Redirect chains: what happens to old addresses when a park site is rebuilt.
When a park's site is rebuilt, every old address either forwards to its new home or dies. Forwarding is right. Forwarding through three hops, from the old page to the old homepage to the http version to the https version to the new page, is how a rebuild quietly loses the rankings the old site had.
IN ONE PARAGRAPH
A redirect sends a visitor from one address to another. A chain is a redirect that lands on another redirect. Chains form when a site is rebuilt more than once and each rebuild forwards to the previous one, or when http, www, and page-level forwards stack up. Each hop costs time and leaks a little ranking, and Google gives up after a few. The fix is to forward every old address directly to its final page in one hop. We check every old address after a rebuild and flatten every chain we find.
How chains form on park websites
- The 2016 site forwarded to the 2020 site's homepage. The 2020 site forwarded to the 2024 site. The old cabins address now goes through three sites to land on the new homepage, not the new cabins page.
- http forwards to https, https forwards to www, www forwards to the page. Three hops for every visit from an old link.
- A trailing-slash rule forwards /cabins/ to /cabins, which forwards to /accommodations, which forwards to /stay.
- The booking link goes through a shortened link, which goes through a tracking link, which goes to the platform.
What it costs a park
Ranking, mostly. A 301 passes most of a page's ranking, but not all, and each hop passes a little less. Google also stops following after several hops, at which point the old address is simply dead. Every link the state tourism site, the chamber, and a decade of forum posts pointed at the old cabins page is worth something, and a chain throws part of it away. Speed too: each hop is another round trip on a phone with one bar.
How to check your own
- Find your old addresses. Search Google for site:yourdomain.com and look for old-style addresses, or ask whoever built the previous site.
- Paste an old address into a free redirect checker. It shows each hop. More than one is a chain.
- Check the basic ones: http://yourdomain.com, http://www.yourdomain.com, and https://www.yourdomain.com should each reach the final homepage in one hop.
What we do about it
When we take over a site, we collect every old address that had search history, from the old sitemap, Search Console, and the linking sites, and forward each one directly to its replacement page in a single hop. The http and www variants forward straight to the final address. After launch we check every old address again. That is how the sites we move keep the rankings the old sites had instead of starting over.
Questions about this.
What is a redirect chain?
A redirect that lands on another redirect instead of the final page. Each extra hop slows the visit and leaks some ranking, and Google stops following after a few.
Do redirects lose SEO value?
A single 301 passes most of a page's ranking. Chains of several hops lose more at each step, and long chains are abandoned by Google entirely.
How do I keep rankings when rebuilding my park website?
Forward every old address that had search history directly to its replacement page in one hop, keep the same domain, and check every old address after launch.
Should http forward to https?
Yes, in one hop to the final address. http, www, and page-level forwards should not stack into a chain.
Want this checked on your park site?
Send us the address. We run the full check and tell you what we found, in plain words. SEO for parks starts at $250 a month.
Part of the RV park SEO guide, section: What a script cannot see. Previous: Broken external links: the links that die when other sites change. Next: Near-duplicate content: the town pages that seemed like a good idea.