Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Cleaning up a Spammy Domain VS Starting Fresh with a New Domain
-
Hi- Can you give me your opinion please... if you look at murrayroofing.com and see the high SPAM score- and the fact that our domain has been put on some spammy sites over the years- Is it better and faster to place higher in google SERP if we create a fresh new domain? My theory is we will spin our wheels trying to get unlisted from alot of those spammy linking sites. And that it would be faster to see results using a fresh new domain rather than trying to clean up the current spammy doamin. Thanks in advance - You guys have been awesome!!
-
Disavowing has nothing to do with traffic.
Disavowing is all about spam signals from spammy links. That and only that.
-
Thanks again for all the advice- Truly appreciated-
What are your thoughts on "disavowing" with google- murrayroofing.com so when it sends traffic to the new murrayroofingllc.com google will hopefully ignore...? Can you see our account in MOZ. You can see the old domain is sending traffic since it is listed on the spammy sites.
-
You are always welcome.
If you got more questions, you can always hit me up on my Twitter @DigitalSpaceman
-
Thank you!!
-
Hard to say who and why is putting you on those websites.
The only way to truly get rid of those backlinks is to reach out to those websites' owners. You'd have to obviously find someone who speaks the language.
Now, what you can do though is this:
- Disavow all those crappy links - that'll get Google to lower the "spam score" of your website;
- Block all traffic by IPs, geolocation and/or hostnames/referrers (that'll prevent from actual unrelated traffic)
That should clean it up pretty good.
Of course, that requires full control and ownership of that domain and website code. If you can't get that - again, my suggestion is just to part ways. -
This is awesome info! Thank you. What are your thoughts on trying to get backlinks removed from sites in China where we have no way to contact them - none of the wording o the sites are in our language- and it seems like it would be impossible to get removed from some of them. Additional thoughts greatly appreciated. In analytics we see "more" traffic from china than the US-
I'm convinced a competitor may be listing us on these sites- Or one of these SEO guys that get really pissed when we turn them down. Could they be out putting our domain on listing sites?
-
Yeah, your suggestion makes sense.
Keep the old one while the new one is ranking up.
Now, here is perfect scenario for you - keep working on the new site, and get full ownership of the old one. Then through IP blocks, cloudflare, removing all spammy backlinks etc, get rid of all or most of the spammy traffic and signals. And then redirect.
-
Thank you again!
I should have been more clear- The old website gets traffic that does convert- If it loaded faster than 10 seconds I'm sure a lot more would convert- Super high bounce rate due to slooooow loading of that site. But we do get "valid leads" every week from it. But not a lot of leads- maybe 5 a week- but our jobs are large dollar jobs.
What is your thought on running both sites separately? We could go in and make sure they are not duplicate and assign different addresses and phone numbers to the old site- But this "seems" black hat- We would not be doing it to get both site to rank- but just so we don't lose the traffic- then in a year or so get rid of it. what are your thoughts?
-
"... maybe a lot of traffic will convert. "
WILL convert? so it's not converting now? If so, it's kind of optimistic that will change, no?
Since you don't own old domain, you can't really reliably do anything about it anyway.
At this point, I would say not to forward at all, start from scratch.
-
Thank you- Yes some of the traffic - maybe a lot of traffic will convert. The problem is old "printed" directories and other places where we can't update the domain. We get a lot of business from a printed catalog that won;t change for a year or more.
I will look at the suggestions you made about IP limitations. The other issue is we don't "own" the original domain so we have to ask the owner who is also our IT guy to change settings. This is another reason we bough the new domain.
Again thank you!
-
Couple ways you can go about it.
-
Is any of the traffic going to the old spammy domain any good? Does it convert? If not, then don't worry about redirecting, there wouldn't be any point, only spam signals
-
If there is some good traffic, then do IP limitations, hostnames limitations etc. That can be done in htaccess or on the server itself. There are other more elaborate ways to filter out spam traffic as well, but that depends on how you or your IT guy is familiar with it. One of the simplest solutions is to route all traffic through CloudFlare, it has quite nice spam filtering, and it's free.
Hope this helps.
-
-
Thank you- we're talking about murrayroofinllc.com in particular- we are not sure how to forward the old domain to the new- We "know how" we just don't know if we should- The reason we developed murrayroofingllc.com is because murray roofing.com had a high spam score and we got advice from this string to go for a new domain-
Now the concern is- if we forward all the traffic from murrayroofing.com to murrayroofingllc.com that the new domain murrayroofingllc.com will be negatively affected by the spammy traffic- Somehow murrayroofing.com got on some spam sites and we get a ton of spammy traffic from china- we don't want this traffis - and these sites there is "no way" to ask them to remove our website from their spam sites in china.
All thoughts are welcome here-
-
Ta Larry
Ok nothing much of substance, that said if ranking worth trying as it is an easier or usually faster route to page 1.
Had a look at the Murray Roofing site and has not been optimised for customer queries a roofing contractor would seek to rank for. As it seems you are keen to start afresh - can do both in parallel. No harm to either.
That said would suggest you also look at your google my business structure - your effectively a local play. Getting reviews and appearing in the local search pack for roofing contractors Omaha etc we would consider a client priority.
All the best go get them.
-
only for a few and we are in position 49 and 50 for them.
-
Hi
Is the current site ranking for any terms of value?
-
Hi there,
Yes, absolutely get new domain. If you look at DA - it's only 15 (not too bad in some cases). But if you look at backlink profile - you'll see that most of the links are from listing sites - homestead, yellowpages, ezlocal etc. You can replicate that profile after a day of work. And, as you said, spam score will only bring troubles.
Hope this helps.
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
-
Why does my old brand name still show up on organic search but as my new brand name and domain?
Hello mozers! I have quite the conundrum. My client used to have the unfortunate brand name "Meetoo" - which by the way they had before the movement happened! So naturally, they rebranded to the name Vevox in March 2019 to avoid confusion to users. However, when you search for their old brand name "Meetoo" the first organic link that pops up is their domain www.vevox.com. Now, this wouldn't normally be a problem, however it is when any #MeToo news appears in the media and we get a sudden influx or wrong traffic. I've searched the HTML and content for the term "Meetoo" but can only find one trace of this name through a widget. Not enough to hold an organic spot. My only other thinking is that www.vevox.com is redirected from www.meetoo.com. So I'm assuming this is why Vevox appear under the search term "Meetoo". How can I remove the homepage www.vevox.com from appearing for the search term "meetoo"? Can anyone help? AvGGYBc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Virginia-Girtz3 -
Should I run my Shopify store on a subdomain or buy a new domain for it?
I'm planning to set up a subdomain for my Shopify store but I'm not sure if this is the right approach. Should I purchase a separate domain for it? I'm running Wordpress on my website and want to keep it that way. I want to use Shopify for the ecommerce side. I want to link the store from the top nav and of course I'll use CTA's in a variety of ways to point to merchandise and other things on the store side. Thanks for any help you can offer.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ims20160 -
Two blogs on a single domain?
Hi guys, Does anyone have any experience of having (trying to rank) two separate blogs existing on one domain, for instance: www.companysite.com/service1/blogwww.companysite.com/service2/blogThese 2 pages (service 1 and service 2) offer completely different services (rank for different keywords).(for example, a company that provides 2 separate services: SEO service and IT service)Do you think it is a good/bad/confusing search engine practice trying to have separate blogs for each service or do you think there should be only one blog that contains content for both services?Bearing in mind that there is an already existing subdomain for a non-profit part of business that ranks for different keywords: non-profit.companysite.comand it will potentially have another blog so the URL would look like: non-profit.companysite.com/blogAny ideas would be appreciated!Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kellys.marketing0 -
Would it be better to Start Over vs doing a Website Migration?
Hey guys /gals I have a question please. I have a computer repair business that does extremely well in search and is on the front page of google for anything computer repair related. However, I am currently re-branding my company and have completely redesigned every aspect of the UI and the SEO Site structure as well as the fact that I have completely written vastly different content and different title tag lines and meta descriptions for each page. So basically when doing a migration we know that we want to keep our content, titles, headlines and meta descriptions the same as to not lose our page rank. Seeing that I have completely went against the grain in all directions on a much needed company re-branding and everything is completely different from the old site is it even worthwhile 301 redirecting my old urls to the new ones that would (best) correspond with the new? In the plainest English, would I do better at Ranking the New Website QUICKER without doing 301 redirects from the OLD to the NEW? In an EXTREME instance like what I have done, would the Domain Migration IMPEDED me ranking the new site seeing how nothing is the same? I have build a Rock solid SILO Site Architecture on the New site which is WordPress using the Thesis Framework and the old domain is built on JOOMLA 1.5 Thank fellas Marshall
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarshallThompson0 -
Is it safe to 301 redirect old domain to new domain after a manual unnatural links penalty?
I have recently taken on a client that has been manually penalised for spammy link building by two previous SEOs. Having just read this excellent discussion, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience I am weighing up the odds of whether it's better to cut losses and recommend moving domains. I had thought under these circumstances it was important not to 301 the old domain to the new domain but the author (Lewis Sellers) comments on 3/4/13 that he is aware of forwards having been implemented without transferring the penalty to the new domain. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience#jtc216689 Is it safe to 301? What's the latest thinking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ewan.Kennedy0 -
How do I list the subdomains of a domain?
Hi Mozers, I am trying to find what subdomains are currently active on a particular domain. Is there a way to get a list of this information? The only way I could think of doing it is to run a google search on; site:example.com -site:www.example.com The only issues with this approach is that a majority of the indexed pages exist on the non-www domain and I still have thousands of pages in the results (mainly from the non-www). Is there another way to do it in Google? OR is there a server admin online tool that will tell me this information? Cheers, Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djlaidler0 -
New Site: Use Aged Domain Name or Buy New Domain Name?
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peterwhitewebdesign
I have the opportunity to build a new website and use a domain name that is older than 5 years or buy a new domain name. The aged domain name is a .net and includes a keyword.
The new domain would include the same keyword as well as the U.S. state abbreviation. Which one would you use and why? Thanks for your help!0 -
Buying a banned domain
Hello all, I've found a exact match keyword domain that I'm able to buy. Problem is that I'm under the impression it might have been banned by google, currently it is only showing adsense without content. The site can't be found using the cache: or site: parameters in Google and the PR is 0. What are your experiences on buying a banned domain and how can I double check if the domain is banned? This blogpost suggests I should not buy it, any other opinions? Thanks. Hellemans
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hellemans0