How does the Google Treat 301 Redirects?
-
Hi,
My website was one of many that dropped in rankings this last Friday, The company that i outsourced my SEO 4 months ago did a bad job. Now i'm doing everything my self to recover, so i was thinking getting a new hosting, duplicate the website with a same content (i have original quality content) and 301 my old domain to new one? How long can it last with Google? Can penalties be passed via 301 redirects ?
Looking forward to your help.
-
You need to think about whether your site has been hit with a manual penalty or an algorithm penalty. If you have had no messages in WMT then it is probably an algorithm penalty. Panda is now part of all algorithm changes so you may have been hit by that.
One of our testing sites got hit by Penguin in May and we decided to test out if a 301 to a new website would work...it didnt!! It took just over 5 weeks for Google to catch up and the site lost all its rankings again. I was actually surprised it took that long to be honest, Google's algorithm is too smart for that so I would advise trying to fix any problems before you give up and start a new website.
Penalties will last as long as you have the problem. The issue here is, if it is an algorithm change then it is harder to figure out what is wrong. Whilst a manual penalty is worse, at least you know what to do in order to fix the problem. You need to look at any duplicate content issues you may have and if that is all ok then look deep into your backlink profile because it must be 1 or the other. If you show us your URL then maybe one of us could take a quick look and give you some more info.
-
Hi,
Everything Sharia says is correct in terms of being sure you know what you are dealing with. Assuming that your drop in rankings/traffic is related to the reported penguin update last weekend and again assuming that the bad job your seo firm did was related to building loads of crappy links to your site then I would suggest taking a deep breath and start looking for more information on penguin/penguin recovery. There is lots of info on this on the qa and the blogs, for example:
http://moz.com/blog/the-difference-between-penguin-and-an-unnatural-links-penalty-and-some-info-on-panda-too
http://moz.com/ugc/what-a-penguin-recovery-looks-likeA short answer to your question is that there seem to be mixed thoughts on using 301s to try and 'get out' of a penguin related drop in rankings. Personally I think the balance of opinion points towards 301s being either a very short term tactic or else just passing the problem on to the new page/domain. So I would not jump into the 301 to a new domain route without thinking things through (a lot!). A couple more relevant posts:
http://moz.com/blog/save-your-website-with-redirects
http://moz.com/blog/google-disavow-tool -
Do you have more information about what went wrong? I think the first step would be an in depth analysis to try and discover why your ratings went down. Did they just fall for the first time last Friday; did you get any penalty notifications; was it four months ago they started falling? Why do you say your SEO company did a bad job - how?
There are many reasons a site can fall in the SERPs, and they aren't all penalty related. And, it is possible to recover from some penalties. I've seen sites fall after algorithm changes even when a site has been doing everything correctly. Sometimes volatility is temporary. Google Local hit a couple of our clients pretty hard just because they no longer ranked across the county, a big disappointment since we'd successfully put a lot of quality work into getting them to the top.
Anyway, if you give more information, it will be easier for the heads here to give you good answers.
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
-
What is the difference between rel canonical and 301's?
Hi Guys I have been told a few times to add the rel canonical tag to my category pages - however every category page actually is different from the other - besides the listings that I have for my staff on each pages. Some of them specialise in areas that cross over in other areas - but over really if I'm re directing for eg: Psychic Readings over to Love and Relationships because 5 of my staff members are in both categories - the actual delivering of content and in depth of the actual category which skills are provided at different levels don't justify me creating a rel tag from Psychic Readings over to Love and Relationships just because i have 5 staff members listed under both categories. Tell me have I got this right or completely wrong? Here is an eg: Psychic Readings category https://www.zenory.com/psychic-readings And love and relationships category - https://www.zenory.com/love-relationships Hope this makes sense - I really look forward to your guys feedback! Cheers
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Google Reconsideration Requests no problem... So what do I do next?
Hi all, So I recently filed a Google reconsideration request - but it came back saying "No manual spam actions found" - ok, so that's that. But from what I've read, if we have been hit by Panda for duplicate or thin content, we wouldn't know - in other words, Google does not report it as it is an algorhythm penalty as opposed to a manual one. So what are my options - do I wait until the next Panda update? when can that be? Or do I start over on a fresh domain? Input and views appreciated. thanks,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs20100 -
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...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Seanbain0 -
I think my site is affected by a Google glitch...or something
Although google told me No manual spam actions found i had not received an unnatural link request notice i figured it would be a good idea to clean these up so i did. So i have submitted 3 reconsideration requests from google. They all came back with the same response: No manual spam actions found. I really doubt that anyone at google really checked those out.You will notice that i don't even appear on page 1-10 at all...its clearly google filtering the site out from the results(except for my brand terms), but i have no idea what for.What do you guys think it is? If you see anythign let me know so i can have it fixed.This has been going on for 2 months now...my company has been around for a long time...i dont understand why suddenly im not showing up in searches for the keyword si used to rank for...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CMTM0 -
Link Building after Google updates!
Hello All, I just wanted to ask the question to start a discussion on link building after the Google Updates. I haven't been very proactive lately with regards to link building due to the updates and not wanting to get penalised! Are there any link building trends/techniques people are using since the changes? Thanks, seo_123
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TWPLC_seo0 -
Can Using Google Analytics Make You More Prone to Deindexation?
Hi, I'm aggressively link building for my clients using blog posts and have come upon information that using Google Analytics (as well as GWT, etc.) may increase my chance of deindexation. Anyone have any thoughts on this topic? I'm considering using Piwik as an alternative if this is the case. Thanks for your thoughts, Donna
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebMarketingHUB0 -
Will Google Penalize Content put in a Div with a Scrollbar?
I noticed Moosejaw was adding quite a bit of content to the bottom of category pages via a div tag that makes use of a scroll bar. Could a site be penalized by Google for this technique? Example: http://www.moosejaw.com/moosejaw/shop/search_Patagonia-Clothing____
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BrandLabs0 -
Is it possible that since the Google Farmer's Update, that people practicing Google Bowling can negatively affect your site?
We have hundreds of random bad links that have been added to our sites across the board that nobody in our company paid for. Two of our domains have been penalized and three of our sites have pages that have been penalized. Our sites are established with quality content. One was built in 2007, the other in 2008. We pay writers to contribute quality and unique content. We just can't figure out a) Why the sites were pulled out of Google indexing suddenly after operating well for years b) Where the spike in links came from. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dahnyogaworks0