2 Questions about 301 Redirects
-
So I have a couple of questions about 301 redirects:
- Do Google penalties EVER pass through a 301? I've done 20+ domain 301s in the last year and have yet to see it happen, but the other day I read a an article (or maybe it was a QA post?) that suggested doing 302s to avoid transferring penalties. Has anyone seen any authoritative information regarding this?
- I 301'd a domain in February that another SEO firm had built a lot of spammy links and I began building contextual links for it at a very slow rate (like 10 or so a month). Within a month, my domain authority was a 26 on the new domain and my inbound links were non existent. By month 2, my links were 70k and domain authority was 34. By month 3, down to 25k inbound links and domain authority of 29, where it has settled for the last 3 months despite some really high quality links. My question (don't worry it's coming), is does anyone have any clue why my links shot up so quickly and then dropped? I'm assuming the 301 links kicked in and then only about 45% ended up 'sticking'??
Thanks in advance
-
Do Google penalties EVER pass through a 301?
Yes. 301 redirects make sure end users, search bots and link equity are passed to the new page. It is true though that not all link equity is passed with a 301, however good or bad it is passed. I have found this out with my own testing with clients as well as a few post i found on SEO round table and Google groups.
Does anyone have any clue why my links shot up so quickly and then dropped?
Where you tracking your external links use OSE? If so they crawl a different amount of domains and URLs each time they update their index so chances are you are looking at different data sets each time.
-
Brian-
1. In a hangout two or three months ago, John Mueller said that 301s can pass a penalty. Whether or not a 302 will do so as well, I don't know, but I'd be hesitant to bet on them not doing so. We've never tried redirecting in a penalty situation. I have spoken to some colleagues, however, that say they've had clients come to them that had 301'd and the penalty showed up on a new domain shortly thereafter.
2. Did your drop-off happen to coincide with a Penguin update? At one time, Matt C. had said that the results of cleaning up a link profile wouldn't really come into play until the next update (for an algorithmic slap). But others and I have seen instances in which that seems to no longer always be the case - 2 weeks to two months, with no update, is showing evidence of removed dampening.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
On Page #2 of Bing But Nowhere on Google. Please Help !
Hi, community. I have a problem with the ranking of my blog and I hope anyone could help me to solve this problem. I have been trying to rank my blog post for a keyword for almost 6 months but still getting no success. My URL is: this blog post
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Airsionquin
Target keyword: best laptops for college The interesting fact is that the post has been on page #2 of BING but nowhere on google. It was on page #3 of google for about one month, but it's been 1-2 weeks gone(not ranked anymore but it's still well indexed). The post has been replaced by another post of my blog(let's say post A) which doesn't have any link. The Post A is ranking on page #4 right now.
The weird thing is my post which ranks for this keyword frequently changes. One day the Post A was on page#4 then after a few days it changed to the post B. Yesterday I searched on google for a keyword "number one on bing but nowhere on google" and then I
come across to read this article on MOZ community and one of the people here said that it was over optimization issue. I think my post has been suffering for an over optimization penalty algorithm. Just for your information, I have been building backlinks to this URL for the last 5 months(it's 1+ year old). It has backlinks only about 1,5k from 200 domains(according to ahref). I have used the exact match anchor only under +/- 2%. The rest is branded, naked URL and generic anchors.
So, in this case, I thought that I haven't done any over anchor optimization.
I have checked the keyword density and I found it was "safe". One important thing I can remember before the post has gone is I add a backlink from lifehack.org(guest post) with exact match anchor.
I suspect this is really the cause because 2-3 days after doing that then the post is gone(dropped) and replaced by another post of my blog(as I've mentioned before). But it's very strange because the amount of the anchor keyword(including the long tail) is only about 10(from 200 domains) or only 5% which mean it should be safe. I'm so Sorry. It's a long story 🙂 So, What is actually happening to my post? and How to fix this problem... Please..please help me... Any hep is appreciated. By the way, Sorry for my poor english.. 🙂0 -
Mobile Redirect - Cloaking/Sneaky?
Question since Google is somewhat vague on what they consider mobile "equivalent" content. This is the hand we're dealt with due to budget, no m.dot, etc, responsive/dynamic is on the roadmap but still a couple quarters away but, for now, here's the situation. We have two sets of content and experiences, one for desktop and one for mobile. The problem is that desktop content does not = mobile content. The layout, user experience, images and copy aren't the same across both versions - they are not dramatically different but not identical. In many cases, no mobile equivalent exists. Dev wants to redirect visitors who find the desktop version in mobile search to the equivalent mobile experience, when it exists, when it doesn't they want to redirect to the mobile homepage - which really isn't a homepage it's an unfiltered view of the content. Yeah we have push state in place for the mobile version etc. My concern is that Google will look at this as cloaking, maybe not in the cases where there's a near equivalent piece of content, but definitely when we're redirecting to the "homepage". Not to mention this isn't a great user experience and will impact conversion/engagement metrics which are likely factors Google's algorithm considers. What's the MOZ Community say about this? Cloaking or Not and Why? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jose_R0 -
Redirect a sub-domain to other domain
Hi there! Suppose a domain 'abc.com' has a subdomain 'news.abc.com'. If we redirect (301) only subdomain 'news.abc.com' to 'xyz.com'. so is there any SEO harm on main domain 'abc.com'? Even both abc.com and xyz.com are running separately. Rajiv
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gamesecure0 -
Manual Penalty Question
Hello dear MoZ community, I have already communicated this problem before but now it reaches to a level I have to make some hard decisions and would like your help. One of our new accounts (1 month old) got a manual penalty notification few weeks ago from Google for unnatural link building. I went through the whole process, did link detox and analysis and indeed there were lots of blog networks existing purely for cross linking. I removed these and the links got decreased dramatically. The company had around 250,000 links and truth be told if I go by the book only 700-800 of them are really worth and provide value. They will end up with roughly 15000 -20000 left which I acknowledge are a lot but some are coming from web 2 properties such as blogger, wordpress etc. Because the penalty was in some of the pages and not the whole web site I removed the ones that I identified were harming the web site, brought the anchor text down to normal levels and filed a very detailed reconsideration request and disavow file. I do not have a response so far by webmasters but here is where my concerns begin: Should I go for a new domain? losing 230.000 links ? How can there even be a "reconsideration" request for a web site with 85% of its link profile being cross linking to self owned directories and web 2 properties? If I go for a new domain should I redirect? Should I keep the domain, keep cleaning and adding new quality links so I take it with a fresh new approach? Thanks everyone in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | artdivision0 -
Redirecting old domains for SEO ranking?
It's been a while since I read anything seriously out of the box on SEO but I thought I would see what others thought of the bold assertions made in this article. Most of it revolves around buying expired domains and using a 301 to point them, and their juice, to new sites. This guy makes a living doing this so he has to know a bit more than the average Joe but I'm wondering where the other shoe is and when it drops.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Highland0 -
Redirecting an image url to a more SEO friendly image url
We are currently trying to find the best way of making the images on one of our sites more SEO friendly, the easiest way for us would be to redirect the image URL to a more SEO friendly image URL. For example: http://www.website.com/default/cache/file/F8325DA-0A9A-437F-B5D0A4255A066261_medium.jpg redirects to http://www.website.com/default/cache/file/spiral-staircase.jpg Would Google frown upon this as it's saying the image is one thing and then points the user somewhere else?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RedAntSolutions0 -
Blogspot or Wordpress.com Redirect?
I have multiple domains with the same registrar. Is there an SEO benefit to create complimentary blogs on blogspot, wordpress.com or other "free" blog sites and forward these domains with the purpose of backlinking to the main site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | reeljerc0