Every Change Counts
Every change on the website (content, design, code, structure, or URL changes) is registered by search engines, compared to the original site, and affects the ranking of the new site. The more changes you make at once, the greater the chance of losing some weight from external links.
For this reason, it is increasingly recommended to maintain the URL. Where this is not possible, a 301 redirect (permanent link change) comes into play.
Redirects Make Sense Only in Certain Cases
When to Use
- when it resolves duplications such as http://www.puxdesign.cz and https://www.puxdesign.cz or https://www.puxdesign.cz/cz and https://www.puxdesign.cz/cz/
- when you are changing the domain (from www.pux.cz to www.puxdesign.cz)
- when you are removing page A and replacing it with page B in terms of content
- when you have 2 URLs that display the same page (e.g., redirecting /index.php?page=123 to /pneumatiky)
When Not to Use
- when you are removing a product category and want to redirect it to the main page
- when you are removing an entire language version of the site and want to redirect everything to the corresponding pages, e.g., in English
- when the removed page does not have a corresponding alternative on the new site
- when you want to redirect all 404 pages to the main page of the site
- when you want to shorten and improve the URL just for effect (e.g., changing www.domena.cz/produkty/nabytek/sedaci-souprava/cervena-kozena-pohovka to www.domena.cz/cervena-kozena-pohovka)
How to Approach It the Right Way
If your original website has traffic, history, and at least some performance, you should take great care with URL redirection.
1. First, determine what and why you want to change on the website.
2. Then, your provider, SEO analyst, or you yourself will download all the URLs of your website and assign traffic from Google Analytics to them, so it is clear which addresses are the most important.
3. Based on keyword analysis, an overview of addresses, and traffic, you can collaboratively propose a new website structure that meets your requirements while maximizing future website performance. This means preserving important URLs.
4. For addresses that will be discontinued, we will find a content-relevant alternative and redirect the original ones to it.
5. If there is no alternative, we will let the address display a 404 page, which we should adapt and enhance with user-friendly navigation back to the website.
Redirection as a Recommendation
You should not underestimate the preparation of redirections for e-shops and websites, nor should you redirect all addresses to a popular main page at all costs. Google increasingly views 301 redirection as a recommendation, which it respects only when it deems appropriate. This is similar to metadata that you write, where you use keywords, monitor character count, and ultimately find out that Google does not display them.
If the search engine determines that the presented content is not the most suitable for users, it will not display it. Therefore, if you redirect, for example, the About Us page to the Contact page, believing it to be the most relevant page on the topic, it may easily happen that Google will display a 404 on the URL of the About Us page.
So how much is at stake?
No one can tell you exactly how many percentage points of external link weight you lose through redirection. Recent observations by analysts and studies on the topic suggest that it is roughly one-third to one-half of all links. Additionally, changing a link on an e-shop or a website with hundreds to thousands of pages may take months to show effects. Therefore, during a redesign, do not rely solely on the magic of redirection, which is becoming less and less significant for Google.
