If your SEO firm recommends you restructure your website or create new pages for existing content, make sure they are using a tool called a 301 redirect to point the search engine spiders and visitors to the new page.
Using 301 redirects preserves the existing URL, but automatically forwards traffic to the new page – allowing your site to retain the search engine rankings of the preexisting page. If you don’t use 301 redirects, you’re losing all the established search engine juice from that existing page.
Creating redirects can be a tricky, time-consuming process, which is why even big brands sometimes get it wrong. Giant toy retailer Toys ‘R’ Us recently made headlines when it spent $5.1 million to buy the Toys.com domain name, but then redirected the entire domain to ToysRUs.com, causing Google to de-index all the Toys.com pages.
SEO experts say the company should have done the hard work of creating a 301 redirect for every page on the Toys.com website to an appropriate page on ToysRUs.com, preserving the rankings Toys.com had achieved and helping ToysRUs.com capture more top results on specific search results pages.
If your SEO firm recommends that you move content to new URLs or restructure your site for better rankings, ask them to confirm they are using 301 redirects from the existing pages. Or, check their work yourself using an online redirect checker such as http://www.ragepank.com/redirect-check/.
Using 301 redirects preserves the existing URL, but automatically forwards traffic to the new page – allowing your site to retain the search engine rankings of the preexisting page. If you don’t use 301 redirects, you’re losing all the established search engine juice from that existing page.
Creating redirects can be a tricky, time-consuming process, which is why even big brands sometimes get it wrong. Giant toy retailer Toys ‘R’ Us recently made headlines when it spent $5.1 million to buy the Toys.com domain name, but then redirected the entire domain to ToysRUs.com, causing Google to de-index all the Toys.com pages.
SEO experts say the company should have done the hard work of creating a 301 redirect for every page on the Toys.com website to an appropriate page on ToysRUs.com, preserving the rankings Toys.com had achieved and helping ToysRUs.com capture more top results on specific search results pages.
If your SEO firm recommends that you move content to new URLs or restructure your site for better rankings, ask them to confirm they are using 301 redirects from the existing pages. Or, check their work yourself using an online redirect checker such as http://www.ragepank.com/redirect-check/.
No comments:
Post a Comment