Re-Direct
-
We plan to re-direct our current site to a new site (with a new domain name as well) because the current site has many unnatural links and it would take too many hours to fix it and yet, the result is unknown and also the site has issues with userability and other SEO issues.
Our question: since the current site is associated with unnatural links, but, it is a domain with 12 years history, should we re-direct it to the new website? My understanding is that no one is sure if the penalty will be carried over, is it something we can cut off if it happened? or should we not to risk re-direct, and just start from fresh?
-
Its a great discussion. I doubt that Google or Bing will give us a real answer.
But if you can forward negative SEO then we are in a heap of trouble.
As far as testing this, I say go for it. Mr. Cutts says that if you get an algo penalty and you undo it then the penalty is undone.
-
I've read countless people's take on the "will the bad follow the 301" issue and need to say I've seen about a 50/50 split. I have yet to see an actual case study on it though.
The fact that the existing site is 12 years old is also something with varying views - the only real benefit for age is for a site that gets 301 redirects with no content change on a page-to-page level (UX design can change without impacting that). If you were to 301 and change content, any age value would be lost as soon as Google reevaluated the new content based on current factors.
So the issue does come down to whether to 301 or not. Hopefully someone has done a real case study and will at some point blog about it or provide a link to it if it's already out there.
-
yes you can, but I would try and filter the good links from teh bad and redirect only them.
-
I understand both of your views (Alan and Thomas'), and my feel for it is 50 & 50, hmmm, what should I do?
Can I then, have both sites, let the current one there to capture residual sales from SEO, and keep the new one separate, and build from scratch. Does this sound like a good plan?
-
A web site would have to be configured to acceppt that domain using host headers or to point taht domain to a interanl ip address so except for the unusealy setup that trick would not work in the vast majority of cases.
If 301ing good links works, then why not bad ones.
-
If the penalties carry over and it's an algorithmic penalty then simply undoing it would undo the penalty. From what I hear the penalties don't carry through a 301 redirect. If you are worried about penalties then it would be best to make the 301 redirects and not notify google through webmaster tools of the site move.
Logically, if 301 redirects could carry penalties over then we would have a whole new set of nasty tricks happening. Could you imagine being able to simply redirect a few websites to take down a competitor?
-
It is almost certain that the penalty is carried over. If i were a search engine i would ceratinly make sure thet loop hole was not avaialble.
If you know the domains that are affected, you can redirect conditionly to fic the problem.
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
-
Direct from one website toanother but different domain name
i have two web site same subject but two different name how can i direct ?
Link Building | | fabric-fabric0 -
Can a feeder site link directly to the main site?
I have a client that has several coupons sites. They have about 15 different URLS all of which are [city]deals.com all of the domains have coupons lists that are relevant to that area. Other than the coupons there is not any other content on the sites. There is a Main site however, that has coupons, content, store locations, blogs, news etc... The coupons on the feeder sites are displayed differently than what is displayed on the main site. They are also categorized differently. So the question is on the feeder sites can they have the coupon link directly to the store page on the main site?
Link Building | | Firestarter-SEO0 -
I have well over 110 identical backlinks of widely varying quality - is it worth taking the page they're linking to down?
The site on which I'm working has been experiencing a month-to-month decline since the Panda and Penguin updates - I didn't get an unnatural links notification, but have clearly fallen off the face of Google with many of the more important rankings. After running a scan on my backlinks, I found over 110 identical backlinks (it looks like the same medical definition and my website is listed in the endnotes as a source - just the URL, not anchor text), some from reputable websites with high pageranks and others that look very 'spammy.' We've redesigned the architecture of the site, so the actual link itself has a 301 redirect on it, but I'm just wondering exactly how much of a liability is it to have these links out there? I'm guessing it's an all or nothing kind of thing given the identical content on each page - on one hand, I'm pretty frantic to get to the root of the Google penalties and get back in their good graces. On the other hand, I don't want to kill the site completely by going after a set of valuable links. Has anyone dealt with this before?
Link Building | | travis-taylor0 -
Should I re-update Google webmaster disavow when bad neighbor republish my Feeds?
Hi all! I have a self hosted, WordPress blog. Today I accidentally found a one bad site republish my blog feeds in its sidebar. This blog has cracked software download links, software serial numbers information as well as few legal contents. I think it's is a bad neighbor. And it will cause future SEO issues. That blog hosted on Google blogspot. Then try to contact the site admin to remove my feeds from the sidebar. But I can't find any contact information. This site doesn't have any social networking profiles/pages. How do I block that site re-publishing my feeds? It uses a blogspot.com sub domain, therefore I can't find any who is information. If I use Google webmaster disavow link feature, what happen when I publish new blog posts? Then I have to re-update the webmaster tools disavow links? Thanks!
Link Building | | Godad1 -
Is it better to link back to the root domain, or the specific page you're optimizing for?
I'm working on a project our site - building links for iPhone Repair. For the term "iphone repair miami" - is it more ideal to link to the root domain (xxx.com) or to the subpage that is about iPhone Repair (xxx.com/iphone-repair)? I would imagine the latter - but obviously that page has less authority than the root. Thanks!
Link Building | | preemo0 -
Link building- Point us in the right direction
We are currently fixing crawl errors and other on page issues and have taken on board that 'content is king' and have invested a lot of time and resources into writing unique content on each of the several hundred pages on our ecommerce site (not just to avoid duplicate content but add researched content that will hopefully enhance the user experience and allow them to make the best choice of products) and earlier this year started blog writing regular content about updates, industry trends and current events e.g. Euro 2012 (all content relevant to our sector and/or products). So we are actively working to improve our SEO (and also have regularly updated social media accounts with healthy number of followers) but the problem is link building as we work in a sector where the content isn't really all that exciting so getting link backs from sharing our written content is rare and also doing an infographic and/or guest blogs would not bring anything exciting. So how do we go about building white hat links? The only thing I can see is maybe doing press release submissions but from research there is mixed feelings about this. Any advice that could point us in the right direction would be appreciated.
Link Building | | jannkuzel0 -
Guest Blog Etiquette & Re-using "Expired" Content
Hi everyone, There's two parts to this Q, which is why the title's sort of split in half. We wrote a guest blog post that we were really proud of, which took a good few hours of work. It went live about a month ago, but I just happened to notice recently that it had disappeared off the person's website - I now get a 404 error and I can't find it either using a 'site:' search in Google or via the site's own search tool. I've tried getting in touch with the webmaster, but he's no longer responding to my emails. I really don't know if a) it disappeared by accident (for whatever reason), or b) they purposefully wanted to remove it and now they're avoiding me. My two Q's: Do you think it's cheeky to re-use the content, by giving it to someone else? Or would you say it goes against guest blogging etiquette? It seems a shame to waste it, for it to disappear. If I were to re-use it, would there be any implications regarding Panda, given the fact that it was content that was once live (i.e. effectively 'duplicate', once upon a time), even if the 'original' content is no longer indexed by Google? Would it even be considered a duplicate if published again now? Many thanks in advance!
Link Building | | Gmorgan0 -
Re april 5th post on over optimization - need clarification blogging
I mainly do content creation for clients .e.g. site and blog on word press - then link the blogs to the related static page. I have been just linking to the static page using keywords that match the title tag keywords. Is that correct?
Link Building | | Doug_Hay0