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In hindsight a stupid idea, but never the less, its done now but around 2 months ago i 301 redirected the root of my website to an inner page that used to redirect from inner to root.
so to summarise:
Original redirect: hxxps://mydomain.com/service-keyword-city 301 redirected to hxxps://mydomain.com
Changed to: hxxps://mydomain.com 301 redirected to hxxps://mydomain/service-keyword-city
The actual page that was on the root of the domain was used for the destination (so all links, images, text, headings, meta title etc was all the same). So on page NOTHING changed other than the path was no longer the root domain but hxxps://mydomain.com/service-keyword-city
Now why did i do this you say... Well the reason was because for all my service offerings on the website, they all have their own page with their own keyword clusters which each respective page ranks for in google.
However, the main money keyword still ranked the homepage root. In the past, I did create a new dedicated page for this same keyword cluster and re-designed the home page to not specifically optimise for this money keyword to encourage google to start ranking the new /service-keyword-city page for the same keywords that the root ranks for.
When i attempted this before (about a year or so ago), google would not rank the inner page for the service keywords, despite the keywords not being present in content on the homepage. It's also worth noting, during this time, i invested quite a bit of money to build a lot of strong links to the hxxps://mydomain/service-keyword-city page. I later threw in the towel and 301 this inner page to the root.
This was the reason, early this year, I had the bright idea to instead reverse the inner to root page 301 redirect so that the root instead redirected the inner page URL and steps were as follows:
1. Implement 301 redirect from hxxps://mydomain to hxxps://mydomain/service-keyword-city while keeping the page and content the same
2 . let google re-write the URL for the keywords ranking in its index from root to inner service page
3. build more links to the mydomain.com/service-keyword-city page
4. re-point relevant links that currently point to my home page to the new inner page (leaving links that should point to the root in situ).
So 2 months on everything was great and going to plan - every page on my website was correctly ranking for it respective keyword clients for the respective service offering.
Now was the final part of the plan - design a new home page with fresh content, images using H1,2,3 headings Meta Title etc more focused to our general serviced offerings and our brand name.
The home page was re-designed to be the a hub page summarising and linking out to all core service pages (still with 800 words of content).
We published the new home page, then removed the 301 redirect from mydomain.com - the hxxps://mydomain.com/service-keyword-city page that the root was redirecting to before was kept 100% the same.
So, since the 301 was removed, the root home page was re-indexed with the new home page content and the inner page hxxps://mydomain.com/service-keyword-city also stayed indexed as it was - so now we have 2 pages instead of the 1. This is great, all as planned.
literally the following day after i removed the root to inner page 301 redirect - all of the keywords that the inner page was ranking for dropped by 30 to 70 places or more (albeit still ranking the "correct" inner page and NOT the new home page) - for the most part, other inner page service keywords were not really affected.
I use SERPbook to monitor all of my keyword ranking positions, this enabled me to check all keywords that the inner page was ranking for. in terms of top 20 websites ranking for each keyword since the past few weeks have been the same - it is just my website that appears to have dropped out of its arse for the keywords. I thought maybe the google core update may have caused this, but given all the data i have from competitors ranking for the same keywords, there was not really much if anything of a shuffled in the past few weeks.
A week on since i removed the 301 redirect, 2 or 3 of the keywords the inner page was ranking for has restored to where about they were before the 301 redirect was removed. However most of the others are still way lower in the SERPs (some are even no longer ranking what so ever).
Note, I am aware that since removing the 301 redirect, the remaining links still present that point to the root domain now do not directly point to the inner page - so this could be something to do with it, but would assume given that the home page now directly and contextually links to the inner page, and that he inner page has its own good links pointing to it directly, SERPs would not be affected this drastically and really the removal of the 301 is still largely to blame.
My question here really is, has anyone done something similar before and/or is it not unreasonable to assume that google will take time to "re-calculate" the "restructure" i have created thus requiring time to process the new signals since the 301 was removed resulting in 2 separate "non-competing" pages?
So that's nearly 900 words or waffle, if you have managed to bear with me and reach this point, i very much appreciate it!
thanks!
Get in Touch!
so to summarise:
Original redirect: hxxps://mydomain.com/service-keyword-city 301 redirected to hxxps://mydomain.com
Changed to: hxxps://mydomain.com 301 redirected to hxxps://mydomain/service-keyword-city
The actual page that was on the root of the domain was used for the destination (so all links, images, text, headings, meta title etc was all the same). So on page NOTHING changed other than the path was no longer the root domain but hxxps://mydomain.com/service-keyword-city
Now why did i do this you say... Well the reason was because for all my service offerings on the website, they all have their own page with their own keyword clusters which each respective page ranks for in google.
However, the main money keyword still ranked the homepage root. In the past, I did create a new dedicated page for this same keyword cluster and re-designed the home page to not specifically optimise for this money keyword to encourage google to start ranking the new /service-keyword-city page for the same keywords that the root ranks for.
When i attempted this before (about a year or so ago), google would not rank the inner page for the service keywords, despite the keywords not being present in content on the homepage. It's also worth noting, during this time, i invested quite a bit of money to build a lot of strong links to the hxxps://mydomain/service-keyword-city page. I later threw in the towel and 301 this inner page to the root.
This was the reason, early this year, I had the bright idea to instead reverse the inner to root page 301 redirect so that the root instead redirected the inner page URL and steps were as follows:
1. Implement 301 redirect from hxxps://mydomain to hxxps://mydomain/service-keyword-city while keeping the page and content the same
2 . let google re-write the URL for the keywords ranking in its index from root to inner service page
3. build more links to the mydomain.com/service-keyword-city page
4. re-point relevant links that currently point to my home page to the new inner page (leaving links that should point to the root in situ).
So 2 months on everything was great and going to plan - every page on my website was correctly ranking for it respective keyword clients for the respective service offering.
Now was the final part of the plan - design a new home page with fresh content, images using H1,2,3 headings Meta Title etc more focused to our general serviced offerings and our brand name.
The home page was re-designed to be the a hub page summarising and linking out to all core service pages (still with 800 words of content).
We published the new home page, then removed the 301 redirect from mydomain.com - the hxxps://mydomain.com/service-keyword-city page that the root was redirecting to before was kept 100% the same.
So, since the 301 was removed, the root home page was re-indexed with the new home page content and the inner page hxxps://mydomain.com/service-keyword-city also stayed indexed as it was - so now we have 2 pages instead of the 1. This is great, all as planned.
literally the following day after i removed the root to inner page 301 redirect - all of the keywords that the inner page was ranking for dropped by 30 to 70 places or more (albeit still ranking the "correct" inner page and NOT the new home page) - for the most part, other inner page service keywords were not really affected.
I use SERPbook to monitor all of my keyword ranking positions, this enabled me to check all keywords that the inner page was ranking for. in terms of top 20 websites ranking for each keyword since the past few weeks have been the same - it is just my website that appears to have dropped out of its arse for the keywords. I thought maybe the google core update may have caused this, but given all the data i have from competitors ranking for the same keywords, there was not really much if anything of a shuffled in the past few weeks.
A week on since i removed the 301 redirect, 2 or 3 of the keywords the inner page was ranking for has restored to where about they were before the 301 redirect was removed. However most of the others are still way lower in the SERPs (some are even no longer ranking what so ever).
Note, I am aware that since removing the 301 redirect, the remaining links still present that point to the root domain now do not directly point to the inner page - so this could be something to do with it, but would assume given that the home page now directly and contextually links to the inner page, and that he inner page has its own good links pointing to it directly, SERPs would not be affected this drastically and really the removal of the 301 is still largely to blame.
My question here really is, has anyone done something similar before and/or is it not unreasonable to assume that google will take time to "re-calculate" the "restructure" i have created thus requiring time to process the new signals since the 301 was removed resulting in 2 separate "non-competing" pages?
So that's nearly 900 words or waffle, if you have managed to bear with me and reach this point, i very much appreciate it!
thanks!
Get in Touch!
Website - https://perfectmarketingsolution.com/
Skype - shalabh.mishra
Telegram - shalabhmishra
Email - info@perfectmarketingsolution.com
