Can Too Many 301 Redirects Hurt A Site?

[Planet13]

Hi there, Everyone:

The Short Version of My Question:

Can too many 301 redirects from an established site (over ten years old) to a new site (about one year old) hurt either the new site or old site?

The Long Version of My Question:

Site A is a 10-year-old ecommerce site, and has two distinct groups of products, that really don't have a lot in common with one another (for example, we'll say that car parts is one type, and children's toys is the other main type of products on Site A).

Site B is approximately one year old and sells just children's toys. The children's toys on site B are pretty much the same as those on site A. The photos are the same. The descriptions and page titles have been re-written so as not to be filtered out for duplicate content.

Because site A has two different customer segments (one segment looking for car parts, the other for children's toys).

Site B has only one segment (children's toys).

I am considering removing the Children's toys from Site A and redirecting the corresponding pages to site B. (similar topic, same photos, different page title and descriptions)

That would leave site A with about 100 pages related to car parts, and about 200 redirects to Site B.

Site B has about 350 pages total, so with the redirects in place from Site A, it would thus have 200 new incoming redirects.

Neither site has lots of incoming links. they both have a google toolbar PR of 4 for the index page. Most PR is internal (from the index page, I am assuming).

Site A (ten years old) has been losing traffic over the last few years.

Site B (one year old) has now surpassed Site A in terms of sheer traffic volume (but Site A's ecommerce conversion rate is still twice that of Site B). This despite the fact that Site A covers TWO areas, while Site B covers only ONE area.

Sorry this is a long question. But I just wanted to give as much detail up front as possible.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[tedster]

What you describe sounds like a sane and positive move to me. I don't see why there should be any fallout from it at all, once Google processes the changes.

[Planet13]

Thank you for your advice, tedster.

My main concern I guess is that just by the fact that the MAJORITY of links to the new site (Site B) will be from 301 redirects, google might think something suspicious is a brewing when it compares the (small) number of direct inbound links to the (larger) number of 301 redirected links.

I will, of course, try to contact the web masters of the relevant sites and try to have them link directly to the new site (site B), but you know how that goes.

[AnkitMaheshwari]

IMO the strategy you have planed should work fine as it is pretty clear that you want to separate the two themes currently under one domain.

[Planet13]

Thank you, Ankit.

Would love to hear if anyone has experienced unexpected negative results.

[iamlost]

Given my experience, you should be reasonably safe, however, that was a number of years ago and Google does change things now and again. :)

I split perhaps a third of a site's content and redirected to be initial copy of a new domain. On the positive side it was fully re-indexed appropriately in less than a week. On the negative many pages ranked lower, some significantly, for a number of months.

It is my belief that inter-domain 301 redirects suffer a value damping factor greater than that applied to internal links. If so, that would explain the various page ranking drops and new additional links may be required to maintain/regain SERPs.

[Planet13]

I split perhaps a third of a site's content and redirected to be initial copy of a new domain. On the positive side it was fully re-indexed appropriately in less than a week. On the negative many pages ranked lower, some significantly, for a number of months.

thank you, iamlost:

My main concern is that while the redirects from Site A will be to the (already existing) same PRODUCT on site, B, the actual name / page title and description will be DIFFERENT.

That raised the problem of which title / description do I use?

should I look at a page by page basis to see which version (Site A's version or Site B's version) of the page gets more traffic?

Or should I decide by which one has higher Tool Bar Page Rank?

Or since it is an ecommerce site, should I base it on which page title / description has a better purchase rate?

Or which page title / description has a lower bounce rate?

[iamlost]

That raised the problem of which title / description do I use?

should I look at a page by page basis to see which version (Site A's version or Site B's version) of the page gets more traffic?

Or should I decide by which one has higher Tool Bar Page Rank?

Or since it is an ecommerce site, should I base it on which page title / description has a better purchase rate?

Or which page title / description has a lower bounce rate?

Ahh...

Traffic can be (re)built...if high traffic from the title/description being 'dropped' does not carry over significantly I would consider recreating new content page around that title/description.

I never consider TBPR.

I would lean much more towards better purchase rate. Converting content is the gold that the web is lined with :)

High bounce may mean they like the title/description but not the content.

If possible I would first test a few 301ed pages before migrating the whole:
* best traffic, i.e. best draw title/description with best converting copy hybrid.

* best traffic title/description and content.

* best converting title/description and content.

Within 100 visits to each you should have an idea which is generally the best value. And then I'd phase the migration in site category by category watching for problems.

[Robert Charlton]

My main concern is that while the redirects from Site A will be to the (already existing) same PRODUCT on site, B, the actual name / page title and description will be DIFFERENT.

What's most important from an algorithmic point of view is that the likely search vocabulary be consistent with your new title and with the anchor text of the important inbound links you're redirecting.

By "consistent" I don't mean identical... just related enough that the links and the titles mesh and that the redirects are appropriate. I assume you have some exact keyword vocabulary that you are carrying over.

For the inbound links that were simply to Brandname A... which you're now directing to Brandname B... you might gain by having a footnote on your page very briefly explaining the rebranding to your customers, which should serve as kind of an algorithmic confirmation for Google. I'm conjecturing that Google's algo might consider this.

iamlost's comments are excellent. I would do a gradual move. With the holiday season coming up, you should weigh temporary loss of traffic vs any gains you see from moving, and perhaps should wait until after the holidays. Definitely get some links changed, if you can, after the move.

[Planet13]

Thank you, iamlost and Robert:

I assume you have some exact keyword vocabulary that you are carrying over.

Well, kind of. Originally, I didn't want google to think of it as duplicate content, so I tried to differ some of the keywords that I was targeting. However, it is the same product as on Site A, so I could only change the keywords I was targeting so much before they would become irrelevant to page.

For the inbound links that were simply to Brandname A... which you're now directing to Brandname B... you might gain by having a footnote on your page very briefly explaining the rebranding to your customers...

Would that go on EVERY page that is 301 redirected to Site B? Or would that go on JUST the index page? Or would that go only on the redirected pages where there is an EXTERNAL link to that page on Site A? But if the page on site A didn't have an incoming external link, then I shouldn't have to put an explanation?

With the holiday season coming up, you should weigh temporary loss of traffic vs any gains you see from moving, and perhaps should wait until after the holidays.

Yes, I definitely plan to wait until after the holiday season.

[Robert Charlton]

keyword vocabulary

It doesn't sound like there's much to be concerned about. Your redirects should be sent to appropriately related pages, and it sounds like that's what's happening. You may take a temporary hit on some pages and perhaps see a boost in others, but you seem to be doing this carefully and correctly.

>>a footnote on your page very briefly explaining the rebranding<<

Would that go on EVERY page that is 301 redirected to Site B? Or would that go on JUST the index page? Or would that go only on the redirected pages where there is an EXTERNAL link to that page on Site A? But if the page on site A didn't have an incoming external link, then I shouldn't have to put an explanation?

I was thinking of a simple footnote to the effect of: "Formerly Brand-A".

The only reason I suggest this is to make inbound anchor text containing "Brand-A" that gets pointed to pages either moved to Brand-B... or to existing "Brand-B" pages... make sense to Google, and I may be overthinking that. It's likely that I am. I'm thinking along the lines of preserving trust, which might be an issue when a branded link is redirected.

Prior to phrase-based indexing, when I did brand name changes I never gave this a second thought. We'd just put something on the new home page for a while, and maybe in Contact Us, etc, saying that "MSN Search, formerly Live, is now Bing" or whatever our brand history was... you know, one great brand has become another.

If I were redirecting an entire site, that's probably still the way I'd do it. The explanation orients the visitor to the changed brand name. I'm assuming, and this assumption is a big leap, that with phrase-based indexing, the association of Brand A and Brand B names might help orient Google... particularly if you've established a strong product/brand association for the terms.

In the situation you describe, including the note on every page that is redirected seems excessive, but including it only on pages with inbound links seems inconsistent for the human user.

More likely, for your visitors, you'd put up an appropriate and temporary note on each site that the Children's toys which they originally found at Site A are now over on site B.

If the branding were really strong, you'd probably want to keep "Formerly Brand-A" as a parenthetical on all redirected pages on site B. I'm guessing that it's most likely not that strong, though, and building and focusing the brands is one of the reasons you're moving the products... so you probably don't want "Formerly Brand-A" on every redirected page.

[Planet13]

Thank you for your well thought out explanation, Robert.