Consolidating many external blogs onto main website: canonicals or 301s
-
Hi Everyone,
Presently I have many blogs across a range of domains, each one targeting the client/type of user interested in that product (or service in this case). I originally set up this strategy to use the content of each blog to create a "link juice farm" (our products are educational courses so have a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT target market depending on the course area), which in turn links to the related page/course on our main site.
My plan is to move all the content from those external blogs into subcategories on my main website blog in order to increase its traffic, authority etc.
Originally, I was going to cut and paste the content, then put in appropriate 301 redirects from the external blogs to the main site.
However, I then thought about copying all the content to my main site, setting it as the canonical version, and leaving all the external blogs intact and running. The idea being, I still get the benefit of all those external links pointing back at my main website.
Which would be the better strategy for me to pursue?
Thanks in advance for your insights, I really appreciate you taking the time to help me out with this question.
-
Whilst I do agree with Federico, it is also possible to 301 those old sites to the new one and enjoy about 85% of the linkjuice they had. There are perfectly legitimate reasons why one might do this - indeed I once closed 4 separate websites and 301'd them to my new site in order as the business we being consolidated. None of this was about building a private link network at the time...that's just how it worked out. Anyway, my new site went from PR0 to PR3 at the next toolbar PR update and has been fine for 3 years+
Just my 2 pence...
-
Based on what you said, you built a private link network, which is strongly forbidden by Google and even if you didn't get caught, you may in the future with that strategy.
If I were you, I would took down all those blogs and move only the good posts to the main one, if you fill your main blog with "crappy" or thin content, you could get that site penalized.
Move only those articles that are worth moving and then take out all those blogs, with no 301s or canonical, just kill them. If you use canonical, they still have links to your main website (link network - forbidden), if you setup 301, then you get hundreds of unnatural links, which again, results in a private link network. and I advise against both.
Hope that 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
-
So many spam links that I haven't created are reflected in my domain
Around 500+ spam links got reflected in my domain. I actually haven't created them. Also, the links are not opening. These links affected my spam score. How can I remove them and reduce my spam score?
Link Building | | OrangeDigital160 -
How to increase DA of my website?
My website DA is gradually decreasing while I am updating my website regularly. Please suggest me good method to increase it. Site is Modapky.com Thanks
Link Building | | james112233 -
Website DA Decreased
Hey I Have A website Related to Drone Today DA of my website decreased what could be the reason Please help me what about issue?
Link Building | | Yetoverynicebundhai0 -
Consequences of shutting down a company blog
We’re an ecommerce company with a blog of 150+ posts. The blog brings in very low traffic and we were never that consistent in publishing great and frequent content. We now know our organic traffic comes from other pages that are doing great. So our question.. Should we: 1. Stop linking to the blog internally and just leave the it up as is. No harm here we guess, but these posts are not as relevant now and we feel their high bounce rate and low ranking is affecting our overall performance.
Link Building | | boxador
2. Take it down and 410 the pages. Will that many 410s eventually hurt us?
3. Take it down and 301 to home page of the company. Will permanently redirecting that many pages to our home page hurt us? Appreciate any input.0 -
Where can I find where to submit my website to?
Hi there, I am currently reading and learning about backlinks and I find myself stumped as to where I can submit my website to. I understand the logic's and methods for backlinks but just don't know how to find good quality websites to submit my website to. I appreciate any help in advance. Jay
Link Building | | VoodooCreativeLtd0 -
Is there a good website builder that can gain links?
I made the horrible mistake of using GoDaddy website builder and just found out that I have 3 homepages with a 302 temporary redirect on one of them. GoDaddy says I have only one homepage and no redirects which is not true as far as both Google Webmaster and Mozpro are concerned. I am not able to change anything structurally on the Godaddy site. Is there an economical alternative to having a website built that I can work with myself (with little knowledge) and that I can do some link building that will be effective. Thank you, I will refrain from commenting on GoDaddy Scott
Link Building | | ScottR.0 -
Does posting on blogs with anchored backlinks do you any good?
My current strategy: I am ranking for keyword and site: Immigration Consultant I access the Fresh Web Explorer and search my keyword, then find the blogposts with High Authority where I can post using HTML and include my link in my signature, or sometimes the post has a link associated with the username. Now my question is this, does this count? will google even crawl the comments? can I aid the crawling process somehow? Any advice on creating relavent back-links is much appreciated. Thank you
Link Building | | thealika
Nikita0 -
Blog Commnets
Since they are nofollow, are blog comments worth while making in a link-building campaign? Seems to be some controversy about the amount of value nofollow links add.
Link Building | | waynekolenchuk1