Is it ok to 301 redirect this previously algorithmicly penalised site?
-
Hi All,
Is it OK to 301 redirect site A to site B?
Site A: http://goo.gl/P9Zp2y
Site B: http://goo.gl/ySDCzb
The story - in 2013 site a seemed to be penalised with some kind of anchor text algorithm penalty - SEO couldnt fix, so created site B and turned site A into a holding page with a no follow link to new site.
SEO company worked on disavow file etc, implemented in late 2013
301 redirect site A to B in late 2013 - SEO advised to stop 301 about 8 weeks later... This was my fault i didnt realise the implications of a redirect...
Stopped the redirect, but too late, as site B dropped in rankings in early 2014 - new disavow files uploaded to both sites, but damage seems done now.
No longer have a SEO company, and i would ideally like to 301 redirect site A to B, as it looks messy having a holding page - but wanted to check if SEO would still strongly advise against that?
please advise
James
-
Hi James, Yes I just meant to make sure there are no 302 redirects or no backlinks from the homepage of site A pointing back to site B.
Also, be aware that Google also knows that you own both domains unless you registered them as private, and you also have both sites in your Webmaster Tools account. Technically, this shouldn't matter, as each site should be treated as its own entity, regardless of who owns it.
The fact that those old 301 links are showing in webmaster tools doesn't mean much, perhaps their link indexing cache hasn't refreshed. If you've removed the 301, then those links are no longer pointing to your site no matter what any tool says.
There is a good service called Link Detox Boost. You load up all of those old backlinks into the tool, and the tool forces Google to crawl those links again. The theory is that once they crawl the pages those links are on and realise that the backlinks don't point back to your site anymore, it helps to remove the Penguin flag (penalty) from your site much faster.
It's ironic how this is achieved though. In order to prompt Google to crawl the pages those old links are on, they spam the pages your links are on with fresh new links. When Google visits the old link pages via the newly created soft spam links, it recrawls the page and adjusts the link index for your domain. Fighting Spam using Spam.
This is why those links may still be showing in your Webmaster Tools for site B. Perhaps if you ran a link Detox Boost campaign, all of these links would be removed from your Webmaster Tools account. And perhaps the Penguin anchor dragging your site down would become a bit lighter. (By the way I have no affiliation with Link Detox Boost - although I have used some of their tools, and I rate them as excellent)
-
hi Richard,
thank you for the reponse, what you explained is kind of what happened - initally after the 301 was started site B went up in rankings for a month or two... then it started to drop, the 301 redirect was removed - but site B still dropped and never recovered.
However you mention "i'd also advise you to disassociate the old site completely", do you mind me asking how?
I ask, because there is no redirect in place any more, has not been for a year or so, however if i look in the google webmaster tools "links to my site" of site B - it lists websites that link to site A... So it appears to me there is now some kind of association because of the previous 301 redirect - is it possible to clear this association, or ami stuck with it?
-
Hello James, The effects of a 301 from a penalised site are dependant on the site the 301 is pointing too. You say that your old site was penalised from over optimised anchor text. If you 301 this penalised domain to a more authoritative domain, then this domain will be able to handle all of the anchor text links you've effectively redirected to it via the 301.
Penalties do not pass through 301 redirects. People get confused about this because the new site often gets penalised too, but that's not because the 301 was from a penalised site. It's because the new site couldn't handle all of the keyword-rich anchor text backlinks either.
If penalties could pass through 301 redirects, then you could simply redirect a couple of penalised domains to an authority site like Amazon or eBay and cause them to be penalised. This is not the case.
Authoritative sites can easily absorb the influx of anchor text links from a 301 because their link profile is so strong and diverse. 1000's of exact match links won't do anything to them, it would probably help them.
There are many situations where 301's from penalised sites can help another site to rank better. If your penalised site was fairly small and you had a 100+ links with the same anchor text, then this domain would make for a great 301 to a bigger site. The bigger site would have to have very low anchor text ratios of about .5%. If all of the new domain's other links were generic and branded links, then the new 301 with 100+ anchor text links would do wonders for the new site. This is provided both sites are in the same niche, and the links were relevant, etc.
Another obvious caveat; if you're pointing 301's to a money site, then this is very risky business indeed. The site may flourish permanently with the new injection of links from the 301; it may also crash and burn a couple of weeks or months later.
In your situation, it sounds as though your new site wouldn't be able to handle the influx of new links via the 301 from your old site. Your new site is just too weak to cope with these potentially toxic links. I'd advise you to remove the 301. I'd also advise you to disassociate the old site completely from the new site too, and this means no 302 redirects or backlinks from the old site either.
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
-
How long will old pages stay in Google's cache index. We have a new site that is two months old but we are seeing old pages even though we used 301 redirects.
Two months ago we launched a new website (same domain) and implemented 301 re-directs for all of the pages. Two months later we are still seeing old pages in Google's cache index. So how long should I tell the client this should take for them all to be removed in search?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Liamis0 -
Redirecting Ecommerce Site
Hi I'm working on a big site migration I'm setting up redirects for all the old categories to point to the new ones. I'm doing this based on relevancy, the categories don't match up exactly but I've tried to redirect to the most relevant alternative. Would this be the right approach?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
301 migration - Indexed Pages rising on old site
Hello, We did a 301 redirect from site a to site b back in March. I would check on a daily basis on the index count using query "site:sitename" The past couple of days, the old domain (that was 301 redirected) indexed pages has been rising which is really concerning. We did a 301 redirect back in march 2016, and the indexed count went from 400k pages down to 78k. However, the past 3 days it went from 78k to 89,500. And I'm worried that the number is going to continue to rise. My question - What would you do to investigate / how to investigate this issue? Would it be screaming frog and look at redirects? Or is this a unique scenario that I'd have to do other steps/procedures?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
301 redirects
One of our employees took an SEO class recently. She was told that having too many 301 redirects can hurt SEO. I have never heard of 301 redirects as having a negative impact. Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Smart_Start0 -
Old site penalised, we moved: Shall we cut loose from the old site. It's curently 301 to new site.
Hi, We had a site with many bad links pointing to it (.co.uk). It was knocked from the SERPS. We tried to manually ask webmasters to remove links.Then submitted a Disavow and a recon request. We have since moved the site to a new URL (.com) about a year ago. As the company needed it's customer to find them still. We 301 redirected the .co.uk to the .com There are still lots of bad links pointing to the .co.uk. The questions are: #1 Do we stop the 301 redirect from .co.uk to .com now? The .co.uk is not showing in the rankings. We could have a basic holding page on the .co.uk with 'we have moved' (No link). Or just switch it off. #2 If we keep the .co.uk 301 to the .com, shall we upload disavow to .com webmasters tools or .co.uk webmasters tools. I ask this because someone else had uploaded the .co.uk's disavow list of spam links to the .com webmasters tools. Is this bad? Thanks in advance for any advise or insight!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SolveWebMedia0 -
Help understanding 301 domain redirect
Can anyone help me understand a specific process of a 301 redirecting a domain. Here is what I would like to know.... When you 301 redirect a site, most if not all the links follow to your new site. But how does this process happen? 1.When Google sees the new domain does it simply apply the backlink profile of the old site to the new one? 2. Does it have to re-crawl all the links one by one and apply them to the new domain? 3. or something else?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gazzerman10 -
301 redirect on Windows IIS. HELP!
Hi My six-year-old domain has always existed in four forms: http://www**.**mydomain.com/index.html http://mydomain.com/index.html http://mydomain.com/ http://www.mydomain.com My webmaster claims it’s “impossible” to do a 301 redirect from the first three to the fourth. I need simple instructions to guide him. The site’s hosted on Windows running IIS Here’s his rationale: These are all the same page, so they can’t redirect to themselves. Index.html is the default page that loads automatically if you don’t specify a page. If I put a redirect into index.html it would just run an infinite redirect loop. As you can see from the IIS set up, both www.mydomain and mydomain.com point to the same location ( VIEW IMAGE HERE ) _Both of these use index.html as the default document ( VIEW IMAGE 2 HERE ) _
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jeepster0 -
Redirect
Hi, I have one domain which was redirected today (the main domain,root) was redirected to a new subdomain of the main root domain.site was ranking for several keywords and had an authority of 35 on root domain. Site after 12 hours disappeared from google results.dont even rank for its brand name. What will happened to the new subdomain? Will rank again? Have the same keywords plus some more.old keywords are 3 and new are 2. For the old keywords on page optimization gets a c , and for the new a+c. For the new keywords don't have backlinks at all. When my site will start to rank for its old keywords? How long will be down ? Will pass the link juice and authority? If yes how soon ? Because I will loose to much money if stay longer like 1-2 weeks down. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nyanainc0