Opportunity for Redirect?
-
Hi there!
I've got a site selling outdoor jackets and remembered about a friend's old business website (that also sold outdoor jackets) which is now dormant.
He's kindly agreed to let me host a splash page on his old domain, or to use the domain to redirect.
I wasn't sure if Google looked negatively at redirects, so I suggested the page host option? What do you think?
I guess what it would mean is for us to supply our name server details to him, and then ask him to put these into his DNS settings.
If we were to host a page in this way, would we add a page of relevant content, a simple link? Would this pull the link juice through?
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.
Matt
-
I think it would be better if it were hosted on a different server than your main site is.
-
Thanks Adam.
He currently doesn't have anything hosted other than the domain name unfortunately. If I was to get a splash page up there, I would have to host it.
I'll ask him about buying the domain, and if it went through, what's the most effective method of utilising this?
I was a little concerned that Google might look at the redirect unfavourably, especially if it was hosted by us, and using the same company that hosts our own site.
Maybe I'm making it more complicated than it is?
Appreciate your help
-
Thanks Rob!
It seems that buying the domain would give us lots more options... I really only spoke to the owner about the possibility for a splash page or 301 redirect
It's all a bit new to me really, the URL gives a 404 Error at the moment, so the content of his old site is gone.
If I was to buy the domain, how would I go about doing the page by page redirects?
I set up a crawl there, and did a little research on Open Site Explorer; found 50 Links from 34 Domains. So there's definitely juice there!
-
If the old domain has incomming links, then you can 301 redirect it. That would be good value.
If it does not have any links, then it is of no value to redirect.
-
"I guess what it would mean is for us to supply our name server details to him, and then ask him to put these into his DNS settings."
Don't do that. That would setup your site to be accessible via both urls.
Either put up a splash page on his domain linking to yours, or do a 301 redirect. I've had success with both tactics.
-
Hi Matt,
This can be a great thing for you - if the old dormant domain is till being crawled, still indexed, and still has inbound links built to the site over time.
Adding a page to his site, and with unique relative content might pass back some value - but if the domain has been dormant for some time - the 'juice' value has probably fizzled a little (along with the site's rankings) for the market KW's he was targeting.
Is he planning to give you the domain? Perhaps sell it to you? If so, and he wanted out - I would do a domain and page by page level 301 redirect from his old dated site - to your domain. This would help pass through all the page link value as well as the domain - helping correct any 404's errorrs that might occur and help search index'es to map out the new 'address' of the pages on your site as the location - also pushing through those links and value to your domain.
Run a 'crawler' on his domain to map out the whole site - and then create an excel doc to map any relavant pages, info etc to pages on your domain and prep a 301 file to handle the redirects.
If that's a route he's willing to go, that's more or less what I would do to salvage any value from his domain/site and pass it along to yours.
If not - a page on his site, with a link back, will do just that - provide a link back from an older/dated and not maintained site which won't do all that much for you in the grand scheme of things.
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
-
Redirect a sub-domain to other domain
Hi there! Suppose a domain 'abc.com' has a subdomain 'news.abc.com'. If we redirect (301) only subdomain 'news.abc.com' to 'xyz.com'. so is there any SEO harm on main domain 'abc.com'? Even both abc.com and xyz.com are running separately. Rajiv
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gamesecure0 -
Redirecting location-specific domains
I am working on a project for a physician who only cares about reaching patients within a specific geographic region. He has a new technique at his practice and wants to get the word out via radio spots. I want to track the effectiveness of the radio campaigns without the use of call-tracking numbers or special promo codes. Since the physician's primary domain is very long (but well-established), my thought is to register 3-4 short domains referencing the technique and location so they would be easy for listeners to remember and type-in later. 301 these domains to the relevant landing page on the main domain. As an alternative. Each domain could be a single relevant landing page with a link to the relevant procedure on the main site. It's not as if there is anything deceptive going on, rather, I would simply be using a domain in place of a call tracking number. I think I should be able to view the type-in traffic in Analytics, but would Google have an issue with this? Thoughts and suggestions appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SCW0 -
301 redirect a set of pages to one landing page/URL?
I'm planning to redirect the following pages to one new URL/landing page: Old URLs: http://www.olddomain.com/folder/page/1 http://www.olddomain.com/folder/page/2 http://www.olddomain.com/folder/page/3 http://www.olddomain.com/folder/page/4 http://www.olddomain.com/folder/page/5 http://www.olddomain.com/folder/page/6 New URL: http://www.newdomain.com/new-folder/new-page Code in .htaccess that I will be using: RedirectMatch 301 /folder/page/(.*) http://www.newdomain.com/new-folder/new-page Let me know if this is correct. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | esiow20130 -
Removing/ Redirecting bad URL's from main domain
Our users create content for which we host on a seperate URL for a web version. Originally this was hosted on our main domain. This was causing problems because Google was seeing all these different types of content on our main domain. The page content was all over the place and (we think) may have harmed our main domain reputation. About a month ago, we added a robots.txt to block those URL's in that particular folder, so that Google doesn't crawl those pages and ignores it in the SERP. We now went a step further and are now redirecting (301 redirect) all those user created URL's to a totally brand new domain (not affiliated with our brand or main domain). This should have been done from the beginning, but it wasn't. Any suggestions on how can we remove all those original URL's and make Google see them as not affiliated with main domain?? or should we just give it the good ol' time recipe for it to fix itself??
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | redcappi0 -
Pages linked with Spam been 301 redirected to 404\. Is it ok
Pl suggest, some pages having some spam links pointed to those pages are been redirected to 404 error page (through 301 redirect) - as removing them manually was not possible due to part of core component of cms and many other coding issue, the only way as advised by developer was making 301 redirect to 404 page. Does by redirecting these pages to 404 page using 301 redirect, will nullify all negative or spam links pointing to them and eventually will remove the resulting spam impact on the site too. Many Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Modi0 -
Should I redirect old pages
I have taken over SEO on a site. The old people built thousands of pages with duplicate content. I am converting site to wordpress and was wondering if I should take the time to 301 redirect all 10,000 or so pages with duplicate content. The 10,000 pages all have links back to different to different pages as well as to the homepage. Should I just let them go to a 404 page not found.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Roots70 -
If I redirect a penalized domain to a non-penalized domain, will the new domain still be penalized?
If I redirect a penalized domain to a non-penalized domain, will the new domain still be penalized?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MangoMan160