Splitting a strong page - SEO

[viatrading1]

Hi,

I have a page with high traffic that is showing a list of flea markets in a unique URL.

We are redesigning our website and we have created a listing directory of flea markets, so the users can look up and find the information for each. Each flea market will have its own URL in the future, and the listing directory shows only summarized info of each flea market in the results.

Before activating the new flea market section, I would like to make sure which is our best bet:

Option 1: Create pages with same URL/content as the current ones, which we won't link from frontend, and besides that, use the new flea market section on a separate page.

Option 2: Redirect the current page to the new flea market section.

As an inaccurate reference because it depends on many variables and SEO doesn't have an actual number, I understand this is more or less how it would work:

• Example Option 1 (after 1 week of launch):

• Old Flea Market Pages SEO traffic: 10,000 visits/month

• New Copied Flea Market Pages traffic: 9,700 (maybe a bit below 100 because of design changes etc)

• New Flea Market Section traffic: 500 visits/month (then increase over time)

• Example Option 2 (after 1 week of launch):

• Old Flea Market Pages SEO traffic: 10,000 visits/month

• New Redirected Flea Market Pages traffic: 9,000 (in principle PageRank wouldn't be affected, but other rankings might)

• New Flea Market Section traffic: (joined above, then increase over time)

According to this, Option 1 would give us more total future visits compared to redirecting, plus the new flea market pages would add to it. If redirecting, the new flea market section would add up some SEO juice to the old page, but not as much as Option 1 (not redirecting). Please confirm.

Which option is the best one and why?

Thank you,

New 301 Redirection Rules: https://moz.com/blog/301-redirection-rules-for-seo

[mememax]

AS a rule of the thumb, no matter what changes applies on 3XX redirections, but the least you do it the best, not just for juice loss but for easier management of your website. You definitely do not want 2x or 3x 301 to happen unless it's really unavoidable based on how complicated your website is.
Now your best bet depends on what you want to accomplish. In the past I always tried to be conservative and try not to lose too much of my so hardly earned traffic, and didn't want to lose a piece of it, but after a while you see consequences of that, as you start having a mixed composition of legacy URLs on your website.

I would say, test in a relatively small section and see what happens. If your loss of traffic/rankings is too significative roll the changes back (don't forget the 301 back), and use your preferred method, but take into account that in the long run you want to have a manageable website limiting exceptions as much as possible.

On a side note, people normally looks at 301 like a loss of value no matter what, but that's not always the case, the big deal with 301s is the loss of value accrued from other pages, so, if after you 301:

• change all the internal links so you don't have unnecessary internal 301s
• contact external websites to get the url changed.

Once you do that, the 301 won't matter at all, as the resources sending value to that page are now linking to the new one.

Hope that helped.