Uncrawled 301s - A Quick Fix for When Relaunches Go Too Well

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Uncrawled 301s - A Quick Fix for When Relaunches Go Too Well Posted: 28 Mar 2012 03:28 PM PDT Posted by Everett Sizemore A lot of things can go wrong when you change most of the URLs on a website with thousands or millions of pages. But this is the story of how something went a little too "right", and how it was fixed by doing something a little bit "wrong". The Relaunch Timeline On February, 28 2012 FreeShipping.org relaunched with a new design and updated site architecture.The site's management and developers were well-versed in on-site SEO issues and handled the relaunch in what many SEOs might consider "textbook" fashion. This included simultaneous 301 redirects from all previous URLs to their specific counterparts using the new URL structure. All internal links were updated immediately, as were the sitemap files, rel canonical tags and all other markup. They had expected some lag-time and a temporary loss in rankings, but traffic had started a dramatic decline immediately after the relaunch, and a week later it was still falling. On March, 7 FreeShipping.org contacted seOverflow to make sure they had done the redirects properly. Everything seemed to check out. A scan of the site revealed only a few 404 errors from internal links, those being relegated to a few outlying blog entries. All of the old URLs were serving a 301 response code to the new URLs, which returned a 200 response code. The XML sitemap was using the new URLs, as was all internal navigation, rel canonical tags and other on-site links. By all indications, the developers had implemented a major site redevelopment flawlessly... Too flawlessly. A site:domain.com search revealed that many of the old URLs were still indexed alongside the new ones, and had not been re-cached since the relaunch of the site a week earlier. Log files revealed that Google had not been back to visit most of the old URLs. They had no link path available to reach most of them, so any page with a preivous version that had not been recraweled yet (i.e. any page without prominent external links) was seen as a duplicate. Knowing how fast and accurate their developers are, I proposed they turn the old linking structure back on for awhile so the internal links on categry pages would send crawlers through the redirects first. This ensures they see the 301 status code and can update the index accordingly, rather than assuming that the old page is still active along-side the new page for weeks or months. This is slightly different than what I used to prescribe, which involved resubmitting an old sitemap (more on that later). It is important to note that only the navigation links changed back - all other markup still reflected the new URLs. Changing the rel canonical, Open Graph or Schema, for instance, would not be recommended. All they needed was an easy crawl path to the now-redirected URLs. On March, 8  about half way through the day they flipped the switch to turn on the old internal link URLs and traffic from search more than doubled on the same day. They maintained a steady climb until traffic from search stabilized above pre-relaunch levels. On March 12 the new internal links were again changed over to the new URLs and traffic from search has remained at or above pre-relaunch levels. Rethinking Overthinking Sitewide Redirect Best Practices I'd seen this situation before and had always advised resubmiting the old XML sitemap to ensure the legacy URLs got recrawled faster than the weeks or months it could take search engines to revisit a page without a link from somewhere. But recent statements from Bing caused me to think twice about that recommendation. And this great post by John Doherty had me wondering the same about submitting a "dirty" sitemap to Google. What Bing Says... "Only end state URL. That's the only thing I want in a sitemap.xml. We have a very tight threshold on how clean your sitemap needs to be...  if you start showing me 301s in here, rel=canonicals, 404 errors, all of that, I'm going to start distrusting your sitemap and I'm just not going to bother with it anymore... It's very important that people take that seriously." - Duane Forrester, Senior Product Manager, Bing Webmaster Tools “Your Sitemaps need to be clean. We have a 1% allowance for dirt in a Sitemap. Examples of dirt are if we click on a URL and we see a redirect... If we see more than a 1% level of dirt, we begin losing trust in the Sitemap”. - Duane Forrester, Senior Product Manager, Bing Webmaster Tools In preparation for this post I asked for some clarification. I'm not sure how "clear" this makes it, as the seriousness of the statements above seem to be at odds with the following advice: What I Took Away From All of This... #1 Despite what I've heard during several interviews and straight from him at conferences, it seems like Bing will let you get away with more than 1% of "dirt" on your sitemap, at least if it isn't an ongoing thing. Sometimes I get the feeling Duane Forrester makes some stuff up as he goes along, which is fine. Sometimes it is better to be decisive and give an actionable answer than to hedge your bets by talking on and on without actually saying anything (*Ahem). #2 As long as your old URLs redirect to the new ones it is OK, perhaps even preferable, to leave the old internal links up for awhile. Best Practices for redirects has always been to update all of the links you have control over. This is for several reasons. First, it helps you avoid multiple redirect hops if/when it comes time to change all of the URLs again. It is also good htaccess housekeeping since old redirect rules can often get broken without being noticed during the QA process. Last but not least, according to Matt Cutts a 301 redirect does not pass 100% of pagerank on to the destination page. However, losing out on a tiny percentage of inherited pagerank for a few days and having a good excuse to procrastinate on housekeeping is better than having your traffic drop off a cliff for weeks or months at a time. #3 The old adage about "Knowing enough to get yourself into trouble" is as true as ever. #4 Leaving the old links up for a few days seems to work equally as well across major search engines. The Google Analytics screenshot above shows traffic from all search engines, but looking at just Yahoo, Bing or Google individually tells pretty much the same story. #5 You can do it either way. Since every site is different it is good to have more than one option. One could stick with the XML sitemap resubmission to each of their webmaster tools accounts as a best practice, and that "should" work just fine. Given the results of this case study I'm going to recommend that most clients leave up the old internal links (especially nav and category links) for about one week after re-launching a website with new URLs on the same domain (a new domain is slighly different, and you can use the change of address tools). #6 Domain Authority doesn't necessarily mean squat for weak internal page crawling. Free Shipping Day was the third largest online shopping day of the year in 2010 and 2011. FreeShipping.org is the only official sponsor, and benefits from massive amounts of press coverage. The site has about 12,700 links from about 1,110 domains, including the New York Times, CNN, MSN, TIME, Huffington Post, Mashable, USA Today, Forbes... Not bad for a coupon affiliate. Yet it was a week after the relaunch, and both Google and Bing were uninterested in revisiting any of the FreeShipping.org pages in their indexes that didn't have their own strong external links. Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Outreach Letters for Link Building [Real Examples] Posted: 28 Mar 2012 03:32 AM PDT Posted by Peter Attia This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc. Outreach letters are a primary element in any quality link building campaign: If you're not getting responses, you're not getting links. It takes a lot of trial and error to find what works, which can be difficult for new link builders. To make things easier for everyone, I wanted to give several outreach letters I use for contacting different sites. Although I have done a lot of testing with different letters, I’m by no means suggesting mine are the best of the best. These are what work for me and I do use the conversion rate of my emails as a factor. Guest Posts For guest posting, you want to have a more personal approach in your email. However, you don’t want to be overly personal and invade their bubble. I like to do some light digging and find something I can personally connect with them on (if you can't find something in 5 minutes, move on). I find this works better than trying to explain why the article would be a great fit for their site. Also, I found that adding a small incentive boosts the response rate. Hey Taylor, I recently came across BanjosOnTheGreen.com and saw that you play a Deering Banjo. I broke the neck on my banjo a few days ago so I’ve been looking for a new one. I’ve never played a Deering before though: what’s your take on them? Also, I’ve been writing up music articles and would love the chance to write on your blog. I’d be happy to send over a new set of banjo strings as a thanks! Cheers, -Peter Michael King wrote a great article with a scenario on how you can be personal to leverage a link. This is a perfect example of the quality links you can obtain through manual outreach. Real Correspondence Example: Broken link building I target personal sites for broken links. These can be blogs or enthusiast sites and usually have a page of resources or a blogroll. I’m a fan of keeping emails short, so I try not to get personal on these. Hey David, I was looking through your suggested links on SportRacerHeaven.com and noticed a few broken links. Let me know how to reach the webmaster and I can send a list their way! Also, if you’re open to suggestions, I think KingKongBikeParts.com would be a great fit. They have a large variety of customized parts that I’ve had trouble finding elsewhere. All the Best, -Peter The webmaster will nearly always be the person you are contacting. I just use the second sentence as a buffer to get a response before providing a list. Once I get a response (And hopefully a link) I provide them with a list I’ve acquired. You can see a great correspondence example of this on Nick Leroy's broken link building post. Also, If broken link building is still a new concept to you, Anthony Nelson wrote a tutorial on broken link building that's definitely worth checking out! Links to a Local Business Site Local businesses are great to target if you have something to provide in return. For example, if you have a tool that would be beneficial for them to use on their site. Judy, My name is Peter. I work for StrictlyBusinessRealty.com and we’ve recently created a tool for real estate businesses to help their visitors find movers in their area. Since we’re located out of Charlotte, we’re offering this tool to Charlotte businesses for free for a limited time. You can customize the tool at StrictlyBusinessRealty.com/moving-tool/ If you have any questions or need any help setting it up, let me know! Thanks, -Peter Real Correspondence Example: Outreach Through Blog Commenting This is what you can resort to if you can’t find any contact information on a blog. You want to be fairly vague, so that you’re not publicly displaying who your client is. I’ve seen bloggers get quite upset about outreaching to them through a comment and you obviously don’t want them publicly talking about your client negatively. Hey Todd, I was wondering if you accepted any guest posting on MyBliggidyBlog.com. I couldn’t manage to find your email on the site. If you could get a hold of me at notmyrealemail@gmail.com, I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks, -Peter Note: Sometimes people will respond through another comment first, so you want to make sure you’re subscribed to get emails on comments made on that post. Real Correspondence Example:   I then got a response via email and was able to negotiate from there. Paid Advertising This is more for bloggers than businesses. Businesses that have paid advertising are pretty straightforward about it. You just need to find the “advertise” button on their site and wait for them to send you an obnoxiously long media kit. Hey Jay, My name is Peter. I’m doing promotions for a dog related site and would like the chance to put up a small advertisement on RufusTheAllMighty.com. I think it would be a great fit considering the relevancy. If this is something you’d be interested in, just let me know! Thanks in advance! All the Best -Peter Real Correspondence Example:   How to Increase Your Response Rate I do this for hard to get links, like EDU's. I basically open with a "soft email" to get a response. After that response, I'll hit them with my actual proposal. This works well for propositions that require a long explanation, where people tend to just skim through instead of actually reading your email. Hello, I’m trying to get in contact with the person in charge of the CollegeUniversity.com/housing/ page. If you could point me in the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance! All the Best, -Peter After I get a response, I give my full pitch. Since they've already committed to a conversation with me, they will read my email word for word instead of skimming through. Real Correspondence Example: Conclusion Keeping your emails short and sweet is a great way to go. I constantly try new forms of outreach and always end up reverting back to small quick emails. They grab attention at a glance and someone can see the point of your email right away. They're also easier to construct on the fly, which allows you to send out several emails faster. Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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