302 redirects - redirecting numerous domains into main primary domain
-
302 Redirects - We are a digital agency carrying out some SEO analysis for a potential client. The client has bought over 150 different domains and redirected (302) them into his main domain. The domains were bought up based on relevant industry keywords and protection.
On first instance this seems like a Black hat technique that Google would most definitely punish - buying up domains and redirecting them to main website.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Thanks...
-
Hi Sean,
If these are just domains they bought that never had any content, there's nothing to worry about here. Lots of brands buy their .net/.co/.etc versions, spelling variations, and any branded/product terms to prevent squatters from moving in. Redirects of any sort are fine in this case.
If they're buying companies along with their domains, also don't worry about it. In fact, I'd say use a 301 redirect in those cases. Google does a decent job of understanding formal purchases and looking for official proof, and they're not going to penalize someone who redirects the site of a company they've purchased to their own.
Finally, if they're buying domains based on the link profile, i/.e. just for the sake of links, then you need to start worrying. It's less problematic with 302 redirects, but I would recommend against this type of domain buying altogether. Some people use expired domains as a method of indirect link buying.
Here's a still-relevant piece from Danny:
http://searchengineland.com/do-links-from-expired-domains-count-with-google-17811
-
Thanks for for your feedback guys! It's greatly appreciated
As I mentioned on first instance this strategy screamed Black Hat at us. We decided to carry out some research in to 302 redirects to see if anything cropped up. The general consensus was that 302 redirects were not harmful for SEO and did not pass any link juice. So this planted a tiny seed of doubt in our minds to completely categorizing this as black hat. So I came to the SEOmoz community to get some concrete answers and you guys confirmed our initial thoughts.
At the moment based on your feedback I think we wil recommend culling the irrelevant domains and redirecting a couple of the relevant domains to an affiliate site and then redirecting that site to the main site (just like you suggested Shledon). I completely agree with you when you say relevancy is key.
Any more thoughts on the issue are more than welcome..
Thanks again
-
I'd say you covered all the bases, Brad. I don't know what you could have done to protect yourself any more. Sean, I think your client is playing a dangerous game. My advice would be to first cull any of those additional sites that aren't highly relevant to their own. Write them off as a bad investment. One thought that occurs to me is that rather than setting a 302 from all the remaining sites to the client's site, maybe you could redirect them to a selected site from their recent acquisitions. Then redirect THAT site to the client's site. Using 302s is still safer, IMO, while you go through the process of requesting changes on link destinations. Relevance is obviously the key... stretching that is treading on thin ice. My approach to that is, if it needs any statement of justification.... it's not justifiable.
-
This is pretty dangerous business. Not sure what they spent on all those domains but I could quickly see Google stripping out all the value if this isn't handled properly.
I recently acquired a small competitor. There were good business reasons for the acquisition but we still wanted to tread carefully with the new domain. Here is what we are doing.
The domain was actually a website that we did not want to maintain so we 301 redirected all the urls up to the homepage and then placed an announcement on that page of our acquisition. The announcement is an image that clicks through to our website. We intentionally did not include any anchor text. Next we issued a press release of the acquisition. The press release is a good line in the stand in case Google did anything crazy to us. We would be able to point back to the date and let them know this was a business move. Next we started reaching out to all the backlinks and making a friendly request to move their links from the previous name to ours. In our eyes any site that moves it to us is a long term win because the risk of the value being stripped out goes way down. Next we sent an email to the customer base informing them of the acquisition and a discount code for trying out our services. Finally, once the outreach to change links is done and the smoke clears (3,6, 12 months down the road) we will place the 301 redirect on the domain to our site.
This is the only way I would suggest buying domains and redirecting. Buying domains for search purposes is blackhat, period. Buying competitors or other sites that help your business but also could help you in search is not. We have decided to take a safer approach to maximize value and mitigate risk.
-
I'd agree that it's a bad idea, particularly at that scale. If relevance of the redirected domains is high, and it's just a couple of domains, I imagine it wouldn't be a problem. The fact that they're using a 302 will afford them some protection, but how long are they planning to leave that "temporary" redirect in place?
-
Im in favor of buying domains that are close to your brand and redirecting, but buying over 100+ domains to redirect isn't smart. Unless they have a strategy built around populating unique content around them - its not a good move.
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
-
301 Redirect Backlinks from Forbes,CNN.
Hello, I have seen on many places people are selling 301 Redirect Links Via Top Authority websites Like Forbes,CNN etc . How do they do it? and is it safe to have such links? I have researched a lot but not found any useful information to implement it. Any Idea how to do it? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ademirates0 -
.com geotagging redirect to subdomains - will it affect SEO?
Hi guys, We have a .com domain and we've got geoIP on it, so UK goes to .co.uk and USA goes to .com/us We're just migrating over to another platform so we're thinking of keeping a "dummy" server just to do this geoIP pointing for us. Essentially .com will just point over to the right place and hold a specific .com/abc (which is generic for everyone worldwide) Current Scenario:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Infruition
.com (Magento + geoIP)
.com/us (US Magento)
.co.uk (UK - geoIP redirect to Shopify)
.com/abc (sits on Magento server) Wanted Scenario:
.com - used for GEOIP and a specific .com/abc (for all users)
.co.uk (UK) - Shopify eCom
.com/us -> migration to us.xx.com (USA) - Shopify eCom I just wanted to know if this will affect our rankings on google? Also, any advice as to the best practises here would be great. Thanks! Nitesh0 -
Why would my domain authority drop 2 points ?and how can i bring my domain authority back up?'.
why would my domain authority drop 2 points ?and how can i bring my domain authority back up?'.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | aronwp0 -
Best Location to find High Page Authority/ Domain Authority Expired Domains?
Hi, I've been looking online for the best locations to purchase expired domains with existing Page Authority/ Domain Authority attached to them. So far I've found: http://www.expireddomains.net
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | VelasquezEF
http://www.domainauthoritylinks.com
http://moonsy.com/expired_domains/ These site's are great but I'm wondering if I'm potentially missing other locations? Any other recommendations? Thanks.1 -
How cloudflare might affect "rank juice" on numerous domains due to limited IP range?
We have implemented quite a few large websites onto cloudflare and have been very happy with our results. Since this has been successful so far, we have been considering putting some other companies on CL as well, but have some concerns due to the structure of their business and related websites. The companies run multiple networks of technology, review, news, and informational websites. All have good content (Almost all unique to each website) and rankings currently, but if implemented to cloudflare, would be sharing DNS and most likely IP's with eachother. Raising a concern of google reducing their link juice because it would be detected as if it was coming from the same server, such as people used to do for their blog farms. For example, they might be tasked to write an article on XYZ company's new product. A unique article would be generated for 5-10 websites, all with unique, informative, valid and relevant content to each domain; Including links, be it direct or contextual, to the XYZ product or website URL. To clarify, so there is no confusion...each article is relevant to its website... technology website- artciel about the engineering of xyz product
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MNoisy
business website - How xyz product is affecting the market or stock price
howto website - How the xyz product is properly used Currently all sites are on different IP's and servers due to their size, but if routed through cloudflare, will Google simply detect this as duplicate linking efforts or some type of "black hat" effort since its coming from cloudflare? If yes, is there a way to prevent this while still using CL?
If no, why and how is this different than someone doing this to trick google? Thank you in advance! I look forward to some informative answers.0 -
301 Redirect Asp.net Help
Hey, we are redesigning the site and we are changing a lot of urls to make them more SEO friendly But some of the old urls have PR 4-5 What is the best way to do about this? How to do a 301 redirect for specific pages in asp.net Or do you recommend something elsE? Thanks in advance
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Madz0 -
Geotargeting a new domain without impacting traffic to existing domain
I had previously asked this as a 'private question' and couldn't make it a 'public question' automatically-- hence reposting it as a new question: We have an existing site, let's say www.xyz.com --- which attracts traffic from all over the world (including the US), though it's primary audience is the UK/ Europe. Most of this traffic is via organic search results on Google. Now, there is a business case to launch a US-centric website -- www.xyz.us, which will have most of its content from the original site (probably with some localization). Our goal is that on day 1 when the new site xyz.us is launched, we want all traffic originating from the US (and may be some other North American countries) to be directed to the .us domain instead of the .com domain. We don't want to lose any search engine traffic; equally importantly, we want this to be done in a manner that is seen by the search engines as a legitimate technique. What are the best options to do this such that the new .US site automatically inherits all of the traffic from the .com site on day 1, without either of these sites getting penalized in any form. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ontarget-media0 -
Is domain name or page title "safe" as anchor text?
I am aware of the dangers of excessively optimized anchor text I have seen some suggestions that as long as your anchor text is either the URL or the page title that this will be OK, no matter how many links come in with that anchor text. Does anyone have an opinion, or even any hard data on this? Thx Paul
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | diogenes0