How to transfer 5 domains under one Brand domain without using 301 redirect with minimum SEO loss
-
My situation is rather complicated , I have 5 domains with different but identical services. Some with good traffic some without, but 2 main domains have manual penalty from Google (I have tried a lot to get rid of the penalty but no success) so finally I have decided to move all our websites under one anchor website 'a brand' and pass all the seo juice + blog articles under the same.
Now the problem with the procedure is that we cannot redirect the penalized domain urls to new one as penalization will also be transferred and the whole motive of creating a new brand will be lost.
So if somebody could guide me as of how I should proceed transferring SEO value with minimum traffic loss but without using 301)
**One way I could figure out is using canonical (Am not confident over it) but say I create 5 identical pages on new domain and declare them as canonical of old domain pages (So is it safe? will it transfer the penalty of old domain to canonical new urls? ) **
Rest i am bifurcating all the traffic sources like direct / organic / referral / Social etc and chalking out what we can control manually and in what ratio, gradually I will work on each section to transfer the traffic.
Main Problem is of Organic and Not available.
Some suggestions or blog urls would be appreciated.
-
Thanks a tons , Yes you are right if I don't want to pass link juice then I can always use 302 instead of 301. I will move along these lines
-
Okay, if you're not interested in maintaining organic traffic to the current site we have a few options.
In theory Google shouldn't even crawl the page to see the redirect if you Disallow: /, so that solution works fine. Still, I'd use a 302 redirect just in case Google the robots.txt doesn't catch something (maybe a subdomain with a different robots.txt or something) or if Google crawls a page before refreshing robots rules (they shouldn't).
So yes, your solution works fine, but I'd use a type of redirect that doesn't pass link as much equity like a 302 redirect just to be extra safe. Over a long period of time Google may treat 302 redirects more like 301s, but by then you'll be sure that Google understands not to even crawl the site so it won't matter.
-
Thanks for a good response first of all my confusion over canonical is cleared because as Google treats 301s and Canonical both as nearly same, I was doubtful if penalization will also be transfered, Anyways as I dont want to take any risk I can go for this technique with no follow link.
But i had one more thing in mind,(kindly note am not looking to transfer organic traffic) but I don't want to loose other sources so for that say my page is :
**www.oldsite.com/blog/example I will 301 it to a new location www.newsite.com/blog/example, now to avoid SEO juice + penalization to be passed to newsite I will block that particular old page from googlebot using Robot.txt or htaccess , so now google cannot access that old page and for the user its redirected to new page. **
Will this work? i.e. my new website would be safe from penalization ?
-
For the sites that are penalized you have a few options. Canonical tags can transfer penalty in some circumstances, as will 301 redirects. Over time even a 302 redirect may begin to be treated more like a 301 redirect.
If you're just worried about direct traffic only, simply noindex, nofollow the whole site, disallow it all in robots.txt. After that you can do something like a client-side-rendering JS redirect or a popup with a nofollow link to the new location.
If you're worried about losing current organic traffic, you will have to avoid any redirects or noindexing and direct people over to the new location with something like a popup that contains a nofollow link to the new location. It's not ideal, but you can't do any redirects that aren't potentially harmful when pages have low-quality links pointing to them. Hopefully over time the new site will start to rank instead, and you can pull the old site down. Or, if the penalty is eventually cleared, you can 301 redirect the old site over.
-
Here is What I will Do if I were You.
Simply Copy all databases of 5 Websites and Integrate them Into One Brand Website.
Delete everything from penguin hit websites. Let them die..
I have done this with our Penalty hit websites and New website started to Rank in few Weeks for Long tail Keywords.
Thanks
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
-
Huge Traffic Drop without any change on website
Hello there, I've experienced a huge website traffic drop and I can't find a reason. I redesigned and updated the SEO strategy in early December and the traffic was increasing, that's why I have no idea why that is happening. I have a video on home page and the views/day dropped a lot as well, but not as much as website visits! Any inputs? Best regards, NIB6rwF.png
Reporting & Analytics | | jancpc1 -
Exact match domains DOMINTATING the serps
For longer tail keywords with typical local monthly search volume of 50 or so, there are exact match domains that are just killing it. Take for instance "alabama registered agent", I'm showing www.alabamaregisteredagent.com in the first spot ahead of the state department, etc. This site has zero links in OSE (DA and PA 1) and is a very small site in general. Can anyone explain why this domain is doing so well?
Reporting & Analytics | | Harbor_Compliance0 -
Google Webmaster Preferred Domain Settings Help
I was recently running my SEO Moz report for my domain and saw a drastic drop in page rankings on the report. After some trouble shooting, I checked my Google Webmaster Tools and saw the "Preferred Domain for my Site has changed" the last week in which I saw the drastic drop. Under the "preferred domain" area, I have it set to www.marware.com but on most of the links to my site, it reads www.marware.com/ . We also have http://marware.com , but am not sure if this carries any relevance as the preferred domain is set for www.marware.com . Does the "/" make a difference in the "Preferred Domain" section? If so, how do I update it? Is there a way to confirm it is set up correctly? In the photo attached, what does "Linked Property" "Analytics Web Property" and "Associated Webmaster Tools Site" mean? Thanks in advance! T5tSCxm
Reporting & Analytics | | Khadaran0 -
Spike in 404 Errors from a redirecting domain
All, The non www version of a site I own redirects to the www version. Recently, WMT began showing a big spike in 404 errors (1,000+) on the non www version of the site. Site traffic is off about 15% since the spike in 404 errors. There was also a brief period about two weeks ago, where the site went down due to an issue with the code that has now been resolved. Any ideas how WMT is showing 404 errors on redirected pages? Thanks, John
Reporting & Analytics | | JSOC0 -
Google WebMasters Tool - Preferred Domain
I just added Google Analytics to my wordpress site with Google Analytics by YOAST. I then added Google WebMaster tools through via verify through google analytics account. I then tried to set a preferred domain. I chose the non www. version; however, google wanted me to verify ownership of both versions in order to set a preferred domain. I then added the www. version of my domain. I was able to set the non-www. version to my preferred domain. Now, there are two example.com's in my webmaster tools. I have 10 sites. I intend to replicate this process on all of my sites. Do I have to leave the non-preferred version of my sites in the google webmaster? Can I delete it after I have set my preferred version? If I delete the non-preferred version will it delete my setting on the preferred version because it is now no longer verified (saved)?
Reporting & Analytics | | JML11791 -
SEO implications of moving from https to http
We're considering moving from 100% https to http to improve performance. What, if any, SEO implications are there? Do search engines need redirects when changing from https to http pages?
Reporting & Analytics | | BlueAcorn0 -
Setting up GA to report on sub domains
I've just launched a mobile version of my site at m.mydomain.com. I could do with a bit of help just checking I've inserted my Google Analytics code correctly though. I've chosen the sub domain option from settings and pasted the code into both the mobile and the non-mobile version of my sites. However, am I right in thinking that the setDomain attribute should point to two different domains for example: _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'm.mydomain.com']); (for the mobile site) and: _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'mydomain.com']); (for the standard site) Thanks very much for your help!
Reporting & Analytics | | theshortstack0 -
Does using Google URL Builder override original source in Google Analytics?
During a free trial on Tatango, we send daily emails to customers to give them advice, resources, etc. We started using Google URL Builder http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55578 to create individual links in each of these emails, but when the customer purchases a subscription now, the source in GA isn't Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. they are all showing up as the source we created using the URL builder for each email. Does Google URL builder override the original source in Google Analytic?
Reporting & Analytics | | Tatango0