Can you use a 301 redirect to maintain your Google rank if you move a page?
Question: -
Q: When moving a landing page to a new directory for SEO, is a permanent redirect the correct way to avoid losing traffic from the original page?
Answer: -
301 redirects, or any other sort of redirects, ultimately 'pass thru' their relationship to Google to the page that they link to. Think of it in terms of short run / long run. In the short run, you can take a page that has a great rank for a Google search, and 'switch' it out to a NEW page with a NEW URL and use a 301 or other redirect.
In the short run this page may still show up on Google. In the long run, the Google search bot will revisit the page and go to the NEW page and drop the OLD page from the index. Will it like the NEW page? That depends not only on the NEW page content but also the inbound links, if any, to that NEW page.
Links matters; so if there are many links to the OLD URL / OLD page, then you should NOT do a redirect but strive to maintain that old URL. Reason? The link juice (votes from other websites) do NOT transfer readily to the NEW page, and all that hard work building links will ultimately be lost.
Hope this helps!
- Jason McDonald - info@jm-seo.org
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