[trafficmarshals]

Hi guys!

Just a query on 301s and your experiences.

I did an internal 301 e.g. Moving example.com/post to example.com/cat/post

I did this for a lot of urls and all was good, google replaced the urls and they took the same position in SERPS. Then a day later all serps dropped for the new urls by hundreds of positions.

Is this temporary? I did this change about ten days ago now. Anyone else experienced this?

I read on google webmaster forum that a change like this can take from 30 - 45 days.

Thanks!

[trishworks4u]

initially you were likely still getting the rankings from the old url's.  At least that's the way my 301's have worked.

I haven't done much internal shuffling like that though, at least not on a site that already had good rankings.  However from doing 301's from one domain to another, yes - there is a lag time in rankings returning.  could be a few weeks or much longer.

[malphas]

I'd normally wait 2-3 weeks. How did you implement the 301 redirects?

I'd do a quick check, to make sure the headers were returning the correct response codes. From my experience I've found internal 301's are significantly faster than external ones.

Edited by malphas, 30 December 2011 - 18:18.

[trafficmarshals]

Thanks for the replies!

I implemented the 301s using RedirectPermanent /page1 http://domain.com/category/page2

It's been 15 days now and still no change in the SERPs. I've read that it can take up to 45 days in some cases? Is this accurate?

[googlealchemist]

trafficmarshals, on 04 January 2012 - 02:02, said:

Thanks for the replies!

I implemented the 301s using RedirectPermanent /page1 http://domain.com/category/page2

It's been 15 days now and still no change in the SERPs. I've read that it can take up to 45 days in some cases? Is this accurate?

Have you checked to make sure that G has recached the urls? Have you built new links to your new url?

[Blah Blah Blah]

If your site was somewhat respected before and was crawled on a regular baisis, typically G will catch the 301 very quickly and pass that value on.

[MattW]

Patience is a virtue in situations like this

[trafficmarshals]

I waited it out but the SERPS never returned even with backlinking. I did check that the 301s were in place correctly and were being followed.

Maybe my site just plain sucked

[seodisaster]

Build another site similar to what you have and start backlinking it

[DoubleUp]

I had the same issue myself a couple of months ago. I had the site setup, and many of it's pages ranked well. I then changed the theme as i wanted to expand the site, and had to change from posts to pages, so done a 301 redirect. The rankings disappeared across the board, and never returned, though I only waited for about a month. I got fed up with waiting, so have now started again from scratch on a different domain.......

[akula]

I have done this a few times and never had a problem with it. In fact I just recently moved a site that was built in .NET to php and WordPress and had to 301 every single page and it worked exactly how it should. Was the content drastically changed? I know when I use 301's for seo  I often lose the SERP position but pass link juice.

Edited by akula, 13 February 2012 - 08:00.

[MattW]

Hi,

When you changed the old URL's did you submit them via the webmaster tools removal form out of interest?  Be interesting if everyone could provide much more detailed steps of what they did and the timeframes around it to build a better understanding.

I have only had to do it once and it did have a negative impact for around 6 weeks but I kept my head in the sand and continued my link building to the new URL's business as usual and it all sprang back.

When I 301'd the URL's I also submitted the old ones to webmaster tools URL removal tool and pinged them to get some attention to the 301's.

Edited by MattW, 13 February 2012 - 13:57.

[akula]

MattW, on 13 February 2012 - 13:57, said:

When I 301'd the URL's I also submitted the old ones to webmaster tools URL removal tool..

I am going to go out on a limb here and say do not fucking do this. I am pretty sure this would be detrimental.

When it comes to things like this, KISS is always best.

301's are there for "webmasters" to tell SE's they are moving the content that used to be at this address here.....over here. Now what would a "webmaster" do? They would find the easiest way to do this, be it a header redirect (php, asp etc), htaccess redirect or some plugin they find that automates it like in WP. And that is all they do. So do that. Whether you do that for the legitimate reasons of moving pages to different urls structures, updating a domains to a .com from a .info etc, or..... when you do it for SEO "nefarious" purposes.

What I think you are describing would remove that address all together not allowing the SE (Google at least) to say "hey this says to look here now for the content that used to be here". Effectively killing it.

Edited by akula, 13 February 2012 - 15:26.