301 Redirect - What happens to backlinks
-
Hello...
One of my sites is losing rankings in G.
I received the webmaster notification of unnatural links...
My question is, should i do a 301 redirect of every page on my site to a new domain?
If so, do the backlinks (which i believe are causing my rankings to drop) carry over?
How about the good backlinks?
Also, what would happen to the rankings i currently have on page 1?
Thanks
-
I would not 301 redirects because it passes link juice, it will also pass the link juice from sites that have nothing to do with your phrases. What I would recommend is starting a new site. Manually check all your old backlinks.
-
i still don't have enough info on this topic. in my case, i purchased a domain name didigames.biz. actually it is expired domain name with 25DA already. but you know .biz domains difficult to rank in top ten. i purchased new domain name didigamesgirl.com and started making links. now i am thinking about redirecting my .biz domain to this domain. need expert opinion on this.
-
Personally I would not do a 301, as Donnie have said. With the 301, also the backlinks will be redirected. Actually one of the problems Wil Reynolds had with SeerInteractive was because of old backlinks to his previous domain name, then 301 to the actual one.
If you are thinking of creating a new site as a solution in order to avoid the penalization for unnatural links, then - during the migration - contact the "not-crappy" sites which linked to your old one, and inform them that you're changinge domain name and, therefore, you are asking them if they may update your link. 99% the link will be updated.
Obviously, all the link equity the "unnatural links" are passing to your site will disappear, which means that a loss in ranking in quite sure, but not at the same level a penalization could cause.
Another solution should be to try to quit all the unnatural backlinks but maintaining the same site. I don't know if this can be possible: if the domain is http://www.simplastics.com/ (taken from the email you use to register in SEOmoz) from OSE is see exact match links from comments, maybe a signature, and from blog related to politics (not quite related indeed).
Said that, and because the site has also other on page issue (i.e.: domain canonicalization), maybe to create a new site is the best decision.
-
There are many individuals that claim redirecting these sites will filter out the crap links. They juice up a site, then 301 it. My suggestion would be to test it. If the penalty is algo based and if you get hit with this penalty after your 301 then simply undo it and the penalty should go away. I don't believe it's a manual audit. Or you listen to google and start removing the unnatural links. Or you take Donnie's approach if you want to build a new, longer standing web presence.
-
I'm not the expert on this topic, so I'd love to hear some others jump in on this.
This is a very hot topic right. Wil Reynolds was talking about a new potential technique of putting up spam crap sites and building tons of anchor text links to them and letting them live for a few weeks until they get burned. Then put up a new one and repeat the process.
Ethan Lyon mentions in the comments something similar to what you're talking about
Ethan Lyon Apr 23, 2012
A strategy that is really big right now is 301 redirecting burned sites to new sites. So if you build 10,000 links to site A, then it gets burned, 301 redirect site A to site B. Build 10,000 links to site B, so now it has 20,000 links. When site B gets burned, 301 redirect site A and B to site C, so now you start with 20,000 links. Then build 10,000 links to site C so you have 30,000 links. Rinse and repeat and you have a strategy to rank consistently in the top spots in some of the most competitive spaces. Insane that it works, but it painfully does.
So I know that doesn't really answer your question, but sheds a little more information and validates the fact that a lot of people are doing this, or thinking about it right now.
So for people that have done this, do 301 redirects carry the original anchor text and thus can result in burning the new site as well?
-
I would not 301 redirect because it passes link juice, it will also pass the link juice from sites that have nothing to do with your phrases. What I would recommend is starting a new site. Manually check all your old backlinks. Find the backlinks that are authoritative and relevant to your topic (usually sites that have your keyword phrases in them), and contact them. Your email should be: Dear____ , we have moved our site to a new location can you please edit our link?
I love giving value.. The more value I give the more value I get (aka karma, and yes I am a hippie)
When you contact these sites webmaster you can check their sites in a broken link checker tool or find something to help them improve. If you cannot find something to improve at least be somewhat entertaining. Remember webmasters are people too!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Redirecting Ecommerce Site
Hi I'm working on a big site migration I'm setting up redirects for all the old categories to point to the new ones. I'm doing this based on relevancy, the categories don't match up exactly but I've tried to redirect to the most relevant alternative. Would this be the right approach?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Is it best to 301 redirect or use canonical Url when consolidating two pages?
I have build several pages (A and B) with high quantity content. Page A is aged and gets lots of organic traffic, ranks for lots of valuable keywords, and has only internal links to this page. Page B is newer (6 months) and gets little traffic, ranks for no keywords, but has terrific content and many high value external links. As Page A and B are related to a similar theme, I was going to merge content from page B onto page A, but don't know which would be the best approach for handling the links going to page B. For the purposes of keep as much link equity as possible, is it best to us a 301 redirect from B to A or use a canonical URL from B to A?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cutopia0 -
301 redirecting a site that currently links to the target site
I have a personal blog that has a good amount of back links pointing at it from high quality relevant authoritative sites in my niche. I also run a company in the same niche. I link to a page on the company site from the personal blog article that has bunch of relevant links pointing at it (as it's highly relevant to the content on the personal blog). Overview: Relevant personal blog post has a bunch of relevant external links pointing at it (completely organic). Relevant personal blog post then links (externally) to relevant company site page and is helping that page rank. Question: If I do the work to 301 the personal blog to the company site, and then link internally from the blog page to the other relevant company page, will this kill that back link or will the internal link help as much as the current external link does currently? **For clarity: ** External sites => External blog => External link to company page VS External sites => External blog 301 => Blog page (now on company blog) => Internal link to target page I would love to hear from anyone that has performed this in the past 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Keyword_NotProvided0 -
301 Redirecting an Entire Site
I have a question which has had me thinking for hours..... If SITE A is ranking well on a number of search phrases and you 301 that site to another (SITE B). The site will change on the Google SERPs to the site which you've re-directed to... In this case SITE B. But how do you maintain the rankings of SITE A?. Do you keep the rankings of SITE A forever? Or will your rankings of SITE A (now SITE B) gradually slip as other sites rank higher? As you can no longer edit SITE A does Google take into consideration the content on SITE B and no longer take anything that SITE A had to offer into consideration? SITE B has simply replaced it in the SERPs??...... Please can anybody help? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | karl620 -
Restructuring/Removing 301 Redirects Due To Newly Optimized Keywords
Just to be clear, this is for one unique page on a website. Also, please see my diagram attached. Let's say that a page's URL was originally /original. So, you optimize the page for a new keyword (keyword 1), and therefore change the URL to /keyword-1. A 301 redirect would then be placed... /original > /keyword-1 However, let's say 6 months down the road you realize that the keyword you optimized the page for (keyword 1) just isn't working. You research for a new keyword, and come up with (keyword 2). So, you'd like to rename the page's URL to /keyword-2. After placing a redirect from the current page (keyword 1) to the 'now' new page (keyword 2), it would look like this... /original > /keyword-1 > /keyword-2 We know that making a server go through more than one redirect slows the server load time, and even more 'link-juice' is lost in translation. Because of this, would it make sense to remove the original redirect and instead place redirects like this? /original > /keyword-2 /keyword-1 > /keyword-2 To me, this would make the most sense for preserving SEO. However, I've read that removing 301 redirects can cause user issues due to browsers caching the now 'removed' redirect. Even if this is ideal for SEO, could it be more work than it's worth? Does anyone have any experience/input on this? If so, I greatly appreciate your time! oDvLl.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LogicalMediaGroup1 -
Is 301 redirect suggested on pagination pages
Hi - Due to pagination the default page of site is coming in 2 url with - ?page=1/ sub-url and /sub-url is 301 a recommended solution due to this pagination urls Also - is it required to create separate title and meta description of every pagination page We are taking specifically in context of our discounts and offer section http://www.mycarhelpline.com/index.php?option=com_offers&view=list&Itemid=9
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
What will happen after I 301 this domain?
A while back I created a new website. Somehow my "scratch" copies of the site got indexed even though I didn't have links built to them. (In the future I will use noindex tags when I am playing around with designing). Now, I have three versions of the site online...let's call them TheRealSite.com and Practice1.com and Practice2.com. Practice1.com and Practice2.com now rank #1 for their main keyword. (It's a relatively uncompetitive niche). TheRealSite.com is somewhere lower than page 20 despite having an exact keyword match domain name. I'm assuming that Google considered it duplicate content as it is the exact same thing as Practice1 and 2. I had considered simply removing Practice1 and 2 from the server, but I was worried that if I did that, I would lose my #1 rankings if TheRealSite didn't recover. So, what I've done is 301 redirect Practice1 and Practice2 to TheRealSite. I'm guessing that over time TheRealSite will come back to #1 and then I can just remove the files from Practice1 and Practice2. Is this the best way to handle this situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes1 -
Should I 301 Redirect Old Pages to Newer Ones?
I know there is value having lots of unique content on our websites, but I'm wondering how long it should be kept for, and if there is any value in 301 redirecting it? So, for example we have a number of pages on our website that are dedicated to single products (blue widget x, blue widget y, red widget x, red widget y). Nice unique content, with some (but not many) links. These products are no longer available though and have been replaced. So I'm faced with three choices: 1. Leave it as it is, and hope it adds to the overall site authority (by value of being another page), and also perhaps mop up a few longer tail keywords. Add a link to the replacement product on these pages; 2. 301 redirect these pages to the replacement products to give these a bit of a boost, and lose the content; 3. 301 redirect these pages to the replacement products and move all the old content to a new 'blue widgets archive' and 'red widgets archive' page? Would appreciate everyones thoughts!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigMiniMan0