What counts as a redirect chain and why is it bad?
What counts as a redirect chain and why is it bad?
I see 'redirect chain' warnings in LinkJuice. My CMS creates 301s when pages move. At what point does this become a problem and how does it affect PageRank?
Re: What counts as a redirect chain and why is it bad?
A redirect chain is 2+ redirects in sequence: A → B → C. Each hop loses a small amount of PageRank equity (Google passes roughly 99% per hop, but the crawl cost compounds).
More importantly, internal links pointing to redirect URLs waste crawl budget and PageRank. LinkJuice flags any internal link whose destination returns a 3xx status code — these should be updated to point directly to the final URL.
Single redirects (A → B) are acceptable but should still be cleaned up over time.
More importantly, internal links pointing to redirect URLs waste crawl budget and PageRank. LinkJuice flags any internal link whose destination returns a 3xx status code — these should be updated to point directly to the final URL.
Single redirects (A → B) are acceptable but should still be cleaned up over time.
Re: What counts as a redirect chain and why is it bad?
Has anyone tried combining the LinkJuice export with a PageSpeed Insights run? We added CWV scores as a third column to the export and now we prioritise pages that have both poor internal linking AND poor Core Web Vitals — those are the ones crawlers struggle with most.
Re: What counts as a redirect chain and why is it bad?
We do quarterly internal link audits now. The before/after comparison feature is genuinely useful — I can show my client a concrete 'your PageRank went from 0.4 to 1.1' for the target page after our linking sprint. Much easier to justify the work than just showing ranking screenshots.