Best way to transfer pagerank from one site to another
-
We currently own two sites (with unique domains) that accomplish a similar goal, but are completely different (so there's no duplicate content, etc) and were developed independently. Both sites have very good pagerank due to great press and inbound links over several years. Also both have thousands of pages and get a lot of inbound deep links.
We plan on shutting one of the sites down so we can focus on the other. We'd like to transfer as much traffic and SEO/pagerank value from the one we're shutting down to the one we're continuing to focus on.
What's the best way to do that? Should we just do a 301 redirect? Or keep the site running in some diminished form and link it to the site we're focusing on?
I saw SEOmoz has a good guide on moving sites http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection which recommends a 301 redirect, but I wanted to see if the same applies when merging sites as we are in this case.
-
Hi Keri, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/anchor-text-distribution-avoiding-over-optimization the author Geoff Kenyon says that he would recommend a 7:3 ratio branded vs. exact..
Do you think this Ratio is good?
<imo>the algorithms are not going to "always" rank a site with a 7:3 ratio over a site with a 6:4 ratio they are not "only" looking at the quality of links and the anchor ratios to rank a site, they are also looking at social media indicators. </imo>
I did read an article on seomoz about Wikipedia pages which outrank many sites and have mostly exact links.. However, Wikipedia's root domain has mucho trust and authority so this would not be a good enough indicator
-
Hi! I'd love to know more about this statement. Can you tell me more about how you derived these numbers, or where you found it? A citation or explanation would be really helpful.
-
To keep a link profile clean the recommended natural looking anchor text are as follows:
50-75% Branded inbound links and URL links.
25-50% Exact and diverse inbound links.
-
Hi Gregory,
If the goal is to focus on one brand I would 301 the site. However are these sites relevant to each other? Aare the existing links from the transferred site going to help the users?
If these are "yes" then I would do a 301.
Keep in mind having two relevant sites is spreading you ink equity in 2. This is also spreading your credibility/authority on the web in 2.
Also, if one site has a bad link profile I would clean it up before transferring it.
Hope this helps.
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
-
Backlink (which one is better)
Hi, for guest posting which Anchor is better for my brand website? 1)Naked Anchor text (e.g according to www.example.co.uk) OR Branded Anchor text? (e.g according to Example, which can be clicked to www.example.co.uk ) Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KINSHUN0 -
Google favoring old site over new site...
Hi, I started a new site for a client: www.berenjifamilylaw.com. His old site: www.bestfamilylawattorney.com was too loaded up with bad links. Here's the weird part: when you Google: "Los Angeles divorce lawyer" you see the old site come up on the 21st page, but Google doesn't even show the new site (even though it is indexed). It's been about 2 weeks now and no change. Has anyone experienced something like this? If so, what did you do (if anything). Also, I did NOT do a 301 redirect from old to new b/c of spammy links. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
We sold our site's domain and have a new one. Where do we go from here?
We recently sold our established domain -- for a compelling price -- and now have the task of transitioning to our new domain. What steps would you recommend to lesson the anticipated decline from search engines in this scenario?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | accessintel0 -
Best way to remove low quality paginated search pages
I have a website that has around 90k pages indexed, but after doing the math I realized that I only have around 20-30k pages that are actually high quality, the rest are paginated pages from search results within my website. Every time someone searches a term on my site, that term would get its own page, which would include all of the relevant posts that are associated with that search term/tag. My site had around 20k different search terms, all being indexed. I have paused new search terms from being indexed, but what I want to know is if the best route would be to 404 all of the useless paginated pages from the search term pages. And if so, how many should I remove at one time? There must be 40-50k paginated pages and I am curious to know what would be the best bet from an SEO standpoint. All feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Best way to remove duplicate content with categories?
I have duplicate content for all of the products I sell on my website due to categories and subcategories. Ex: http://www.shopgearinc.com/products/product/stockfeeder-af38.php http://www.shopgearinc.com/products/co-matic-power-feeders/stockfeeder-af38.php http://www.shopgearinc.com/products/co-matic-power-feeders/heavy-duty-feeders/stockfeeder-af38.php Above are 3 urls to the same title and content. I use a third party developer backend system so doing canonicalization seems difficult as I don't have full access. What is the best to get rid of this duplicate content. Can I do it through webmaster tools or should I pay the developer to do the canonicalization or a 301 redirect? Any suggestions? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kysizzle60 -
Has my site been penalized?
Our site was listed on the first page for the phrase Active SEO on Google.co.uk. We suddenly find ourselves on page 4 overnight and we're not sure what's going on. We have not undertaken an Black hat techniques however the site is fairly new. Anyone have any ideas as to what is going on?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MassivePrime0 -
Two Brands One Site (Duplicate Content Issues)
Say your client has a national product, that's known by different brand names in different parts of the country. Unilever owns a mayonnaise sold East of the Rockies as "Hellmanns" and West of the Rockies as "Best Foods". It's marketed the same way, same slogan, graphics, etc... only the logo/brand is different. The websites are near identical with different logos, especially the interior pages. The Hellmanns version of the site has earned slightly more domain authority. Here is an example recipe page for some "WALDORF SALAD WRAPS by Bobby Flay Recipe" http://www.bestfoods.com/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1 http://www.hellmanns.us/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1 Both recipie pages are identical except for one logo. Neither pages ranks very well, neither has earned any backlinks, etc... Oddly the bestfood version does rank better (even though everything is the same, same backlinks, and hellmanns.us having more authority). If you were advising the client, what would you do. You would ideally like the Hellmann version to rank well for East Coast searches, and the Best Foods version for West Coast searches. So do you: Keep both versions with duplicate content, and focus on earning location relevant links. I.E. Earn Yelp reviews from east coast users for Hellmanns and West Coast users for Best foods? Cross Domain Canonical to give more of the link juice to only one brand so that only one of the pages ranks well for non-branded keywords? (but both sites would still rank for their branded keyworkds). No Index one of the brands so that only one version gets in the index and ranks at all. The other brand wouldn't even rank for it's branded keywords. Assume it's not practical to create unique content for each brand (the obvious answer). Note: I don't work for Unilver, but I have a client in a similar position. I lean towards #2, but the social media firm on the account wants to do #1. (obviously some functionally based bias in both our opinions, but we both just want to do what will work best for client). Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | crvw0 -
Migrating a site
Hello, I have what a I think it's a noob question.. I have a medium size website and need to put it into maintenance for the next 2 months, and afterwards activate a completly new site. My client asked me to do this, cause the same people whoe run the constant flow of information on the site, are the ones who are going to develop the new site, so he wants to just close it out So... what are the steps for doing this with minimum impact on any SEO advances made this past months?.. How do I tell the search engines, Hey, just under maintenance for a while....then... i'm back in the game but this is my new structure. and the old one should go here
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0