New website on new url?
-
We have a new website on a new url (been up for around 2 years now) and our old website is slowly fading in the background, we are now at the point where the money is still ok but we are having issues running both side by side, we have a calculator on each page and are thinking about removing this and adding a box with please order from our new site here (with url of similar page).
Now the issue is we don't want to link for SEO purposes and google hammer us (thinking of no - following these) and we also have a penalty we got in 2012 on the site but we did get out of this, would this cause any issue to the new site?
-
I agree with the responses here: having two sites is generally not the way forward. I just want to add one other option. Most people who received link-based penalties were building links to 2 or 3 pages. If that's the case you could 301 redirect most of the site on a page level and let the pages with bad links 404.
If you have cleared the penalty it might not even be an issue to 301 redirect the whole domain. Just make sure that you update your disavow on the new domain.
-
Good point from Eric, if you have identified that there is a penalty then you can have it removed, and then 301 the old domain (or go on with the old one).
Let us know more about the penalty and we can help you to remove it. I suppose it´s based on links (most common).
- Look for messages (and Manual actions) in Google Search Console
- Use Open Site Explorer (https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/) to identify low quality links and remove them.
If there are some links you cant remove, you can tell Google to ignore them by using their Disavow-tool.
You find the tool here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-mainGood luck!
-
Eric said basically what my next recommendation would've been. Building a new site on a new domain is not the way to handle a penalty from Google.
Having 2 websites confusing for people; i.e. people who find both of your sites through a series of refined Google searches. Additionally, it's not likely to solve your problem. Unless you moved your physical location AND you re-branded your company, Google almost certainly knows that your new site is an offshoot of your old site. Therefore, your new site is fighting an uphill battle, competing against its older self, and with Google's preconceived notions of what you're trying to accomplish.
-
If the old domain has a penalty, you should be able to get that penalty lifted/removed/revoked. Then, later on you should be able to go ahead and redirect once the penalty is removed.
One of the concerns, though, is that if you redirect ANY page from the old domain to the new domain you may pass on the penalty to the new site. We recommend getting rid of the penalty on the old domain first--and then consider dealing with the issue of redirecting the old to the new domain.
-
we did not do it because the old site has a penalty and we do not want to pass anything over to the new domain?
We are thinking of just directing the customer with the url on the calculator rather than 301ing the whole domain as it still gets traffic.
-
Hi,
After reading your post, I'm wondering why the old domain hasn't already been 301 redirected to the new site? That would really be the ideal situation for not having your two sites compete against each other. You'd want to do this at the page level, so equivalent pages on the old site get redirected to the most relevant page on the new site.
For example: www.oldsite.com/calculator redirects to www.newsite.com/calculator
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
-
Folders in url structure?
Hello, Revamping an out-of-date website and am wondering if I need to include the folders (categories) in the url structure? The proposed structure has 8 main folders. I've been reading that Google is ok if the folder is not included in the url, but is it really? The hesitation I have is that the urls are getting long and the main folder only has only a sub folder beneath it. So, /folder-name/facility-name/treatment-overview. This looks too long, doesn't it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | lfrazer1230 -
URL is invalid: Why?
Hello everyone, I am currently listing my company on business directories. For some websites however when I add my website URL, it comes up as URL is invalid. What could be the reason for this? I have tried different variations like www., http:// and https://. Kind Regards,
Technical SEO | | SMCCoachHire
Aqib0 -
Usage of keywords in URL
Hi everyone, I'm trying to optimize our website and I'm not sure what's ideal for our URL structure. We have two products: one of them is focused on B2C & the other one on B2B.
Technical SEO | | Klouwers
Our homepage is focused on the B2C product. For our B2B product, I'm not sure what's ideal. The URL for our 'homepage' of the B2B product is ourdomain.com/software. We have different target groups for our B2B software, and therefore different pages on our website. Which URL would be best to use for the keyword personal trainer software?
1. ourdomain.com/software/personal-trainer-software
2. ourdomain.com/software/personal-trainer0 -
Website Alerts
Hi
Technical SEO | | Bossandy
Does anyone know of plugins/ extensions for joomla or wordpress to alert us as soon as a site goes down?0 -
URL Understanding -
Hello everyone! Can anyone help me understanding this url? Product.asp?PID=1236 cheers
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
301 or 410 a Pop Up Window with a New URL
I asked our development team to 301 Pop Up window URLs back to their complimentary product page as we've changed URLs for all of our Pop Ups. We have 100,000s of products on our site, so the number of rewrites are becoming unmanageable and slows server response times (their words). They want to kill these 301's after a prescribed amount of time. Should they just become 410s, leave them as 404s (current state), or insist that we keep them as 301's?
Technical SEO | | rhoadesjohn0 -
New URL or Folder Off Existing Site
I am working on a project that is promoting dining in a particular region of the southwest for a destination marketing company. The parent Web site is an authority in the region and ranks well for almost all terms related to the leisure experience in the region. A completely separate Web site was built to promote this culinary program as it involves a committee of different stakeholders, but it’s solely focused on the region. My question is this. The site is on a different CMS, etc., but the overall experience on the site is similar to the parent DMO site in terms of creative. The client has a brand new domain that they purchased for this initiative, but we are also considering mapping the parent site URL to the new culinary site. Parent: www.regionalsite.com New Themed Site: www.regionalsite.com/theme/ Or www.themeurl.com My fear is that if I take the approach of the new URL that it will take forever for the site to build any link clout at all, as the client doesn’t really get the fact that working a link strategy is so critical. However, I know that having links from the regional site over to the theme URL will have an impact. Also, if I do take the approach of mapping the URL to a new folder off of the parent domain, do I risk that 2<sup>nd</sup> tier links on the micro-site will have a challenge indexing as they will essentially be on tier 3? Any advice would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | VERBInteractive0 -
Redesign existing websites / worried about urls / mapping
Hi Guys, While redesigning existing websites that will have page name changes such as: example.com/products to be called example.com/solutions example.com/about-us to be called example.com/about should I 301 the old url to the new url. In the past I have not done this & I'm just wondering from an SEO point of view how bad is this? (On a scale of 1 to 10 how bad is this not 301ing urls, 10 being really bad & 1 being fine), Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0