Preserving Link Value
-
My client has an existing domain, domain A. They recently purchased and absorbed another company with their own domain, domain B.
For marketing purposes company B will be rebranded as company A. They want to redirect domain B to domain A.
The problem is that company B has by far the more visible domain, with 4x the number of inbound links.
If I redirect domain B to domain A, what will happen to these links? I'm thinking their value will be lost.
-
Assuming these companies are closely related in market you might just get away with 301 redirects.
Is it perhaps possible to port the actual content on domain B to domain A (for example blogs, news items, events etc.), pretty much anything that has heavy backlinks? You might want to give the 'top pages on domain' tool by SEOmoz a go to see which pages are most important to conserve link value for.
-
If you do permanent redirects to the new site all the link juice shouldn't be lost, just a fraction.
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/301-redirect-test-how-much-link-juice-are-you-losing/2010/04/09/
SEOmoz says around 90-99 percent of the juice will be passed.
Another idea is to contact some of the websites that site B got their links from. You could introduce yourself and say that site A now owns site B, and you could politely ask them to change the links, or post an update in the blog post/content page that links to site B. This could also help you get some new links for site A by establishing a relationship with these outlets that you know give quality links to good sites.
Good luck with the transition.
Vinnie
-
That sucks...
A year ago I would have said to create a portal of domain B with shallow content that links to domain A. I was in the same situation.
The problem is that nobody is going to feed domain B if the company becomes non-existent. The page will drop eventually. Besides that, google doesn't seem to like shallow portal websites ;).
Right now I would:
- Create a 'our company is now ....' email template
- Fire up OpenSiteExplorer and find backlinks for Domain B
- Aks all these nice people to change their link to the relevant Domain A page
dirty work...
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
-
Should I worry that thousands of spam sites are linking to me?
I was browsing Google Webmaster Tools and discovered there are 117,301 links to my site— mostly from very low-quality, spammy websites. I definitely did not solicit these links. I'm worried they are from a competitor trying to get me penalized by Google. Should I be worried about this? spam-websites.png?1505218483
Technical SEO | | steve_benjamins0 -
Linking to my Site so I should Link Back?
I remember hearing a few years ago that it was a good practice to link back to a site that was linking to you. My company's site was referenced and linked to in a news article. The news company has an above average domain authority, which is pretty good for my company's backlink profile. Is it still or was ever a "best practice" to link back to this website/domain? I feel like linking back was a best practice, but when I try to search this, all I get back is backlinking 101 and backlinking articles. Nothing really answering my question straight forward. Thanks for any help.
Technical SEO | | aua0 -
Value of dormant domain
My client used to own a successful domain. They sold the business, the domain was not used by the purchaser. My client bought back the business and redirects the original STRONG domain to their new domain. How can I find out current page rank, traffic, etc of the original domain? Mik
Technical SEO | | mcorso0 -
Are bad links the reason for not ranking?
Hello Moz community. I'm looking here for some input from the experts on what could be wrong with a site I'm working on. The site is in Spanish, but I'm sure you'll get the idea. We want to rank the site first page on Google Mexico (www.google.com.mx) for the keyword "refacciones Audi" and some other brands (refacciones = replacement parts would probably be a good translation, just FYI). Now, our page hasn't been completely optimized, so in my mind it's OK not to be on first page yet. However, our main competitor is ranking first page for all the keywords we want to rank for, but when you check their site, you'll find there is hardly any content, no keywords are being used in their content, all pages have the exact same title and meta description, their catalog is in a completely different domain. In short, no SEO whatsoever. Looking at Moz data, our site has a DA of 26, while our competitor's has a 10. They have no external backlinks at all, while we have a few hundred. This leaves me scratching my head: how can a completely non-optimized site outrank us? I decided to check our backlink profile, and a previous SEO agency seems to have built MANY fake blogs with lots of backlinks with rich anchor text. Quite a big percentage of our backlinks are of this kind, so this is the only thing I can think can be affecting our ranking. Will disavowing be our solution? If you'd like to check, our site is: www.refaccionariaalemana.com.mx Our competitors' is: www.saferefacciones.com ANY help will be extremely appreciated as I feel a bit lost. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | EduardoRuiz1 -
Preserving Social Shares Through URL Changes
We are making significant URL changes to our website. Because the URL is changing the social sharing buttons are not showing previous shared counts. I have read several resources like the one below that is linked to in several other similar questions. http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2172926/How-to-Maintain-Social-Shares-After-a-Site-Migration However I would love to get some insight from someone who has done this and there thoughts on the outcome. As an ecommerce site the "Social Proof" of products that have received social shares is a big deal to us. In Mike Kings example above the counts are being attributed to the OLD URL which is problematic over time. Our site has been up for over 12 years and has had several major changes to it, and I am certain there will be more in the future, being able to preserve the count on the current URL is ideal. While I agree with him that over time I believe social platforms will let data pass through 301 redirects, until then I need to find the best way to do this. Also with his example and others I have seen people mention than new likes from the new url can reset the counter. If you have gone through this and have ideas pleas share them. I look forward to your thoughts thanks.
Technical SEO | | RMATVMC1 -
Is it a problem to have an image + link in your menu
Hi, My menu has a image with links to some of the main pages on the site and text underneath it explaining what the banner is. Will it be beneficial or harmful to have the text hyperlinked to the same pages the images go to?
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Bad link profile?
Hi Mozzers! We have recently been handed this client due to the former SEO company building up a bad link profile, which resulted in the site dropping off the search results all together. Forcing them to get a new domain. This happened in July last year and we are unsure whether it would be wise to submit a reconsideration request and then 301 their old sites pages to the new domain. Basically I'm asking whether you can spot any spammy links being built in their profile. Here is the old domain: http://www.claimssolicitors.co.uk/ It would be great if you could help me out! 🙂 Thanks
Technical SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
Too many links? Do links to named anchors count (ie page#nameanchor)?
Hi, I have an internal search results page that contains approx 200 links in total. This links to approx 50 pages. Each result listing contains a link to the page in the format /page.html and also has 3 more links (for each listing) to named anchors within the page. eg /page.html#section1, /page.html#section2, /page.html#section3 etc. Should i remove the named anchors to keep my links per page under the Seomoz suggested max of 100? Will it impact crawl-ability or link juice being passed? Thanks in advance for your response.
Technical SEO | | blackrails0