Let's say I have this url: /malta and it's ranking 1st for 'malta' on Google. I want to make a split test on this page to try different layouts. Set up a 302 redirect from /malta to /malta/a or /malta/b and split traffic equally to monitor user behaviour. With a 302 redirect I understand Google will keep /malta in the index but will crawl /a or /b and extract that content (however won't index these urls). Can a 302 redirect hurt rankings of /malta if used for this reason? Any insights or maybe better solutions, will be more than appreciated.
there is 2 kind of redirect, god and bad type that is a tool to test it but i forget the name and i tried one of mig redirect page and it says , that is a good one. se this redirect page (is Rank 3)
Redirection using L302 simply wont tell the search engines bot to index the new URL as it's not moved for ever.. But in my opinion the best way is it to have two links on your main page, linking to each new layout.. just make sure to use 'nofollow' tag in your links as well as 'noindex, noarchive' tags for each new layout page.. This way you will test your visitors behaviors and keep your main page ranking
What about making the page dynamic. A little javascript in there doing a random number test...if number > 0.50 display this page of code, if <=0.50 display the second layout?