How to Completely Ruin (or Save) Your Website with Redirects

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How to Completely Ruin (or Save) Your Website with Redirects Posted: 17 Jun 2013 07:13 PM PDT Posted by Cyrus Shepard Have you ever redirected a page hoping to see a boost in rankings, but nothing happened? Or worse, traffic actually went down?  When done right, 301 redirects have awesome power to clean up messy architecture, solve outdated content problems and improve user experience â€" all while preserving link equity and your ranking power. When done wrong, the results can be disastrous.  In the past year, because Google cracked down hard on low quality links, the potential damage from 301 mistakes increased dramatically. There's also evidence that Google has slightly changed how they handle non-relevant redirects, which makes proper implementation more important than ever. From Dr. Pete's post - An SEO's Guide to HTTP Status Codes Semantic relevance 101: anatomy of a "perfect" redirect A perfect 301 redirect works as a simple “change of address” for your content. Ideally, this means everything about the page except the URL stays the same including content, title tag, images, and layout. When done properly, we know from testing and statements from Google that a 301 redirect passes somewhere around 85% of its original link equity. The new page doesn’t have to be a perfect match for the 301 to pass equity, but problems arise when webmasters use the 301 to redirect visitors to non-relevant pages. The further away you get from semantically relevant content, the less likely your redirect will pass maximum link juice. For example, if you have a page about “labrador,” then redirecting to a page about “dogs” makes sense, but redirecting to a page about “tacos” does not. 301 redirecting everything to the home page Savvy SEOs have known for a long time that redirecting a huge number of pages to a home page isn’t the best policy, even when using a 301. Recent statements by Google representatives suggest that Google may go a step further and treat bulk redirects to the home page of a website as 404s, or soft 404s at best.  This means that instead of passing link equity through the 301, Google may simply drop the old URLs from its index without passing any link equity at all. While it’s difficult to prove exactly how search engines handle mass home page redirects, it’s fair to say that any time you 301 a large number of pages to a single questionably relevant URL, you shouldn’t expect those redirects to significantly boost your SEO efforts. Better alternative: When necessary, redirect relevant pages to closely related URLs. Category pages are better than a general homepage. If the page is no longer relevant, receives little traffic, and a better page does not exist, it’s often perfectly okay to serve a 404 or 410 status code. Danger: 301 redirects and bad backlinks Before Penguin, SEOs widely believed that bad links couldn’t hurt you, and redirecting entire domains with bad links wasn’t likely to have much of an effect. Then Google dropped the hammer on low-quality links. If the Penguin update and developments of the past year have taught us anything, it’s this: When you redirect a domain, its bad backlinks go with it. Webmasters often roll up several older domains into a single website, not realizing that bad backlinks may harbor poison that sickens the entire effort. If you’ve been penalized or suffered from low-quality backlinks, it’s often easier and more effective to simply stop the redirect than to try and clean up individual links. Individual URLs with bad links The same concept works at the individual URL level. If you redirect a single URL with bad backlinks attached to it, those bad links will then point to your new URL. In this case, it’s often better to simply drop the page with a 404 or 410, and let those links drop from the index. Infinite loops and long chains If you perform an SEO audit on a site, you’ll hopefully discover any potentially harmful redirect loops or crawling errors caused by overly-complex redirect patterns. While it’s generally believed that Google will follow many, many redirects, each step has the potential to diminish link equity, dilute anchor text relevance, and lead to crawling and indexing errors. One or two steps is generally the most you want out of any redirect chain. New changes for 302s SEOs typically hate 302s, but recent evidence suggests search engines may now be changing how they handle them â€" at least a little.  Google knows that webmasters make mistakes, and recent tests by Geoff Kenyon showed that 302 redirects have potential to pass link equity. The theory is that 302s (meant to be temporary) are so often implemented incorrectly, that Google treats them as “soft” 301s. So, not only do search engines limit us when we try to get too clever, but they also help to keep us from shooting ourselves in the foot. 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!

#MozCon Speaker Interview: Aleyda Solis Posted: 17 Jun 2013 03:27 AM PDT Posted by Lindsay Today I’m pleased to bring you Aleyda Solis, Madrid-based International SEO at SEER Interactive, a Moz Associate, and State of Search blogger. We’re excited that she’s bringing her international perspective to MozCon, where she’ll lay out how to make the bold but lucrative move into the international market. You definitely don’t want to miss her talk, “International SEO and the Future of Your ROI,” if you’re interested in growing your online business. Tell us about the presentation you have planned for MozCon. It’s going to be an exciting adventure, guiding the audience to discover their international SEO potential and what could be the future of their ROI.  It will be beyond the "ccTLDs vs. subdirectories for country targeting" type of session (although best practices with examples and tactics will be also shared). It’s meant to answer frequent questions I get from strategic, operations, and business perspectives, like: “How do I connect with international audiences and develop an attractive offer and assets when I don’t even speak the language or know anything about the country?” Or, “How can I develop original, localized content for all of these non-English websites if I don’t have enough resources?” If this is an issue for your business, then it’s highly likely that your international SEO strategy wasn't planned and established well enough from the beginning, allowing your investment to become cost-effective and scalable in foreign organic search markets.   I started to cover international SEO from this perspective in a SEER post I wrote about establishing an international SEO strategy.  Why would it be unwise for someone to miss your presentation? Because I will be giving away delicious Iberian ham that I will be bringing from Spain to selected audience members in my session! :D (I’m kidding!) I really wish I could do that, but unfortunately it is forbidden by US Customs. (Nonetheless, you might want to ask for a change in customs law to make it friendlier to Spanish gastronomy so I can do that in the future.) Seriously, though, it would be really unwise to skip my session because I will be sharing what could be the next step to grow your online business. You definitely don’t want to miss that. What types of businesses should be thinking about international SEO, and why? All businesses that might have an audience in other countries or that speaks other languages should be thinking about it.  Sometimes people think that only huge businesses that already have a multinational physical presence should be thinking about an international web presence and search marketing activity. But this is far from true and is just myopic. For more, take a look at this Moz post I wrote about discovering your international online potential.   Regarding international SEO, what is the most unexpected thing you've learned along the way? Maybe not unexpected, but unfortunately usually overlooked: The characteristics of audience behavior in each country. Beyond language differences, there are many cultural, economic and sociological factors that can affect the success of many aspects of your SEO process, like the level of response from a link-building campaign, for example. At the end, beyond search engines that serve as a bridge, SEO is about the people. You can have a better understanding of what I’m talking about in this post I published at State of Search about different aspects that drive an international SEO industry and audience research.     What do you do at SEER Interactive? My activities at SEER are quite diverse: On one hand, I’m helping to grow the international SEO business, giving SEER more visibility by speaking at diverse events in Europe, identifying and validating leads, giving pre-sales support, and establishing and coordinating the best organization and processes for international SEO. On the other, I’m also developing and helping to implement international SEO processes for current clients. Tell us about the places you've lived. I’m from Nicaragua, a small, tropical country with a lot of volcanoes, lakes, and beaches on both the Pacific and Caribbean coasts in Central America. Nicaragua's natural landscape is breathtaking; here’s a photo of Momotombo Volcano (one of the 12 volcanoes on the Pacific coast of the country):   Photo from Flickr (under Creative Commons): http://www.flickr.com/photos/garrettziegler/7355295166/ I grew up, studied, and worked there until I left to study in Salamanca, Spain in 2006. It’s a beautiful student town full of history, with students from all over the world (a lot of people go there to learn Spanish). It’s also home to the University of Salamanca, the oldest university in Spain (where I went to study), which was founded in 1218. Its front building looks like this: Photo from Flickr (under Creative Commons): http://www.flickr.com/photos/paullew/3855579280/ I ended up staying in Salamanca after finishing my studies, and got my first SEO job at an online marketing company. I lived in Salamanca for a bit more than 4 years â€" until I came to Madrid, the city where I live now.  I came to Madrid after accepting an SEO manager position at a company here at the end of 2010. Madrid is an amazing place, since it has the great alternatives that big cities offer, and at the same time allows you to have a good quality of life. Here’s a view of Gran Via, one of the main streets in Madrid: Photo from Flickr (under Creative Commons): http://www.flickr.com/photos/nico_/6887000482/ What is it about Madrid that keeps you there? Madrid (followed by Barcelona) is where most of the bigger types of business activity happen in Spain, from trade shows and professional networking events to a wide range of cultural activities. There’s also good weather (there’s always sun, although it might be a bit cold during winter) and great culinary offerings (delicious tapas everywhere!), so I’m happy here at the moment. Although, of course, I’m quite open to experiencing new places to live in the future. I love to travel and experience new cultures. Are you doing what you thought you’d be doing when you were growing up? I had the somewhat common “dreams” among children of being an astronaut (I really just wanted to go to space, it wasn't necessarily because I knew what an astronaut actually did). So that’s really a pending point in my life: going to space! I definitely need to start saving more for that. What is the last thing that you have seen/heard/experienced that has inspired you? I’ve recently had two experiences that have been inspiring in different ways. A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to go to Israel to speak at KahenaCon and had the great opportunity to spend a Saturday walking around Jerusalem Old City. It was a truly inspiring experience, seeing places with such a rich historical and also religious background, like the Western Wall, the Holy Sepulchre and Dome of the Rock. Even if I’m not religious myself, it was a somewhat magical experience. Photo from Instagram: http://instagram.com/p/Zucpg1N8yT/  Another (and totally different) inspiring moment happened a week ago when I had the chance to try Google Glass. I felt like I was already living in the future, interacting with that small, translucent movie theater-like interface in my glasses with just my voice. Truly amazing. Photo from Instagram: http://instagram.com/p/Z8tuxJt8yd/ What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? To ask myself “What’s the worst that could happen?” when I’m making an important or scary decision. This question allows me to get my risk-averse considerations under control, and gives me a great opportunity to start assessing a new situation with more balanced criteria. By asking this, I’ve been able to go out of my comfort zone more frequently and live new experiences. Thank you, Aleyda! It was great to learn a bit about your background and how international SEO matters for all types of businesses, not just the big multinationals. If, like us, you just can't get enough of Alyeda, you can find her as @aleyda on Twitter (where she juggles Spanish and English). Still don't have your #MozCon ticket yet? Reserve your spot now! 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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