Should a 301 from a penalised domain to a new domain be removed?

[Ewan.Kennedy]

A business traded on a domain let's say example.COM which was heavily penalised due to non-removable spammy back links. Their previous SEO advised them to set up on example.CO.UK but redirected example.COM to example.CO.UK.

Example.CO.UK ranks very poorly, presumably due to being 'tarred with the same brush' i.e. attributed with the ills of example.COM.

Will it do any good to remove the redirect or is example.CO.UK now doomed as well?

[Ewan.Kennedy]

Hi Robert,

Thanks and sorry for my slow reply.

Loads of good points you've raised here.

You're quite right to challenge my presumption that the new domain is ranking poorly due to the 301 since there could be many other reasons.

It's difficult to describe all the circumstances in a short question, so I guess I was going on my gut feel to some extent. Not ranking in the top 100 for a non-competitive term. I don't think the question of correlation arises here since there are no data sets to relate but I understand the point you make about cause and effect.

For me a 302 doesn't really feel like that's what it's intended for so is not ideal.

I think when Matt Cutts said 'start again', he meant really start again' i.e. no 301 so removing the 301 and having no other kind of redirect seems intuitively like the best option to me.

Cheers.

[Ewan.Kennedy]

Hi Marcus,

Thanks and sorry for my slow reply.

I guess removing the 301 has the short term disadvantage of losing any traffic that might have come via the good links to the old domain but that's probably the lesser of two evils so a worthwhile trade-off longer term.

Cheers.

[RobertFisher]

Ewan,

I would remove the 301 on a very simple premise: the previous domain had (based on you stating it was penalized) a lot of poor links. If that is true, why would you want to even go down that road to try to bring juice that likely does not exist any longer? Also, was the "penalty" a manual or algorithmic? Was it based on a date of inception for something like Panda, Penguin, or an update of same?

But, even though I would remove the 301, you cannot draw a correlation that a new domain: example.co.uk is ranking poorly due to the 301's from the .com. That is correlation equalling causation and, typically, it does not. First, what additional quality links are now coming to new domain that are independent of the 301 coming in? Second, is on-page, KW analysis, etc. for new domain all as it should be or did previous SEO miss on any of that? If it is possible for localization there with the domain, when new domain was created did someone make changes to local, citation sites, etc.? Is there a change from previous social such that the social now resolves to the new domain.

There are many questions here, but I think I would be remiss to claim that taking the 301 off would cause some rise in rankings. It is more likely that other factors will have a larger impact. Note, given you still need to redirect to the new site, you could use a 302 (temporary) redirect to prevent juice passing. You could use a meta refresh but that is a bit slow to most and not really recommended. There are other redirects and I would be interested to see what others suggest as a way to redirect while preserving the "autonomy" of the new domain. My first thought is still the 302. On a certain level, you could continue to attempt removal and mitigation of poor links to old site while you keep new up. Ryan Kent  does a lot more with link removal I believe. If the site is of particular value in customers/revenue, etc. you might PM him. If you do a site search on him here, you will find several links to answers on link removal/penalty removal.

I hope this helps you out,

Robert

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Ewan,

By all accounts, if you 301 a penalised domain to a new domain, you are just passing the penalty along (5h1t rolls down hill) and if the whole reason they moved domain was to move away from an inescapable penalty then 301'ing the bad domain to the new domain makes no sense whatsoever.

If you remove the 301 you will eventually remove the problem. If it was a manual penalty then you may need to submit a reconsideration request (it may not hurt to do this anyway) but the new domain is not broken assuming nothing untoward has been done there.

This is basically a severing of ties, remove the 301 is removing the bad links so whilst you may need to do some SEO to move things forward you will not be fighting a losing battle.

Hope that helps!
Marcus