When creating a new site and having an old one, it is often necessary to redirect 301 from the old site to the new one. This is done to keep all SEO work.
Question:
After what time we can assume that all the "juice" was transferred to new pages and Google stops indexing the old site? When do I need to delete the 301 redirect?
Technically - never.
If you moved from the old domain or page structure, where you had a lot of high-quality links pointing to these pages, it’s better to save the redirect.
But for some sites - especially for large ones - this can be a problem.
The strategy we usually use is to check how much these old pages really contribute to the new site.
Update old links inside
Distract - this process will have no value if you do not have live links on an existing site that need to be redirected.
Every time you redirect pages, you should always update all the live links on your site to point to a new location.
Are links valuable?
Three main data sources to determine the value of the redirect. If the source page has:
• Valuable external links.
• It receives external traffic.
• Frequent “hits” in server logs (where redirection is performed).
Then you should save the redirect.
On the other hand, if, for example, you wrote 100 blog posts on the old site, and then moved the content to the new site and made a redirect, but these pages accounted for less than 0.5% of your site’s total traffic, plus you don’t with any valuable links pointing to them, with the exception of some 10 years ago, then you can probably safely destroy these 100 redirects.
However, if in these 100 blog posts there was an external link from USA Today, which is still active, then even if it doesn’t receive much traffic, you can save this redirect.
Rate the value of the page using the developed checklist and move on
Create a checklist for evaluating the pages of the old site and scroll through it every time you want to redirect to a new page.
Here is an example of a checklist for a page:
• Less than 100 visits in the past 6 months.
• Has a TIC of 5 or lower.
• Associated with a specific event (events are advertised on the site).
If the page corresponds to these points, it does not need a redirect!
But this is just an example, your site may have a completely different redirect rejection threshold.
Over time, links become constraining factors. You should definitely keep good redirect links wherever possible, but don’t waste any more time than necessary. Instead of looking back, go ahead and create new high-quality content and link mass.
Futureinapps company is engaged in SEO website promotion for businesses.
