Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Closing down site and redirecting its traffic to another
-
OK - so we currently own two websites that are in the same industry.
Site A is our main site which hosts real estate listings and rentals in Canada and the US.
Site B hosts rentals in Canada only.
We are shutting down site B to concentrate solely on Site A, and will be looking to redirect all traffic from Site B to Site A, ie. user lands on Toronto Rentals page on Site B, we're looking to forward them off to Toronto Rentals page on Site A, and so on. Site A has all the same locations and property types as Site B.
On to the question:
We are trying to figure out the best method of doing this that will appease both users and the Google machine. Here's what we've come up with (2 options):
When user hits Site B via Google/bookmark/whatever, do we:
1. Automatically/instantly (301) redirect them to the applicable page on Site A?
2. Present them with a splash page of sorts ("This page has been moved to Site A. Please click the following link <insert anchor="" text="" rich="" url="" here="">to visit the new page.").</insert>
We're worried that option #1 might confuse some users and are not sure how crawlers might react to thousands of instant redirects like that.
Option #2 would be most beneficial to the end-user (we're thinking) as they're being notified, on page, of what's going on. Crawlers would still be able to follow the URL that is presented within the splash write-up.
Thoughts? We've never done this before. It's basically like one site acquiring another site; however, in this case, we already owned both sites. We just don't have time to take care of Site B any longer due to the massive growth of Site A.
Thanks for any/all help.
- Marc
-
Hi Mark,
I personally would run a clean 301 to the new site, then use something like $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] (in PHP) to determine where the user came from. If it's from the old site, run a small banner in the header (like Hello bar) to advise your users of the change. This would be a lot cleaner for search engines and very user friendly.
Don't forget to transfer the sites worth using webmasters...
Hope this helps.
Dan
-
Hi,
Most definitely do a 301 redirect because it will keep most of your link juice and it will let the search engine know that the page/site has moved. As long as the page is redirected to a relevant logical page you will be fine... no matter how many 301s you do. However if the page does not make sense to redirect do not redirect instead you can display a 404 page (splash page) etc...
From the user end they will be redirected to the new page. If the origin of the redirect is the old domain (site B) try to change it, or edit it so it has the new location/anchor.
-
Thanks for the insight. We were also leaning that route.
Just a note: Site B isn't receiving much traffic anymore (maybe 1K visitors a day). Has been in a steady decline for quite some time simply due to lack of time and effort towards it.
-
I would set up a splash page letting people know that the page is going to be redirected. I believe if your receiving decent traffic to your site that the end user's experience is more important than the search engine value. You could also set up a splash page that reads they will automatically be redirected within "set amount of seconds"
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
-
The use of a ghost site for SEO purposes
Hi Guys, Have just taken on a new client (.co.uk domain) and during our research have identified they also have a .com domain which is a replica of the existing site but all links lead to the .co.uk domain. As a result of this, the .com replica is pushing 5,000,000+ links to the .co.uk site. After speaking to the client, it appears they were approached by a company who said that they could get the .com site ranking for local search queries and then push all that traffic to .co.uk. From analytics we can see that very little referrer traffic is coming from the .com. It sounds remarkably dodgy to us - surely the duplicate site is an issue anyway for obvious reasons, these links could also be deemed as being created for SEO gain? Does anyone have any experience of this as a tactic? Thanks, Dan
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOBirmingham810 -
Acquire domains to boost yours, how to redirect an acquired domain
What is the best way to redirect for best SEO benefits? Examples: glaspunt.nl -> glas.nl fietstassen.eu -> loodgieter.nl Any technical information how to (root) redirect for best SEO practices?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | remkoallertz0 -
How to 301 redirect from old domain and their pages to new domain and pages?
Hi i am a real newbie to this and i hope for a guide on how to do this. I seen a few moz post and is quiet confusing hopefully somebody able to explain it in layman terms to me. I would like to 301 redirect this way, both website contain the same niche. oldwebsite.com > newwebsite.com and also its pages..... oldwebsite.com/test >newwebsite.com/test So my question here is i would like to host my old domain and its pages in my new website hosting in order to redirect to my new domain and its pages how do i do that? would my previous page link overwrite my new page link? or it add on the juice link? Do i need to host the whole old domain website into my new hosting in order to redirect the old pages? really confusing here, thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andzon0 -
Can I 301 redirect old URLs to staging URLs (ex. staging.newdomain.com) for testing?
I will temporarily remove a few pages from my old website and redirect them to a new domain but in staging domain. Once the redirection is successful, I will remove the redirection rules in my .htaccess and get the removed pages back to live. Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | esiow20130 -
Thousands of 301 redirections - .htaccess alternatives?
Hi guys, I just want to ask if there are other possible issues/problems (other than server load) once we implement 301 redirections for 10,000+ URLs using .htaccess. Are there other alternatives?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | esiow20130 -
A site is using their competitors names in their Meta Keywords and Descriptions
I can't imagine this is a White Hat SEO technique, but they don't seem to be punished for it by Google - yet. How does Google treat the use of your competitors names in your meta keywords/descriptions? Is it a good idea?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PeterConnor0 -
Site being targeted by hardcore porn links
We noticed recently a huge amount of referral traffic coming to a client's site from various hard cord porn sites. One of the sites has become the 4th largest referrer and there are maybe 20 other sites sending traffic. I did a Whois look up on some of the sites and they're all registered to various people & companies, most of them are pretty shady looking. I don't know if the sites have been hacked or are deliberately sending traffic to my client's site, but it's obviously a concern. The client's site was compromised a few months ago and had a bunch of spam links inserted into the homepage code. Has anyone else seen this before? Any ideas why someone would do this, what the risks are and how we fix it? All help & suggestions greatly appreciated, many thanks in advance. MB.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MattBarker0 -
Penalised by Google - Should I Redirect to a new domain?
Last month my rankings dropped a couple of pages on Google and am no longer receiving as many visits from Google as I used to. It's coming up to summer which is the time my business naturally picks up yet I can't fix this problem. I have a crazy idea of redirecting my established site onto a new domain in hopes that the penalty would be removed. I have tried removing any manipulative links yet my ranking are not coming back. Anyone had success in redirecting to a new domain?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | penn730