Is it worth redirecting?
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Hello!
Is there any wisdom or non-wisdom in taking old websites and blogs that may not be very active, but still get some traffic, and redirecting them to a brand new website? The new website would be in the same industry, but not the same niche as the older websites. Would there be any SEO boost to the new website by doing this? Or would it just hurt the credibility of the new website?
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Thanks. These are good things to consider. I suppose in my case I'm primarily wanting to just find a new home for the old content since eventually I will just get rid of those websites and domain names. And then if it adds a bonus to the new website, then great!
The old content is automotive, diesel truck related, which the new site is too. The difference is the brands. So I think the old readers would just like the content to be live and not be too worried about where it's hosted. And the new readership would probably find it all interesting as well...thanks for helping me think it through!
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I always use a very simple logic when it comes to redirections. You have an old website and blog that you want to redirect to the brand new website. If this is the case, here are the few things you should consider before coming up to any final decision.
- Users Reaction: You said that old website has some traffic, when you are going to redirect to the brand new website, how users/visitors are going to react? If they will be fine, just go for it, if not just leave the idea immediately.
- Link Profile: If the link profile of the old website/blog is clean just go ahead and 301 redirect to the new domain. But, if the link profile contains some spammy links, you probably should leave the idea as it is.
If users and link profile support the idea, probably search engine will also like it and if not, you probably should avoid the idea as a whole.
Hope this helps!
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Hello Andrew,
Few things I need to know before answering your query.
1> Is your old site penalized earlier or have low quality backlinks if yes don't do redirects it won't help in fact that will harm your website.
2> if your old website is completely fine I mean no penalty/ no low quality links then it is good practice to do 301 redirect.
3> as you mentioned in your query that your old sites niche is different then current that means if you will redirect that will not serve any value to user and bounce rate will be high and I doubt boost in ranking.
Hope above suggestion helps you in deciding what would be the appropriate steps.
thanks
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I guess this article answered most of my questions: https://moz.com/blog/save-your-website-with-redirects
I do think that my redirects would be in that 70% relativity he mentioned. However, the main big website I'd want to redirect is a forum, and I'm not going to redirect all the old forum pages to new pages on the website... that would be a massive undertaking. Hmmm...
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