What to do after 301 redirect is in place

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What to do after 301 redirect is in place

Should backlinks ideally change?

trumpington

4:02 pm on Sep 10, 2009 (gmt 0)

I have a site which has changed from a .com to co.uk. A 301 redirect has been in place for some time and the site is ranking well again, but not as well as it used to. It's been about 9 months since the change. Should I be contacting those webmasters of sites that are linking to the .com site or is it sufficient to let the 301 redirect do it's stuff?

I know it seems tidier to have the links to the correct domain and I would only target the higher ranking sites but don't want to embark on it if it's going to be a lot of work for only a small beneficial increase in ranking or none at all.

buckworks

4:44 pm on Sep 10, 2009 (gmt 0)

I can't prove that it makes any difference, but I'm convinced that getting old links updated is worth a bit of effort. It's not worth obsessive effort, but it's worth some.

Identify the most important links to be updated, and contact the webmasters one by one when you get a spare moment. In your update request be sure you identify the exact page where the link is located. Provide code snippets, suggested wording, anything that would make the task easier at their end. The easier you make things the better the chance that they'll do what you ask.

Ask once, but don't chase anyone over this. They'll either do it or they won't. Don't worry about followup other than to say a quick thank you.

trumpington

5:06 pm on Sep 10, 2009 (gmt 0)

Great, thanks buckworks. That's been very helpful, and makes perfect sense. It's confirmed my gut feel about it too.