful with your 301s not to daisy chain them more than 3 times according to Matt if I remember correctly. Personally, I rather work my .htaccess file a bit more carfully not to 301 more than once or twice.

Cheers

[Getz.pro]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70LR8H8pn1M

Typically passes, but it can't be guaranteed. Yeah, that helps. Thanks Matt

[Getz.pro]

So you are 301ing from one domain to another? I have noticed this to take a long time to transfer any link juice and rankings. Two months which I thought was forever!

[NewBuilder]

Hi Sean, never heard of that or experienced it. Here is a usefull interview by Eric Enge with Matt Cutts that really goes into the effects of a 301: http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-012510.shtml.

I guess what they mean is the situation that if you are on page A on your site and click on the link to page B, and a  redirect takes you to page C. Basically you could have gone from A to C directly. As the 301 dilutes a little bit of the page rank, it is by definition that sites utilising 301 internally this way lose a very little bit.

[Jenni_HeartInternet]

This is interesting, because I assume this to be true and yet I've encountered the opposite. I used a simple 301 to direct an outdated page to a more relevant page on the same topic. Both pages were well-optimised, and the (slightly) newer page had more, higher-quality backlinks. I vanished from the SERPs for my keyword, and 3 months later hadn't returned - despite expecting Google to simply replace the listing for the old page with the new one. When I removed the 301, the original page appeared in the same position in the SERPs.

Because of this, I think it's best to be careful when it comes to 301s.

[ThomasHgenhaven]

The only thing I don't understand about their claim is that it is "our latest intelligence". If that holds true, they are very slow catching industry news

301 is never perfect, but almost always the best way to keep rankings when moving content.

Wpuld also love to hear their elaboration of their latest intelligence.

[Yozzer]

Me too Thomas. I have requested that they share their "latest intelligence" and correlation with lost rankings. when/If I get an answer I'll be sure to post it.

Big thanks for everyones input here, really appreciated.

[ninjamarketer]

Have they provided you a report showing all the links from each page that are linking to a 301 link instead of directly linking to the destination page? I would not take their words unless they show you reports.

301 in the internal link structure should not directly impact the ranking so as to down grade rankings but it could impact your page rank juice flow. The concept is similar to having multiple hoops between origin and destination page. If you have a link on the page that is pointing to a 301 version instead of direct link then chances (based on page rank juice flow math) your are not allowing a complete flow of juice through those links.

Here are some great posts from Rand on page rank juice flow

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/determining-whether-a-page-site-passes-link-juice

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-science-of-ranking-correlations

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-the-juice-is-loose (although controlling page rank is not a good practice anymore but this post is highly educational for anyone to understand the page rank flow)

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Sameer

[Yozzer]

Thanks Sameer,

They ahve provided us with a list of 301 directs: I cant find these on OSE though, and to be fair they don't really make sense {as to why we would want a 301on these links in the first place}

Sameer i look after the SEO for my agecny and their clients:  If indeed what they are saying is correct and we have 301's on internal links I can't see them, and the case they are pointing out I would use rel=canonical.

Should they show in OSE: I've tried this and it says we have zero, which is my thoughts, as i would have had to do them

Cheers

[ninjamarketer]

Sometimes the internal redirection issues will not show up on OSE. OSE data is not real time so it will take couple of weeks to get the most updated one (as per the last I heard from Rand in one of the webinar).

I generally use Xenu link Sleuth to identify all the redirection and page not found issues. Another tool that we use which is more advacned is Gsitecrawler.

[Yozzer]

Thanks Sameer, I'll hav a look at those.

Regards

[Jeepster]

I need to 301-redirect about 25 product pages because I'm having a content management system installed in part of the site.

What's the definitive answer on this -- is some link authority lost along a 301 link? These page rank superbly & are high-traffic, so I can't afford to take unnecessary risks.