301 redirecting old content from one site to updated content on a different site
-
I have a client with two websites. Here are some details, sorry I can't be more specific!
-
Their older site -- specific to one product -- has a very high DA and about 75K visits per month, 80% of which comes from search engines.
-
Their newer site -- focused generally on the brand -- is their top priority. The content here is much better. The vast majority of visits are from referrals (mainly social channels and an email newsletter) and direct traffic. Search traffic is relatively low though.
I really want to boost search traffic to site #2. And I'd like to piggy back off some of the search traffic from site #1.
Here's my question: If a particular article on site #1 (that ranks very well) needs to be updated, what's the risk/reward of updating the content on site #2 instead and 301 redirecting the original post to the newer post on site #2?
Part 2: There are dozens of posts on site #1 that can be improved and updated. Is there an extra risk (or diminishing returns) associated with doing this across many posts?
Hope this makes sense. Thanks for your help!
-
-
You lose some juice with a 301 and there is usually a 2 week period where you drop out of SERPs for that page. However, the rankings usually come back strong after that.
A note about rewriting pages in general: I've rewritten old pages and seen improvements in SERPs. The risk would lie in how big of a content change occurs - if you have a page about dogs and rewrite for cats, you won't be rankings as well for dog terms. The benefit of rewriting over creating a new page is that it already has ranking power and can rank more easily for new terms.
Since #2 is the one that is getting shared/linked to frequently now (and I'm assuming a better domain name), I would slowly redirect the pages from #1 to #2. Try it for a few pages and see what kind of results you get. Just give G 2 weeks to update your rankings.
Cheers,
Oleg
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
-
Are on-site content carousel bad for SEO?
Hi, I didn't find an answer to my question in the Forum. I attached an example of content carousel, this is what I'm talking about. I understand that Google has no problem anymore with tabbed contents and accordeons (collapsible contents). But now I'm wondering about textual carousels. I'm not talking about an image slider, I'm talking about texts. Is text carousel harder to read for Google than plain text or tabs? Of course, i'm not talking about a carousel using Flash. Let's say the code is proper... Thanks for your help. spfra5
Technical SEO | | Alviau0 -
Old Content after 301 Redirect Success
Hi, I want to ask what need I do to the old content after my 301 redirect to the new domain with the same content success? Do I need to remove that old content? Nothing bad happen right? Thanks
Technical SEO | | matthewparkman0 -
301'd site, but new site is not getting picked up in google.
Hi I'm having big issues! Any help would be greatly appreciated This is the 3rd time this happened. Every time I switch my old site greatcleanjokes.com to the new design of chokeonajoke.com traffic goes almost completely down (I even tried out the new design on greatcleanjokes [to see if it was a 301 issue] and traffic also went down.) What can possibly be wrong with this new site that google just doesn't like it ?! I was ranking high up for many big phrase like joke of the day, corny jokes, clean jokes, short jokes. Now It's all gone. I also think it's strange that when I search for site:chokeonajoke.com the post pages show up before the category pages!? Here is the old site http://web.archive.org/web/20140406214615/http://www.greatcleanjokes.com/ Here is the new one http://chokeonajoke.com/ If you can't figure out anything do you know of anyone I can hire who may be able to figure it out?
Technical SEO | | Nickys22111 -
Do quizzes hurt your site? Thin content?
We did a 10 question quiz awhile back relating to something we were sponsoring, and it had a decent response. However, considering quizzes just aren't that long, does that contribute to making the site's content thin? Obviously, it's not a major problem at the moment, but if we did more of them would this be an issue? If there's no real issue, I'd prefer not to no-index them, but I'd love some feedback to help make the decision. Thanks, Ruben
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
301 redirect from sites closing down
Hi We have around 10 supplementary sites that have links to our site which are now closing down but are out of our control. We could have access to their domains so how could we maintain the link juice from these old sites which are going to our new site? However there will be no websites left on these old supplementary just domain names
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Setup 301 Redirects
I have been asked to transfer a clients old domain over to a new domain with a new site. All of the inbound links basically go to the homepage, and the few links that dont go to the homepage on the old site, might as well be redirected to the homepage on the new site. I'm wondering is there a "catch all" sort of redirect such as www.oldsite.com/* redirects to newsite.com. So any redirects we havent set up will automatically go to the new site homepage? And secondly, whats the easiest way to the redirects up? Can I just add it as a parked domain or addon domain in cpanel, and do the redirects in there? Or does it needs its own hosting for the old domain with its own htaccess file? Any help appreciated! 🙂
Technical SEO | | timscullin0 -
Redirecting an Old Domain
One of my clients has a newish e-commerce website that was just redesigned. Part of this new marketing push is shutting down an old yahoo store. The problem is that this old store's domain has a 10 year old link in DMoz and is there fore in about 200 other directories. Is pointing that old domain at the new website going to be enough to keep all of that link juice flowing?
Technical SEO | | Simple_Machines0 -
Looking for some help adding a 301 redirect for my Site
Hi there, I am trying to eliminate the 'www' using a 301 redirect script as I have duplicate page titles for both versions (with and without the 'www') I checked the page authority and found the pages without the 'www' to be ranked higher. For this reason I believe it would be wise to go for this option. I have an .htaccess file, all I need is the code and I should be ok 🙂 Thanks!
Technical SEO | | debeenus0