Minisites - 301 Redirect or Links to Main site
-
Not sure whether this is considered black hat or not but I know it is done and I would like to know which is the most effectrive method.
If you were to acquire multiple sites in the same niche to your main site (either by buying existing sites or perhaps registering expired domains) which already had strong aged backlinks, is it better to either:
a) 301 the new domain to the main site (or a subpage perhaps)
b) create 'minisites' on the new domains (trying to mirror the URL structure of the previous incarnation if possible to scoop up and remaining inbound backlink juice, on seperate IPs to the main site as well) and then place several links to the main site & subpages.
Would the decay of link juice through 301's mean you lose benefit that way or is it the same as a normal link? Would the 301 method mean any IBL's into URL's other than the homepage be lost? The homepage of the minisite will likely have 4 or 5 internal links so will this dilure the effect of the links to the main site?
Thanks in advance!
-
Thank Ryan,
Does that mean registering 100's of expired domains with backlinks and 301-ing them all to the main site would be a viable link building strategy? It shouldn't in theory because the original 'votes' were to the expired site not the new site.
But how would Google algorithmically work this out other than just devaluing heavily a 301 redirect from one domain to another. And if they did that surely the minisiste would be the best option?
Thanks again
David
-
If time isn't a factor, and you're able to create similar content on your own site, you could 301 all the old pages that had existing links into new, applicable pages on your site. This would probably grab you the most link juice in this scenario because you'd be attempting to address the most links and pages as possible.
Creating all those mini-sites wouldn't just be tedious from a time perspective, but also in terms of user experience and brand.
-
Impossible to say. Every site in every market is unique. Every topic within every site is even further unique. That's why the best practice is to go with the known quantity value. One site, laser focused effort all on that one domain.
-
Thanks for the quick reply. Agree with you entirely reagrding time and effort however, just for the sake of the exercise, if we take that out of consideration which do you think would have a greater effect.
Say 2 weeks after doing one or the other, which would have a better impact?
Thanks again
-
The amount of effort required to maintain several mini sites is not, in the long-run, usually worth the effort. Sure, you might get an initial bump in value for those inbound links, however it's nothing like it used to be. And over time, unless you continue to add new content to those sites, and build new unique inbound links to those, their initial value will fall off over time.
Better to try and get that content on the main site, and redirect page-to-page topical relevance with 301 redirects. Much more efficient use of time and energy. That way moving forward, you only need to focus on adding new content to one site, and building new inbound links to that one site. All the inbound links benefit the entire site, not just one mini-site's worth of one-off link value passing.
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
-
Backlink management: 301 redirect unsuccessful.
I am managing my company's spammy backlinks using Open Site Explorer. Our company owns a few URLs that are related to our company or are iterations of our main URL. All of these additional URLs have 301 redirects to our main domain. Open Site Explorer has identified one of these URLs as having a spam score of 8 indicating a 56% chance of Google crawler penalization. Obviously, this is a red flag. Instead of being redirected to our main domain upon visiting the URL, I was directed to what seems to be an automatically generated, generic webpage with links that seem to have been generated by keywords from our main domain. I have seen this type of webpage before when incorrectly typing in URLs from other pages. They tend to look the same. They have a black background with the URL written in grey at the top and a rectangular related links bar. Is anyone familiar with my problem and could you offer any advice? Thanks, Ben
Technical SEO | | SOLVISTA0 -
301 Multiple Sites to Main Site
Over the past couple years I had 3 sites that sold basically the same products and content. I later realized this had no value to my customers or Google so I 301 redirected Site 2 and Site 3 to my main site (Site 1). Of course this pushed a lot of page rank over to Site 1 and the site has been ranking great. About a week ago I moved my main site to a new eCommerce platform which required me to 301 redirect all the url's to the new platform url's which I did for all the main site links (Site 1). During this time I decided it was probably better off if I DID NOT 301 redirect all the links from the other 2 sites as well. I just didn't see the need as I figured Google realized at this point those sites were gone and I started fearing Google would get me for Page Rank munipulation for 301 redirecting 2 whole sites to my main site. Now I am getting over 1,000 404 crawl errors in GWT as Google can no longer find the URL's for Site 2 and Site 3. Plus my rankings have dropped substantially over the past week, part of which I know is from switching platforms. Question, did I make a mistake not 301 redirecting the url's from the old sites (Site 2 and Site 3) to my new ecommerce url's at Site 1?
Technical SEO | | SLINC0 -
301 redirecting old content from one site to updated content on a different site
I have a client with two websites. Here are some details, sorry I can't be more specific! Their older site -- specific to one product -- has a very high DA and about 75K visits per month, 80% of which comes from search engines. Their newer site -- focused generally on the brand -- is their top priority. The content here is much better. The vast majority of visits are from referrals (mainly social channels and an email newsletter) and direct traffic. Search traffic is relatively low though. I really want to boost search traffic to site #2. And I'd like to piggy back off some of the search traffic from site #1. Here's my question: If a particular article on site #1 (that ranks very well) needs to be updated, what's the risk/reward of updating the content on site #2 instead and 301 redirecting the original post to the newer post on site #2? Part 2: There are dozens of posts on site #1 that can be improved and updated. Is there an extra risk (or diminishing returns) associated with doing this across many posts? Hope this makes sense. Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | djreich0 -
301 redirect to new website
We are migrating to a new website that will be using entirely new URLs under the same domain as the old website. The old website is a custom PHP script and the new website uses Drupal. I know that I should use individual 301 redirects to the corresponding new pages. My question is just how to set up the hundreds of 301 redirects from the old website to the new one? Here is the process I've come up with. Please let me know if there is an easier and better way for this. Before actually changing to the new website: download an advanced report with all pages on this domain from OSE. Find corresponding pages on the new website Make the hundreds of 301 redirect lines in an .htaccess file with the following code: redirect 301 /oldurl.html http://domain.com/the-full-url Thanks in advance for your help!
Technical SEO | | qbeeker0 -
Redirecting Entire Microsite Content to Main Site Internal Pages?
I am currently working on improving site authority for a client site. The main site has significant authority, but I have learned that the company owns several other resource-focused microsites which are stagnant, but which have accrued significant page authority of their own (thought still less than the main site). Realizing the fault in housing good content on a microsite rather than the main site, my thought is that I can redirect the content of the microsites to internal pages on the main site as a "Resources" section. I am wondering a: if this is a good idea and b: the best way to transfer site authority from these microsites. I am also wondering how to organize the content and if, for example, an entire microsite domain (e.g. microsite.com) should in fact be redirected to internal resource pages (e.g. mainsite.com/resources). Any input would be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | RightlookCreative1 -
301 redirecting a mobile site.
Is it possible to selectively 301 redirect mobile/tablet user agents and google robots from the desktop version of a website to a mobile site? Would this preserve the SEO for the desktop website while optimizing the mobile/tablet site for mobile SEO?
Technical SEO | | inc.com0 -
Will 301 redirecting a site multiple times still preserve the original site value?
Hi, All! If site www.abc.com was already 301 redirected to site www.def.com, and now the site owner wants to redirect www.def.com to www.ghi.com - is there any concern that it's not going to work, and some of the original linkjuice, rank, trust, etc. is going to vanish? Or as long as the 301s are set up right, should you be able to 301 indefinitely? Does anyone have any experience with actually doing this and seeing good/bad/neutral results? Thanks in advance! -Aviva B
Technical SEO | | debi_zyx0 -
Site links -> anchor text and blocking
1.Does anyone know where google pulls that anchor text for the organic site links? -- Is there a way to manipulate the anchor text of the sitelinks to get our more important pages to stick out more (capitalization, punctuation etc.) 2. If i block a few of my sitelinks from showing will goolge replace it with a new sitelink or will i be left with fewer? Thanks! Srs
Technical SEO | | Morris770