Redirecting a penalized domain to a new one to remove penalty?
-
I've got this website that has been hit quite hard by the first Penguin update round.
Would it be better to move all my content to another domain and do a 301 redirect? Or should I keep the penalized domain and try to clean up the bad link profile?
Also I must say that the website has been hacked last fall and the hacker was able to upload porn stuff in one of the folders. Needless to say, I quickly acquired tons of links from porn and warez. And no, porn and warez has nothing to do with my website's topic.
Thank you for your help!
Stephane
-
Any update on 301's passing penalt to a new domain?
-
Sorry I'm late to the conversation but I was just wondering, in a scenario where you have been punished just for bad links but the quality of your site is fine, If you put the exact same version of your penalised site on a new domain (with no redirects), would Google recognise it and penalise it again, or would that give it a completely fresh start?
-
I have seen people report that they have escaped a penalty by redirecting a Penguin hit site to a new domain, but really this is likely to just be temporary. Once another Penguin refresh happens, you'll probably get hit again on the new domain.
As EGOL mentioned, Penguin is not so much about content, but rather about links. If you redirect, those redirections will still take the links with them. (We think that 90-99% of link juice is transmitted through a redirect.) So, if you got penalized because of bad links then those bad links will still be pointing at the new site via a redirect.
I'm not an expert on getting links removed, but I had this thought. You mentioned that someone hacked your site and put porn in one folder and it was this porn stuff that attracted links. Can you not just remove the pages that have the porn? And tell Google in your WMT to deindex those pages? Or do those pages also contain your money content as well?
Edit: I think I need to be a little more clear. I was thinking that the goal would be to remove the pages that are attracting the links. If the links point to 404's do they still count? I'm guessing no?
-
Penguin problems are because your site has bad links.
If you have a penguin problem the 301 redirect will assign those bad links to the new site.
If you do other types of redirects your search rankings in Bing/Yahoo will probably disappear.
-
I never rinse dirty cups. I just fill it with water and bam! free coffee!
-
How about a meta or javascript redirect then?
The content is unique and valuable. Relaunching a new website would cost me about $3000.
-
it still brings in about $1500 a month from Bing/Yahoo.
OK... leave it up for that money.
Why no redirect?
The same reason why you rinse a dirty cup.
-
Why no redirect?
Even though the website has lost 80% of traffic, it still brings in about $1500 a month from Bing/Yahoo.
-
With all the information you have provided, it's always worth a shot to file a reconsideration with Google, but then the most you'd expect back is an automated reply within 1-4 weeks. After that, when your website starts showing up, if it starts showing up (which is further dependent on whether there was any manual penalty). If it was just algorithmic loss of rankings, then the reconsideration won't do anything. If I were you, and I have tried all of the above options, then obviously the last resort is a new domain, but then I don't think I would do a 301 from the old penalized domain to the new domain.
-
Just saying what I would do... this isn't advice.
If your content sucks or is mediocre. Walk away.
If your content is unique and fantastic. Hire a security pro to clean up the files and the database. Move it to a new domain and start promoting it with white hat methods.
Forget about the redirects.
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
-
Am I better off with ten links from one site or one link from ten sites?
I am writing a series of linked-back articles for a highly-ranked web publisher, but wonder if I'd be better off sharing the articles across different sites. My goal is to grow our domain authority and SEO rankings.
Link Building | | Lysarden0 -
1000's Backlinks from ONE Root Domain - Positive or negative?
One of my website's link is placed over a comment. This website has a "recent comments" section in the footer which is hence appearing on all the websites pages. All tools including - Google Search Console, Majestic and MOZ are showing 45000+ links from that root domain. Questions: Are these links harmful to my rankings? Should I get all those links disavowed? Should I disavow the root domain or leave the link that lies on the home page? What if there are up to 10 links coming from a domain? is that harmful too? Apart from disavowing, is there any other option to get this fixed? If at all this counts as an issue... Thanks in advance!!
Link Building | | Ishrat-Khan0 -
Migrating blog posts to new site
I'm in the process of setting up a new site for a client, moving them over to WordPress from Joomla. They've got 50ish blog posts on their old site, but none of them have accumulated any external links. Is it worth it to copy them over to the new site for the sake of retaining all that content, or better just to start from scratch?
Link Building | | mtwelves0 -
SEO for new product at the market
Hi everyone, Imagine you are a book store owner and there is a new book which is going to be released next month. What would you do to rank for queries such as: And the Mountains Echoed And the Mountains Echoed book Of course, this book has been already released but think as it not. Thanks.
Link Building | | nedimtalovic0 -
What happens to (external) linkjuice after you redirect a page?
Hope everybody is having a good day:). I was wondering what happens to the external link juice of a page when you redirect it to a new (and improved) url? For instance www.example.com/lowvolumesword/highvolumeword/ 301 --> www.example.com/highvolumeword/ Will the /highvolumeword/ page lose a lot of (external) linkjuice? Is it best to change the external links to the new url manually or leave them as is and let the 301 redirect take care of it? Is it possible to say that no more than x% of your linkjuice will be passed through via a 301? I hope im making sense here and am looking forward to your reaction. Thanks in advance,
Link Building | | PrizeWize
Lawrence0 -
Confirming unnatural link removed
My SEO firm confirmed on 4/5 that they've removed links from a site www.fantake.com. However, as of today, it still shows on GWM there are 1100 links coming from that site. Questions: where can I find out bad links from root domain listed on GWM? There are some domains showing they have hundreds of links to our site. Between the lag time of GWM crawling, is there a tool that I can use and verify if a link is indded removed?
Link Building | | ypl0 -
Remove Unatural Links by SEO Co.
The SEO firm we hired built 2797 links with 123 domain within two month period (March and April) when we don't know better. We received Google's warning on 3/28, and they didn't tell us anything but keep building. Well, that's history now. We learned our lesson. That's why we are a member of SEOmoz. The SEO firm is not too keen on helping us remove the link (we've discontinue the service) after one initial attempt to a few site with tons of links (performed by their Indian team). I've got advice from this Forum regarding link removal. The most suggestions we get is to remove it as many as possible and move on building good links. But, I am afraid such approach will take us years to come ahead as we are under staffed. I saw here that someone mentioned their link building firm wants to charge $10 for links removed. Based on that idea, I wonder if I should offer some monetary incentive? If so, what amount would make financial sense?
Link Building | | ypl0 -
Are backlinks to a domain that redirects useless?
I am working on trying to get backlinks. We are currently redirecting a few Domains to our current domain name. One of the Domains that is redirecting is the main Domain, we will be advertising in the near future. Can I send backlinks to the redirected URL or does it only carry link juice if it is to the main Domain?
Link Building | | hfranz0