Hot to move 3 websites into 1 SEO wise and recover from penaltys in the process?
-
I decided to migrate 3 EMDs and all of its content into 1 big new website.
1.) I will manually move each page/post to the new website, on new hosting.
2.) Redirect each old url to new via htaccess (how long do I have to wait before I simply change DNS records on my old domains, and just point it to the new domain - want to drop one hosting plan in the process)
3.) Tell Google via Webmaster tools, that my site has moved to the new domain.
Website A suffered from Penguin update, Website B suffered from EMD update and Website C is OK. I removed most of "bad" and "exect anchor text" links from websites.
Could I just move the content, change DNS records and tell Google that my website moved.
Any thoughts, advices and pointers are appreciated.
Tnx
Marko Strbac
-
Thanks Marko, and I am so with you on the impatience part. I have two sites I manage still being outranked by a competitor using black hat tachniques. I know, not only because their backlink profile makes it obvious, but also because I used to work for them.
I have been tempted, and even mildly pressured by my current CEO to do what they are doing. I keep saying "Stay the course. Do what's right. Time will take care of this problem."
But in the business world, one only has so much time (and patience). I mean, if your competitor can hold on with the black hat tachniques long enough, and still enough of your traffic to adversely effect your business...to the point of not having a business...what would you do?
So yousee, I totally understand your impatience. I think you are doing the right thing now. Consolidating those sites is probably your best shot at getting back on track.
While the blog post might be very interesting, I sincerely hope you don't have to write it!
Cheers,
Dana
-
Hi Dana,
Tnx for your kind words Dana, I really appreciated your opinions,.
I admit, this was more of a test project when it started, but soon some passion and love developed. I used only white hat SEO techniques at the beginning, even got a mention on imdb related articles, Over 400 visitors in a day from 1 natural referral, etc... Got a little bit of taste of a small snow ball effect.
Even with the great thing going on, somewhere along the way a "black hat" competitor, made me frustrated and impatient - I know... Rookie mistake
He copied some of my article ideas, targeted same keywords, and outranked me with obvious BS "black hat" SEO (a couple hundred profile backlinks, 10-20 high PR spammy comments, some .edu and .gov in there, etc...).
Watching his website top the SERPs and mine struggling on the bottom of 1 and top of 2 page, made me loose my focus.
I admit, I went "Grey Hat", I pushed the limits with some manual backlinks from his shady backlink profile(IMO around 10% of his backlinks), and it fired back on me. Great lesson learned
The best way to describe my situation:
If you had 4 seo related websites, would it make sense to join them?
example sites: seoreviews.com, seoaudiobooks.com, seobooks.org, seovideos.com
I know my decision to merge them and create 1 "brandable" website is the right one for users and SEO.
I hope that the quality of the new site will outrank the possible transfer of penalties from the old sites.
Hope it works, of not I have a great resource for a quality blog post: "What not to do...!"
Regards,.
Marko
-
Hi Marko,
I want to start by saying I realize how frustrated you must be to have your sites suffering due to one of several algorithms updates. Everything I am about to say is strictly my opinion and is based, of course, on not knowing all the specifics about these three websites.
This move you are suggesting, to me, doesn't address the real root of the problem. I think the EMD algorithm change was intended to effect EMDs that weren't providing great value to users/visitors. If you've already decided that this is absolutely the best course, I would encourage to continue to ask yourself: "How is consolidating these three domains into one providing improved value, content and experience for my users?"
IMHO, if you consolidate all your content into one domain, it may not necessarily have the panacea effect that you desire.Also, even if it does work, I would be prepared to ride out a big dip in rankings and traffic until Google gets it all sorted out. The domain to which you are moving everything to may suffer because it will immediately be getting a big change in its link profile. I know from experience that this can cause Google to sandbox a site (not de-indexed or even a manual penalty - just suffering from a bit in the algorithm that looks at link profile and history).
It just seems that you are making a pretty bold drastic move in order to get bold and drastic (better) results. I just want to be the voice of caution in that this move, and all of the work involved in moving content and writing redirects may not produce any positive results at all.
I'm sure you've probably already considered that possibility and most likely you've decided that the potential rewards outweigh the risks. I certainly hope it goes well and that your sites recover and flourish going forward.
Best of luck to you Marko,
Dana
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
-
I want to use a photo from an official website for my own website.IF YES HOW?
Lets suppose i downloaded a photo from a XYZ website and want to use it on my own website, and also i want to rank for same keyword, and would like to rank just below XYZ site, i know there could be copyright issue. what can be done to avoid this issue. Can i manipulate the picture in a such way that it is usable. if yes how? How can i use that official websites picture for my website, i mean, can i cite that website as a source? what is the best practice in this case? i dont want to use stock photo,i really like xyz sites pics.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam09schulz0 -
Old Website Build Effecting SEO
So this is a bit of a strange one. My latest website was built on a different domain, then transferred over (as opposed to being built on a subdomain). I was told that the domain which my site was built on wasn't indexed by Google, but looking at the Google Search Console I can see that the old domain name is showing up as the most linked to domain name of my current site - meaning it was indexed. The domain (and all of its pages) does have a 301 redirect to the new website home page (as opposed to their individual pages), but could this be causing me a problem with SEO? Additionally, my website has a sister (UK and US websites), both link to each other on the footer (which appears on every page). Could this be pulling my SEO efforts down if it is a do-follow link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Can anyone tell me if this website was built with Frontpage or another cookie cutter drag and drop website creator by looking at the source code?
Can anyone tell me if this website was built with Frontpage or another cookie cutter drag and drop website creator by looking at the source code? http://naturespremiumpestdefense.com/ Thanks, Russell
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ULTRASEM0 -
How do I best optimise a page with 3 keywords that all contain 1 common word?
I am new to this so still getting to grips with a few things. I have a page here that I want to optimise for 3 keyword phrases. Towels, Egyptian Cotton Towels, Personalised Towels http://www.towelsrus.co.uk/towels/catlist_fnct561.htm SEOmoz reports a huge number of instances of the word towels overall. Title 3 URL 1 Meta Desc 5 H1 3 H2-4 1 Body 83 B / Strong 1 IMG ALT 11 Total Keyword Usage for this Page = 108How could i restructure meta tags and descriptions to still rank for these terms but reduce the level the word towels? Similarly as this is a category how can I reduce the term towels from other on page links?Also any extra advice regarding on page optimisation would be greatly appreciated to help our efforts
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
If this is what happens when a penalty is removed, I want more penalties
So a couple of weeks ago I posted that we had submitted a reconsideration request along with a list of about 40 spam pages that were linking to us that we had attempted to have remove their links to us. On 8/3 we received a note from Google that our manual penalty had been removed. We have thousands of inbound links so these 40 pages were a minuscule part of our links and ones that we hadn't tried to get in the first place. So I thought "Great, our rankings should go up." Up until this point our year-to-year organic Google traffic was between 45% and 100% over last year. As of 8/9 our traffic is now only 26%-39% above last year. I don't think we can handle too many more penalty reversals like this one.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanTheScot0 -
SEO for eCommerce?
I'm working on a game plan for the on-page optimization for a growing e-commerce site (https://www.boutine.com) and I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with similar projects. Specifically, how to get the most SEO value out of product and category pages. Thanks in advance! -Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boutine0 -
Production and Priority Issue for SEO and Website Usability
I am a NOVICE .........My website is about 4 months old. My developer/programmer only has 4-6 hours of work a week so it is going to take 4 months to finish two weeks of work. So I have to prioritize the things that are best for SEO (Our architecture is PHP,Apache and Zend) .** If you are interested I would be curious to how you would prioritize some or all of these. Or at least as many as you can until you get bored.** 1. Optimizing Cart/Conversion - 7 hrs - (Extremely low conversion rates)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux
2. Optimizing Speed for usability -10+ hrs (Very slow on initial load time) 10-14 sec
3. Filling in all Titles and Metadata - 2 hrs
4. Contact persistence with cookie...enter data only once. - 2 hrs
5. Social panels for sharing content - 3 hrs
6. Custom notifications for those who opt in. for updates - 5 hrs
7. Shorten 12 key URL's and optimize with key words - 3 hrs (I rank this very high)
8. Install Wordpress Blog - 5-10 hrs
9. RSS Feed - 5 hrs ( Run a feed real time on side of page)
10. Create Content Management System for me - 20 hrs (So I can make changes)
11. Keywords for H-1 Tags - 1 hr
12. At tag for images - 1 hr
13. Use of bold /italics - 2 hrs
14. Canonical tag in head - 3 hrs Any expert advice will be greatly appreciated. Boodreaux PS After studying SEO for 1 month I think the priorities should be #7,#3, #2, #1, #5 (on landing pages) #11, #12,#6, #4, #13, #14, #8, #9, #100 -
Seo Hosting
Can anyone suggest me some seo hosting providers?But in better price like hostgator?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nyanainc0