Moving Content To Another Website With No Redirect?
-
I've got a website that has lots of valuable content and tools but it's been hit too hard by both Panda and Penguin. I came to the conclusion that I'd be better off with a new website as this one is going to hell no matter how much time and money I put in it. Had I started a new website the first time it got hit by Penguin, I'd be profitable today.
I'd like to move some of that content to this other domain but I don't want to do 301 redirects as I don't want to pass bad link juice. I know I'll lose all links and visitors to the original website but I don't care.
My only concern is duplicate content. I was thinking of setting the pages to noindex on the original website and wait until they don't appear in Google's index. Then I'd move them over to the new domain to be indexed again.
Do you see any problem with this? Should I rewrite everything instead? I hate spinning content...!
-
If we're understanding the situation correctly, I'd say this sums it up pretty well.
-
It sounds to me as though most of the content from old site is staying but that 3 enigmatic 'tools' are being moved to a new domain.
In which case I would want to be sure that the functionality being moved wasn't the cause of the previously lifted penalty, especially from a Panda perspective (given that the tools on the new domain presumably won't have any links pointing to it, Penguin shouldn't be an issue) - as a penalty would be re-applied if the tools are not Panda-friendly.
So:
- if you want to have the tools on both sites, I'm with Pete - noindex the tools on the old site.
- if you are permanently moving the tools, review them for Panda-friendliness and then noindex the old site's URLs, probably worth blocking the old URL in robots.txt as well.
- If your previous penalty was nothing to do with the tools at all, and the link profile of those pages is good (or if there aren't any links) then 301 the old URLs to the new.
That's if between Pete and myself we've understood correctly what you're trying to achieve.
Good Luck!
-
So, I'm confused - are you looking to keep both sites active? If you're just moving the tools to a new domain, you could NOINDEX the old pages. If the link-based penalty isn't too severe, you might try a cross-domain rel=canonical on the old site. Unfortunately, without understanding the penalty profile, it's a bit tricky to advise. It's really a cost/benefit trade-off - how much risk of carrying the penalty are you willing to accept vs. the alternative of cutting off all authority and starting over on the new site.
If you've had Panda-related problems, though, I wouldn't keep the tools crawlable on both sites. That seems more likely to prolong your problems than it is to solve them.
-
In fact, I am not moving any content from the old website to the new one. It's just 3 online tools that I wanted to keep for the new website. They both have different content though but the functionalities are the same. I've "noindex" the tools on the old website.
By the way, the manual penalty has been revoked on the old website a few weeks ago.
-
I tend to agree with Martin - it seems like there's probably a way to preserve some of the power of the old site and 301-redirect selectively (or potentially use cross-domain rel=canonical tags), but it would take a much deeper understanding of the site than Q&A allows.
If you rebuild the site from scratch, you'd almost always want to de-index the old site. I'd flat out remove it via Google Webmaster Tools - it's the fastest method. Leaving both sites crawlable is only going to compound your problems and haunt the new site.
I'd warn, though, that if this is Panda-related, just moving the content won't solve your problems. You do have to sort out why they happened in the first place, or the same algorithmic issues will just come back. In other words, if the problems are content-related, then it doesn't really matter where the content lives. If the problems are link related, then moving will remove the problems. Of course, moving will also remove and advantages you currently have based on good links.
Unfortunately, this isn't a problem that can be addressed without a pretty deep audit. My gut feeling is that there may be a way to preserve some of the authority of the old site, but you really need to pin down the problems. Panda + Penguin is a wide swath of potential problems and just isn't enough information to do this right.
-
Some of this "content" are in fact online tools and the tutorials that accompanies it.
-
Hi Stephane,
All the below assumes you feel there is some value in keeping the original website live at all.
My first reaction would be to do a full review of all your old content and carefully consider which ones may have been hit by Panda - is there keyword stuffing, content duplicated from other sites, thin content...etc? Then either fix or completely rewrite those.
After that you should avoid publishing duplicated content so my view would be
1. Remove the rewritten/fixed articles completely from the old site
2. Don't implement the 301 so you don't get any redirected bad Penguin vibe
3. Put a block on those URLs using robots.txt
4. Remove the URLs from Google's index in Webmaster ToolsThen you are free to publish your new, Panda-friendly content to your new website.
Not sure what other mozzers would say, but that's my view. This is not about 'spinning content' but removing poor content and republishing great content. Hope it makes sense.
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
-
Duplicate Content
Let's say a blog is publishing original content. Now let's say a second blog steals that original content via bot and publishes it as it's own. Now further assume the original blog doesn't notice this for several years. How much damage could this do to blog A for Google results? Any opinions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CYNOT0 -
.Com version of my site is ranking better than .co.uk for my UK Website for branded search. 301 redirect mess
Dear Mozzers, I have an issue with my UK Website (short url is - http://goo.gl/dJ7IgD ) whereby when I type my company name in to google.co.uk search the .com version returns in Search as opposed to the .co.uk and from looking at open site explorer the page rank of the .com is higher than the .co.uk ?. Infact I cant even see the .co.uk homepage version but other pages from my site. The .com version is also 301'd to the .co.uk. From looking at Open Site Explorer, I have noticed that we have more links pointing to .com as opposed to .co.uk. Alot of these are from our own separate microsites which we closed down last year and I have noticed the IT company who closed them down for some reason 301'd them to the .com version of our site as opposed to the .co.uk but If I look in http://httpstatus.io/ (http status checker tool) to check one of these mircosites it shows - 301 - 302 - 200 status codes which to me looks wrong ?. I am wondering what it should read ... e.g should it just be a 301 to a 200 status code ?. My Website short url is - http://goo.gl/dJ7IgD and an example of some of 10 microsites we closed down last year which seems to be redirected to .com is http://goo.gl/BkcIjy and http://goo.gl/kogJ02 As these were redirected almost a year ago - it is okay if I now get them redirected to the .co.uk version of my site or what should I do ? They currently redirect to the home page but given that each of the microsites are based on an individual category of my main site , would it be better to 301 them to the relevant category on my site. My only concern is that , may cause to much internal linking and therefore I wont have enough links on my homepage ? How would you suggest I go about building up my .co.uk authority so it ranks betters than the .com- I am guessing this is obviously affecting my rankings and I am losing link juice with all this. Any advice greatly appreciated . thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
301 Redirection
Hi there guys, I have a question about redirection. My boss has just bought a new domain name and he wants it to redirect to our current site when looking for specific products. www.example.com is our current website www.productname.com is the new domain So the new domain would be redirected to example.com. Would that be considered against Google Policies? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
Would a .co.uk Website Looking to Rank in Baidu Require a Internet Content Publishing License?
Bit of a specific one, but if there's anyone that can help it's you guys. If a .co.uk website is looking to rank in Baidu with a .co.uk/cn subdirectory, would we require an Internet Content Publishing License? Taking a step back, it might be there's two parts to my question: How likely is it a .co.uk. could rank in Baidu, with simplified Chinese language content? In order to have a chance of ranking, would we require an Internet Content Publishing License?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ecommercebc0 -
How correcttly redirect to http://m.mobile.com website
Hi everyone, I will appreciate if you will drop here a piece of script ( or link to ) for CORRECT redirection for our http://m.mobile.com website. We are confused what type of redirection should we use java script, htaccess, php, 301, 302....? in order not to damage any rankings and etc... Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webdeal
webdeal0 -
Duplicate Content and Titles
Hi Mozzers, I saw a considerable amount of duplicate content and page titles on our clients website. We are just implementing a fix in the CMS to make sure that these are all fixed. What changes do you think I could see in terms of rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KarlBantleman0 -
Website Is In Tables
Our website www.accupos.com is mainly created with TABLES, which I've heard is a practice from Neanderthal times. Nevertheless, it is my job as the new Dir. of Marketing to SEO the hell out of it. Would you recommend converting the ENTIRE website into Divs or changing the current Tables situation? Or is this not a big deal for SEO? The site APPEARS fine, but I want to get our keywords ranked as well as possible, putting my time in the most efficient places (like link building!). How much of a high priority might this Tables fix be? We are also running an AdWords campaign spending LOTS every month. Please Moz me! Derek
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DerekM880 -
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