Site updates, 301 redirects, and link juice
Once a page on a web site has been published on the ‘net, and indexed by the major search engines, one of the LAST things you want to do is to remove that page! But that is often what happens when a site is “updated”… navigation is restructured and page names/URLs are changed to suit the new “look”.
Any existing links to that URL are gone for good! Traffic to that URL will end up nowhere! Any PR (Page Rank) that page had is lost forever.
And YOU LOSE!
Unless you use 301 redirects to change any requests for old pages to the new address!
A 301 redirect tells search engines that the page has been REPLACED by another one, so they should adjust their records/index to show the new page… Which means you will continue to get traffic to “old” pages… And (given time) even Google will “transfer” the page rank of the old page to the new one.
This is something which does concern me immensely at the moment as I upgrade Come On Aussie… The site is well established, with thousands of pages indexed, and the main “category” pages have a PR of 4 to 5 with lots of incoming links I just can’t afford to lose.
As an integral part of this update, I’m implementing 301 redirects to tell the search engines which pages have been replaced.
Quite simply, that means ANY requests for an old page (eg the old “Latest Australian Web Sites” page that was at /categories/new_sites.html) will end up at the new correct URL (of www.comeonaussie.com/new-sites)
How long does it take for Google to pass on the Page Rank for this old page?
I’m not too sure… and cannot seem to find a definitive answer to that question… but so far it’s been a week since I did the redirects, and I’m still not seeing any of the PR5 appearing on the new page!
Because the rest of these pages have PR’s of 4 and 5, I’m waiting to see how long this takes with just one important page before I do the BIG update where I do a 301 redirect for the rest of them…
( I’ll let you know here how many days it takes for the PR to appear on the new page!)
Final Notes… Once you’ve moved pages, you really should try to contact everyone who has linked to the OLD page and ask them to update their links.
Oh… and if you DO actually need to remove a page completely, either:
1. do a 301 redirect to another (relevant) page, OR
2. make sure your 404 (page not found) error page is useful at helping people find something else on your site!
Resources: 301 redirects can be tricky - use this 301 redirect guide for help to do a 301 redirect properly, and pass on page rank & search engine position status from one page to another.
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8 Responses to “Site updates, 301 redirects, and link juice”
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CHANGES ARE HAPPENING!!!
If you're seeing this message, then congratulations! You are one of the first people to see a "new look" Come On Aussie web site...All our pages do not yet support the new look, as it's a pretty big job updating the different sections on the site.
Rest assured... it's all happening, and will make your favourite Aussie web site search experience a LOT better!
WELL… It’s been over a month since I did the 301 redirect on my test page… time enough you would think for something to show for my efforts.
The test page is now showing ONLY a Google page rank (PR) of 2 - which it got sometime around about 10 days after making it live.
And I’m thinking that is only due to the power behind the new links I had to put in as part of the site navigation.
It is certainly NOT showing any imminent signs of inheriting the PR5 of the original page as all the pundits suggest it should!
So that means I’ll defer making the changes I had planned to the other pages, for at least another month.
If no PR is transferred by then, I’ll have to come up with a different idea!
Stephen
I’m very interested in hearing how you get on with this test page. I know the PR hasn’t move but that may be because of the lag in Google publishing the actual PR.
Have you seen any movement / benefits in the actual SERPS?
Hi @gadget… Well it’s now September 3, and still the PR has not returned… so who really knows what’s going on with that!
As far as the SERPS go - i didn’t take any notice of the position of the page when I did this. However on checking now, both the home page and the test page rank #1 and #2 for the words new australian web sites, and the test page is #10 for new australian websites - it’s amazing the difference in spelling makes…
On another note… the “changes” also included a trial run of a new layout for the site - including trying the different adsense boxes. For anyone who might be interested, that type of box has performed EXTREMELY poorly in my situation (despite supposedly being a better performing ad size and type according to Google).
So it goes to show… TEST things before you make any site-wide changes that could impact on your bottom line! What works on one site with one type of audience may not translate well to another site with a different audience.
Hi ComeOnAussie Admin,
my name is Ron and I work for an SEO company in New Zealand. I support the theory that 301ing does have some leaks and that it is not as easy as all the “SEO for dummy” articles say: “Just 301 old to new and everything will be fine!” That might be the case for non-www to www domain but I highly daubt that changing from one root domain to another will work with no consequences.
I am very interested to see the progress here - please keep me posted.
Regards,
Ron
It’s the middle of September - 2.5 months after making the change - and my page is STILL showing a Page Rank of just 2… Now beginning to wonder whether it will EVER return to the original PR5???
Hi Comeonaussie,
Google only update the toolbar PR every 3 months or 4 times a year. So this is why it takes time for your 301 Google love or link juice to appear to flow on.
I do believe that Google update PR daily based on link popularity but this is only reflected 4 times per year.
Have you noticed a return to former traffic levels to the pages in question?
I would be interested to hear.
Cheers,
Greg
Hi Greg
I didn’t actually consider “traffic levels” when I did this… was only looking at how long the PR takes to flow on. And it seems like I must’ve made the changes right at the start of the update cycle!
So if you are right, I should see some movement in the next couple of weeks or so… Unfortunately I can’t keep my fingers crossed until it happens - got far too much work to do
As far as “traffic” goes… I don’t think the changes made would have affected that too much since the page in question is one of the main nav links.
Cheers
Stephen
Just when I was about to abandon the thought that anything was gonna happen with the PR for the test page…
Lo and behold, today (FOUR months AFTER I did the 301 redirect) it is now showing as a PR4 - so it seems Google has recently done a PR update.
And it is still NOT showing the PR5 that it had originally back in July.
So where did the #4 come from?
Is it a case of earning NEW PR, or is it partly due to transferring some of the original PR?
So I’ll conclude this experiment by saying that - in my opinion - it seems a 301 redirect may inherit only SOME of the page rank of the original page… and it will take a VERY long time to do it!
In other words, if Page Rank is important to you - it is best NOT to fiddle with your established pages/URLs!