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How do SE's look at redirects?

by aprilm
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
My client does not want any outbound links in their navigation for SEO purposes, but they want to include a link to their other website. Their initial request was to create a page within their site where the link in the nav bar would take them, and then externally link out to their other site from that page.
My question is, instead of creating a page, would it be possible to achieve the same thing with a page redirect? The nav bar menu item would be linked to a page within their site, but that page would be redirected to their other site, so the visitors would go straight to the other site without having to hit that 'landing page' first.

Would the search engines still view this as an external link in the nav bar, or do they view redirected pages as internal links.

Thanks. Any clarification would be helpful.
#redirects
  • Profile picture of the author Adam Roy
    Originally Posted by aprilm View Post

    My client does not want any outbound links in their navigation for SEO purposes, but they want to include a link to their other website. Their initial request was to create a page within their site where the link in the nav bar would take them, and then externally link out to their other site from that page.
    My question is, instead of creating a page, would it be possible to achieve the same thing with a page redirect? The nav bar menu item would be linked to a page within their site, but that page would be redirected to their other site, so the visitors would go straight to the other site without having to hit that 'landing page' first.

    Would the search engines still view this as an external link in the nav bar, or do they view redirected pages as internal links.

    Thanks. Any clarification would be helpful.
    301 redirects will pass anchor text and page rank, so a 301 redirect is 'in a sense' pretty much treated the same as a regular link.

    What you should be worried about is using a nofollow link on external pages you don't want to 'give credit to', and leave the link to your client's second website dofollow.

    It doesn't really matter how, or where you link out to the site, but whether you attribute the link as dofollow/nofollow as that's pretty much how you dictate to a search engine how you want that link treated.

    Here's a little video I found regarding 301 redirects,
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    • Profile picture of the author Adam H
      It would be pointless , If its their other site and its remotely related to that current site whats the problem with just linking to it normally ? Imo you either have to decide to no-follow external links or you don't , having a mixture of both would raise alarm bells for me.

      PR sculpting doesnt exists , its a myth! so not allowing search engines to certain parts of your website is pointless. Why would you nofollow "about us" and "Contact pages" when alot of search bots search for your company's information to list on their sites. Much like how google loves to see a company's address and phone number on a contact page because it ratifies they are genuine in a way. So why would you block that ?

      Unfortunately there is no given rule when it comes to this , a handful of SEO's will tell you it works and the other handful will tell you it wont. You'll never win an argument there is no "real" answer for.
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    • Profile picture of the author aprilm
      Originally Posted by Adam Roy View Post

      301 redirects will pass anchor text and page rank, so a 301 redirect is 'in a sense' pretty much treated the same as a regular link.

      What you should be worried about is using a nofollow link on external pages you don't want to 'give credit to', and leave the link to your client's second website dofollow.

      It doesn't really matter how, or where you link out to the site, but whether you attribute the link as dofollow/nofollow as that's pretty much how you dictate to a search engine how you want that link treated.

      Here's a little video I found regarding 301 redirects,
      YouTube - Does anchor text carry through 301 redirects?
      Thanks for that video. Very informative.

      They don't really want to put a nofollow on the link from site A to site B, because they would like that backlink to count for Site B.

      They don't want to lose page rank on the homepage of Site A by directly externally linking out. Thus, the idea of a middle man page, a page instructing users to click through, came into play, so the external dofollow link would reside in the body of a 2nd tier page instead of on the left sidebar of the homepage.

      My question is, if we set up a redirect, instead of using that middle man page, would it still achieve the same goal of not externally linking out on the homepage? Will the search engine view that redirected link as an internal link or an external link?

      Hope that makes sense.
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      • Profile picture of the author Adam Roy
        Originally Posted by aprilm View Post

        Thanks for that video. Very informative.

        They don't really want to put a nofollow on the link from site A to site B, because they would like that backlink to count for Site B.

        They don't want to lose page rank on the homepage of Site A by directly externally linking out. Thus, the idea of a middle man page, a page instructing users to click through, came into play, so the external dofollow link would reside in the body of a 2nd tier page instead of on the left sidebar of the homepage.

        My question is, if we set up a redirect, instead of using that middle man page, would it still achieve the same goal of not externally linking out on the homepage? Will the search engine view that redirected link as an internal link or an external link?

        Hope that makes sense.
        You're somewhat contradicting yourself here, you want the backlink to count, but you don't want to pass page rank to it?? <<is that correct?

        By utilizing redirects and things of that nature, they don't really have much of an effect on the passage of anchor text and page rank, the nofollow/dofollow attribute is what determines this.

        If you're really worried about passing page rank to it from your site, (I honestly don't think that you'll lose any page rank by linking out to a single relevant website with dofollow) but still want the backlink to count, just put the link on an appropriate page on your website, instead of in the navbar, which I would assume would make this link 'site-wide' right? Try creating a 'resources' page on your site or something and linking to it there. That way you're only passing page rank from the linking page, rather than your entire website.
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