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
-
First Link Priority - Drop Down Menu
Hey Mozzers Just want to make sure I have this right - If a website offers a service, say "digital marketing" - and has this link in a dropdown menu in the header, would this make any link in the body of a page (using different anchor text) pointless in SEO terms?.. e.g. a link with "online marketing" or "digital strategy" Cheers!
Technical SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Do web design footer links of websites you build have value?
Hi everyone. I am trying to build up DA for my site and create linking opportunities with my clients sites but I am not seeing any link value. I just did a redesign with another firm and we built out www.denbow.com . We have links to our sites in the footer but for some reason it's not being indexed. Can someone help me understand if it is good to put built by a href link in the footer? I've built almost 12 sites in my first 1.5 years of being in business for myself and I thought the links would pass some sort of value. Thanks in advance for the help and education. Regards, Noob Gary
Technical SEO | | gdavey0 -
Can I redirect a link even if the link is still on the site
Hi Folks, I've got a client who has a duplicate content because they actually create duplicate content and store the same piece of content in 2 different places. When they generate this duplicate content, it creates a 2nd link on the site going to the duplicate content. Now they want the 2nd link to always redirect to the first link, but for architecture reasons, they can't remove the 2nd link from the site navigation. We can't use rel-canonical because they don't want visitors going to that 2nd page. Here is my question: Are there any adverse SEO implications to maintaining a link on a site that always redirects to a different page? I've already gone down the road of "don't deliberately create duplicate content" with the client. They've heard me, but won't change. So, what are your thoughts? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Rock330 -
How are these links being displayed?
How does one markup their site to get the small sitelinks to appear in SERP listings as seen in the example image below? jJiQYy3
Technical SEO | | SelectHub0 -
Does HTTPS Affect Inbound Link Numbers?
Hi All, I'm dealing with an internal IT staff that is trying to change an entire site to run on HTTPS instead of HTTP. The way they want things configured, all links pointing to HTTP URLs would redirect to the HTTPS. I'm assuming this would adversely affect page rank/domain authority, etc... am I right there? Thanks, Ben
Technical SEO | | Ben_Alvord0 -
Internal links of my website is taken as inbound link ?
Hi, I was checking my links in Open Site Explorer (http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.bons-plans-vacances.fr) this morning and i came up with this: My main domain is taken as outbound links ...! This link : www.bons-plans-vacances.fr/ Anchor Text : (img alt)100% Bons Plans Voyages From this URL : www.bons-plans-vacances.fr/ I have the same problem with my subdomains : voyage.bons-plans-vacances.fr/sejour/Toutes-Destinations I have that HTML code on the link : Any help ? This is very strange .. i have the same result in google webmaster tools. Thanks 🙂 eDE9b.jpg
Technical SEO | | BonsPlansvacances0 -
What is the value of english links with foreign language anchor text for a foreign site?
I have a site in Spanish that is hosted in Spain with a .es TLD. I already have many Spanish-language links from websites in Spain, but I obviously want more and I'm finding I might need to look beyond typical Spanish sites. In talking to some of my link builders who work on my English/American sites, they are recommending that I build links on the normal article sites, blogs and web 2.0 sites that I normally build links on but that I make all the content English and insert the anchor text in Spanish. For example, if my site were about "weightloss", my keyword would be "perder peso" (in spanish). They are recommending that I have articles, reviews, etc written about weightloss in English with the anchor text "perder peso" worked into the English article. Most of the sites are English sites that are hosted in the US (article sites, web 2.0 properties, etc). My question is what is the value of these links? Does anybody have any experience with this?
Technical SEO | | jargomang0 -
Mobile sitemaps - how much value?
Hi, We have a main www website with a standard sitemap. We also have a m. site for mobile content (the mobile site only contains our top pages and doesn't include the entire site). If a mobile client accesses one of our www pages we redirect to the m. page. If we don't have a m. version we keep them on the www site. Since we already have a www sitemap, is there much value in creating a mobile site map? The mobile site (although missing all pages) is pretty robust and contains most content people are looking for. Will the mobile sitemap help for Mobile searches (more so than our standard sitemap)? I'm also planning on rel canonical the m. pages to the www. pages (per other suggestios on SEOMoz) Thanks
Technical SEO | | NicB10