Intra Domain 301 Redirects & Google Page Rank

TheBigK

Well-known member
I've been considering migrating to XF from my vB+vBSEO for quite some time now and wondering whether intra-domain 301 redirects carry the page rank with them.

Google's been through several changes in the recent past and I wonder whether PR and Traffic are related anymore :) . My biggest fear is losing out on traffic (vBSEO did very well) after migrating to XF.
 
PageRank is dead... it died many years ago actually, its purely only kept around as a marketing tool within a small circle of people who think otherwise.

It has no value for rankings, it's only value is within that limited circle for selling links. Pagerank no longer cites a pages worth for links, as Google have advanced their algorithm so much nowadays, buying links on high PR pages is more likely to damage you than do you good.

Domain age is whats worth the $$$ nowadays, not pages themselves.

Yes, 301 redirects are considered a permanent redirect, thus all links and values you perceive to be worth something transfer to the directed page.
 
Hi Anthony! Thank you for your time and response. I'm quite pleased to hear that. However, every board that has converted to XF from vB (and other scripts) have reported a dip in traffic. I referred few other forums and found that this dip may last for about 3 months and in few cases for even more time.

Kier indicated that if 301 redirects are in place, then there won't be any effect on the traffic. There are other pros who advised the same; however, webmasters 'do' notice traffic drop! I know I can only try and discover it myself but I need to prepare well in advance to take care of the dip in earnings which is a direct result of the traffic.

I tried searching for case studies for vB+vBSEO => XF conversion; but do not see any for established forums. Does anyone have link to the discussions or would be kind enough to share their experience of conversion?
 
301 redirects are not the reason for the dip in traffic that people confuse themselves about.

If you took your exact site, shifted it across to another URL exactly the way it is now, and used 301's to redirect URL's, then you would experience zero traffic loss, because the only thing that has changed is the domain name, the page itself is identical in every aspect.

Now, look at your VB page and look at an XF page. They are two very different pages when viewed looking at raw data. There are different terms used, different phrases, user post details are minimal in XF compared to VB, etc etc... so what you are doing is completely changing the dynamics of the pages themselves.

That is the difference in traffic, because you aren't presenting Google the exact same data any more, you are actually changing the amount of words on a page, the dynamics of the page, just by changing software type.

This applies to changing any software type, the same thing will happen, regardless of 301 redirects.

301 redirects will minimise the impact and loss in traffic, because Google will find the new page containing the near similar content, yet if the dynamics of the page has changed, then Google will define the page differently, either ranking it higher or lower... but the 301 will play an important role, because it tells Google the page is not actually new at all, it is this existing page that has now changed location... so the drop in traffic will be minimal.

The best thing you can do is ensure you keep the same post count per page, ie. if you have VB set to 20 posts per page, ensure XF is set to 20 posts per page, etc... this will keep every thread close to identical in content and page numbers.

That is where you get the difference, not a 301 redirect. Big difference.
 
PageRank is dead... it died many years ago actually, its purely only kept around as a marketing tool within a small circle of people who think otherwise.


It has no value for rankings, it's only value is within that limited circle for selling links. Pagerank no longer cites a pages worth for links, as Google have advanced their algorithm so much nowadays, buying links on high PR pages is more likely to damage you than do you good.
Page Rank is important. The higher the rank, the stronger your keyword postensity is, and in turn means more keyword nest.

MW3Blog would not be 1,000 visits per day without the page rank authority.

It's just that marketers put too much stock in it, and lose sight of what is really needed to push your website.
 
@Anthony: Thanks a ton! That gives me lot of clarity.

Page Rank is important. The higher the rank, the stronger your keyword postensity is, and in turn means more keyword nest.

MW3Blog would not be 1,000 visits per day without the page rank authority.

It's just that marketers put too much stock in it, and lose sight of what is really needed to push your website.
Well, do you agree that PR does not get affected in there are 301 redirects within the domain?
 
Total nonsense... I have 5000+ on a site daily with a pagerank of 4 and less. Garbage!

I marketed a site years ago to disprove Pagerank, having a PR7 and still only a hundred daily against a similar structure not targeting Pagerank which out did it over the six month test.

Pagerank is for children...
 
Well, do you agree that PR does not get affected in there are 301 redirects within the domain?
Links are transferred equally with a 301, which Google publicly accepts as a permanent redirect solution, stating they transfer all existing page attributes to the new page.
 
Carlos, here is more upto date information for you about Pagerank and relevance in general within Google results...

http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/tech.html

Relevance. As Larry said long ago, we want to give you back “exactly what you want.” When Google was founded, one key innovation was PageRank, a technology that determined the “importance” of a webpage by looking at what other pages link to it, as well as other data. Today we use more than 200 signals, including PageRank, to order websites, and we update these algorithms on a weekly basis. For example, we offer personalized search results based on your web history and location.

Google don't hide these facts about their technology nowadays; they also don't give specifics either. Local search killed many facets of SEO... actually, it killed SEO pretty much, as they rolled out enormous changes in one swoop. Saying that, its also pretty easy to taint results locally, its just extremely hard to taint them globally, compared to when it was a relatively easy task that could be accomplished within a few months. Global is now an enormous task, so there are easier ways than links to achieve such aims nowadays, ie. local TLD's will get better exposure in country engines than a website with a million links going to it within another countries Google data.

These are the same old discussions... SEO is dead, kick it to the curb where it belongs, focus on specific country data-centers if you want one site with massive global traffic.

You cannot compare a personal or business website to sites like Wikipedia, Ebay, etc, that have corporate agreements with Google for priority placement in search results due to their global online dominance.
 
Well, do you agree that PR does not get affected in there are 301 redirects within the domain?
No.
Carlos, here is more upto date information for you about Pagerank and relevance in general within Google results...
I guess I live under a rock. :(

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
 
Top Bottom