Should I let 22-year-old website go or revamp it?
-
Hi,
I’m trying to decide whether to renew annual hosting for my old website and hoping a wiser brain than mine in these matters might be able to advise me.
The website was the home of a weekly website review column, e-newsletter, content writing tips and other web content/marketing related content so has lots of backlinks since 1997, though hasn't been updated for about 10 years.
The domain email address is listed on some spam lists as I suspect it was harvested from the site by crawling spambots. I haven't bothered trying to de-list as don't use the address or website anymore. The site has never been used for PBN or sending spam (at least not by me).
There's lots of good content in there, and some would still be relevant, but not sure if it's worth keeping for backlinks and for redirecting to my new website when it’s built. Plan to build a new WordPress website for my new writing as no longer in the content marketing business.
It's a country-specific domain so can't really sell it as need to own the business name to own the domain name. I no longer use the business name either as plan to set up new brand for new website.
But it might be useful to direct traffic to my new website domain once it's up and running if I cleaned up all the many broken links to expired websites in the databases of hundreds of website reviews.
It's all on archive.org but I'm still very attached to the old site, even if it's no longer useful from a business point of view.
Did a Moz check which showed:
Domain Authority
20Linking Domains
89Discovered in the last 60 days
1Lost in last 60 days
4Inbound Links
1.9kRanking Keywords
0My web host stats show the site gets between 300 and 500 visits a month. Had about 138,200 visits since October last year. And about 653,200 hits.
Is that amount of traffic worth the time and expense of pruning the site of hundreds of expired links and fixing up other glitches? It's very dated in design and layout and is written in .asp
I could send you the URL in private message if you would like to look at the website first.
Been agonising over this decision for months as budget is very tight but don’t want to lose the site if it might have future value.
Would greatly appreciate advice from someone who's up on this stuff as I've been out of the game for a long time and the deadline to renew the site hosting is very soon.
Thank you in advance for your time and help.
-
Thanks for that. You certainly know your stuff.
I'm beginning to wonder if it is worth keeping the old site alive as it might require a lot of work to clean up and be useful linking to my new website when it's built. Not sure its ranking and links will help my new website that much, or hinder it. Big decision.
-
Looks like there could be some spammy domains in the backlink profile, however, most of the linking domains are fine. The next step is for you to go through all these domains and see what kind of domains they are, and what is the nature of the backlink coming to your website. If it turns out to be a spammy domain, then you can disavow the whole domain through Search Console.
-
Thanks for that.Spam Score BreakdownPercent of Linking Domains with a Spam Score of:1-30%82.1%31-60%16.7%61-100%1.3%Linking Domains89Domain Authority20Spam Score2 %Not sure what that means? the domain is brizcomm.com.au Backlinks look legitimate but not sure I'm checking the right thing.
-
The fact that the domain is on spammy lists (I'm assuming email lists here) does not mean that the domain itself is in a bad shape. You can check the following:
-
See if the domain has any Manual Actions on Google Search Console
-
Check the MOZ Spam score
-
Check the backlink profile of the domain to see if any spammy domains are linking to your domain - this matters much more than the domain being on email lists. If you find the domain to be on some spammy websites, you can disavow them.
Also, keeping the domain does imply that there will be an upkeep effort/cost.
As for whether to keep it or not, it really comes down to if you can benefit from keeping or redirecting it. If so, then it's worth it.
-
-
Thanks very much for your response and advice.
I'm worried that the fact the domain is on so many spam lists will mean it could be a negative benefit to redirect to my new site when it's built.
I would also have to get it de-listed from spam monitors and fix up the site to remove the email address, among many other broken links in the database.
Nobody else could buy the domain as they would need to have a business in the same name to comply with my country's domain registration rules.
So confused about this and renewal expires next week. If I do let the hosting renewal lapse, I'm guessing I would quickly lose any search engine rankings the old site has gathered, though not sure if 20 is much of a ranking anyway.
I can send you the URL if it helps?
-
Sounds like the site is in decent shape. I'm pretty sure that if you let it go, it will be picked up very quickly by someone else.
I think you have a couple of options:
1- You can keep it and continue to maintain it on a minimal basis. This will allow you to link out to your new domain where appropriate.
2- Redirect it to a new site, or a section of a new site, provided it's in the same space. This would require you to keep the domain name without the hosting & maintenance expenses.
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
-
Is GSC data (branded clicks + impressions) a good indicator for how well your PR activity has performed for the year?
We are reviewing our creative / PR agency and are intending to use our GSC data as a way to assess their performance...
Branding | | Jacksons_Fencing0 -
Hosted content vs Dedicated website (for large piece of content)
There is one question that keep bugging us and for which we are looking for a logical answer – to put it short, in which context(s) is it preferable to publish original content on a company website vs on a dedicated external platform with its own URL? To give a little more details: we an education company that provides languages course abroad and that functions like a specialised travel agency. Each trip is very specific – it depends on people's language level, objectives, budget, etc. – so we provide tailor-made advice for each of our students. Our site is not an e-commerce site, and a typical call-to-action is a request for a 1-to-1 interview with one of our agents, or a quote request for a language trip project. The top conversion for us is an enrolment for a language course abroad. We have a corporate websites structure where we have 1 website per locale where we operate, which means 14 websites in 7 different languages. We produce smaller pieces of content for these websites in a dedicated section – the rest of the website being mostly a presentation of our products, services and destinations – but here we intend to create a very large Quiz which will be based on multiple audio files. The content will be translated into multiple languages (likely 10 different languages) and will require some rather heavy development. We intend to add sections for scoreboards, stats, a log-in section (probably Facebook), etc. This sounds to us like something we should host on a specific URL, but then how can we make the most of the SEO benefits that we will (hopefully) get with such content? We plan to have an about section where we explain a little bit who we are, where we will probably link back to our corporate websites, but of course we want our project to live for itself and to be as far from commercial as possible – while still making the most of the SEO benefits. How can we do this in the most subtle / logical way? Would it be better to host our Quiz on our corporate domains? Thanks in advance for your advice. Maëlle
Branding | | ESL_Education0 -
YouTube won't let me disconnect a Google+ business page from my channel.
Hello! Here is a good one. My YouTube channel is connected to a Google+ page a created by accident. Since I named this accidental page as a business, when I go into advanced setting to disconnect it from YouTube, it says "This feature is not available for this account." Does anyone know a way around this? I don't want to have to rebuild my Google+ page on the new, accidental page. I have put quite a bit of time onto my current page and would like to get it hooked up to YouTube. Please help! Thank you!
Branding | | sarita3450 -
Re-code website and start from scratch?
Hi Community, one of my sites was affected by panda penguin and then EMD updates last year. All our google 1st page rankings were lost and we have spent the last few months trying to recover the situation. Changed content, meta tags, meta titles, disavowed links, changed navigation structure among other things. We are now at a point where we are thinking of scrapping the whole thing and re-coding the site. Before we make the decision I wanted to ask what the main risks and points are that we need to consider. Are there any useful guides to help us make an informed judgment? Also, if we were to re-do the site and also change the domain name what are the implications of this and what needs to be considered. I'd really appreciate some advice as this is a major step for us. Thanks
Branding | | BipSum0 -
Competitors' dummy websites --- What SEO (or other?) strategy is this?
I work for an e-retailer. I've noticed that at least one of our competitors (and, I think, a second as well) has set up a neutral "third party" website that attempts to provide unbiassed information about different manufacturer's products. Of course, their products always win out over the competitor in these comparisons. But this one site (and another whose corporate backer I can't seem to figure out) is keyworded so poorly, and not branded at all. There are very few (if any) links to the corporate sponsor, or links, period. It's definitely not serving to have "Little Brand x" appear next to "Big Brand Y" in search results, either (again, really poorly keyworded). Other SEO seems really minimal. What do you think their strategy is? Is it a dumb waste o' money or something really smart that I'm not picking up on? Your insights most appreciated!
Branding | | Novos_Jay1 -
Long term risks of using .org for commercial websites
Hi everybody, I'm having a 'heated' discussion with a collegae about .org domains. Originally .org domains were created for non-profit organizations and it was fairly difficult to get a .org domain ( like .gov and .edu still are). Nowadays it's easy to register a .org domain and i see plenty of commercial .org emd's ranking well. We are planning on launching a new white label in the Netherlands (.nl) and have several domains in our portfolio that we can us for this. I recommend using an exact match .org domain (.nl and .com are already taken) for the new white label www.exactkeyword.org. **My collegae says don't use www.exactkeyword.org, because we aren't a non-profit organizaton and we can't garantuee we won't lose our rankings over the next 3 to 4 years. He would recommend going with the available www.exact-keyword.info. ** Who right and who's wrong and why? Can i garantuee no risk with .org for a commercial organization?
Branding | | PrizeWize0 -
Is having two websites that sell most of the same products a good idea?
Hi - Please read this in full before you answer. I currently own a website that sells kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities that match the kitchens. This website has been operational since Arpil 2009 and we have built good rankings over the past 3 years. The site is operated on the Volusion platform (my mistake from the beginning, but we're kind of stuck now). We are in the process of designing a new website on the Magento platform - everything will be 100% different from look, speed, the way our customers shop, content, product skus, etc. The original plan was to keep the same domain but implement 301 redirects for subpages (subpage urls would have to change) and shut down the Volusion site and transfer the domain name to the Magento site. Our current website does make money right now and we would hate to lose rankings (even if only temporarily) during the switch or have something go wrong. What I am now thinking is keeping our current website on Volusion where it is currently making money and having the new Magento site have a new name/domain. The sites would sell most of the same products (the Magento site would sell more types of vanities and accessories though). The two sites would have different email addresses, phone numbers, and mailing addresses. Is it a bad idea to try and rank two websites selling pretty much the same thing? We have competitors out there that sell the same products as us, I would just prefer to compete with myself rather then someone else. Another issue is our name, one of our competitors names is extremely close to ours and we rank for pretty much all of the same keywords and customers get us mixed up all the time. This other site would have a different name (one that makes more sense). I want to make a decision that will not come back and bite us later. I know there are a lot of bigger sites that operate tons of niche sites, and of these website could eventually be similar to that. I really appreciate your help and guidance! Thanks
Branding | | tyler7560 -
What are the best Guest Blogging websites? services?
Does anyone know of any guest blogging websites that offer a good (white hat) service? We're looking for websites that website owners may subscribe to that actually are pursuing guest bloggers to post on their site. We're looking for white-hat only websites. Thanks,
Branding | | iAnalyst.com0