From what I understand, each redirect a page goes through looses a little more SEO power, link juice, Google mojo, or whatever you like to call the strength imparted by incoming links.
So this series of redirects: /original-url.html >>> /midstream-url.html >>> /almost-there.html >>> final-url.html would suffer three decreases in “link-juice”.
While this redirect: /original-url.html >>> final-url.html would only suffer one decrease in “link juice”
My question is about the order that the redirects appear in the htaccess file, and if the general redirect to the www (or non-www) version of the URL should always be last to avoid an additional redirect and therefore retain as much link juice as possible?
Here is an example of what I mean…
If the order of redirects is like below, does it first convert an incoming mydomain.com/oldpage.html[/I] visitor to [I]www.mydomain.com/oldpage.com[/I] and then to [I]www.mydomain.com/newpage.com (for two decreases in link juice)
Redirect #1: transfer all non-www version visitors of any page to the www version of the page.
Redirect #2: transfer all incoming (www and non-www)mydomain.com/oldpage.html visitors to www.mydomain.com/newpage.com
But if the order of redirects is switched like below, does it only convert an incoming mydomain.com/oldpage.html[/I] visitor to [I]www.mydomain.com/newpage.com (for just one decrease in link juice)
Redirect #1: transfer all incoming (www and non-www)mydomain.com/oldpage.html visitors to www.mydomain.com/newpage.com
Redirect #2: transfer all non-www version visitors of any page to the www version of the page.
Hopefully this makes sense. I look forward to hearing your answers…