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
-
301 redirect single page
I have a popular page on one domain and I did 301 redirect of it to another domain. Just one single page. Both the sites are very related to each other. Will the backlinks get transferred? Its been more than a week but nothing shows up in webmaster tools.
Link Building | | anran0 -
Is there a downside to "closing" a domain and 301'ing to to your main domain?
We have a domain which was optimized for a specific keyword. It does very well for that keyword, but seems like it has in turn caused our primary domain to be penalized (back to page 3) for that same keyword (We think they've figured out the connection). The optimized domain (only one page) has links on it to our primary domain, so I don't want to delete it as that's where our traffic currently comes from. But if I deleted it and 301'ed it to the primary domain is there a downside? Alternatively I could disavow it, but if the search engines know it's the same owner will they hold that against all domains? Or, alternatively again. Should I turn it into a more substantial website? Which could in turn remove it's "spamminess". Any suggestions are welcomed!
Link Building | | absoauto0 -
Backlinks from the Same Domain (But Different Pages)
Wayyy back when (in the days of yore) Mr Cutts spelled out in a video that page rank is distributed equally between the external links on the page. If there are two links on a page, each gets passed 50% of the available page rank etc. (Perhaps an oversimplification but bear with me). As a result of this, the company I worked for at the time (this was the dark ages when sidebar homepage links were in vogue) decreed that we would only ever approach a site about a link for a client once, as additional links had little extra SEO Value. Now you could argue that if there are 5 external links, each acquiring 20% of the power, and your site has 2 of those, you are getting 40% of the power, but lets forget the basic math for a minute. I have scoured the web and Mr Cutts' videos and I cannot find the answer to my question: If my site (Site A) has a backlink from SiteB Page 1, and a backlink from SiteB page 2 - does this count as two separate links in the eyes of Google? If the SAME site links out to my site, linking to different pages in different posts, does this give me more SEO benefit? Thanks for your time!
Link Building | | Turkey0 -
Buying a domain from auction
Hi Mozer's There is a domain in auction. I can see it has a PA of 40 and DA of 29 and PR of 2 Is it worth buying for $999? any suggestions?
Link Building | | riyas_heych0 -
Recovery from Penguin removing internal urls permanently replace with new
Since I was hit with Penguin back in April, but with this last update Oct. 5th I did see a very slight recovery, I was thinking about dumping some of my old URL's which contain backlinks which I can't get removed that seem spammy. I was thinking of keeping the page intact but replace with an entirely new URL and NOT 301 redirect. So basically starting over with that URL that way the backlinks points to a dead url. Any thoughts?
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
One Website or Mini Sites?
Hello and thank you in advance for your responses. My wife and I have been running a small service business for over 5 years and we recently came upon an untapped niche in our industry we will like to explore. We have found some niche keyword specific domains and have been contemplating building a few specific minisites linking to our main site(blog) in order to reach a more targeted audience. It seems the more I research this concept the more confused I guess. My questions are the following: 1. Should we create a main blog, for example: "BestHotelConferences.com" and have some (about 10) independent optimized sites "HiltonConferences.com," "MarriottConferences.com," linking to our main blog or should we optimize these pages within our main blog? 2. If we choose to create this minisite buildout concept and these domains yield the following monthly search results which one should we pick? HiltonConference.com - 3900 HiltonConference**s.**com - 1700 HiltonHotelConference - 730 HiltonHotelConferences - 580 I have heard that the plurals already include the singular version however they will not be an exact match. Also if we add the word hotelwe will be targeting a broader audience since "hilton conference" will still be included in the domain name, but once again it will not be an exact match. Please help! Which domain name should we pick?
Link Building | | Laz1010 -
Linking Root Domain does not show twitter
I wonder what it takes to capture twitter as a backlink. We have a twitter account @idyllicsoftware which never occurs in open site explorer. Also it never shows newer back links. Could you suggest how to use it better?
Link Building | | idyllicsoftware0 -
Redirect
A few pages get a lot of external links and rank well (when site:domain.com) but i do not want that those pages rank well (these are blog pages and we are in E-commerce) Can i redirect these pages to other pages which are more important to me and customers because google see only the link or is google so smart that they see a realtion between the page from which i get the links and to the page in my webste In that case i rename the old pages.
Link Building | | turnon0