Acquiring a blog
-
Hello All,
I've recently acquired somebody else's blog and have redirected every post to the relevant page of my website (madegood.org). The content is the same as on the original site, and I have used 301 redirects. The original blog didn't have a particularly high page rank
I'm slightly worried that there are now thousands of links coming from one domain, which itself doesn't have much authority. Is there a way that I can tell google that I've acquired the blog, as opposed to just having lots of links from one domain.
Thanks
Will
-
Hey thanks!
-
Couple of good resources I can recommend:
1. How to find low value Links: http://www.stateofsearch.com/step-by-step-guide-finding-low-quality-links/
2. Link Detox: http://www.linkdetox.com/
If using an automated system like Link Detox, be sure to review each link manually.
-
Charles, saying that "Google will penalize you" for doing something is a fairly strong statement. Can you point to your source on this subject? It's helpful to give additional information in cases like this.
-
Although, what am I looking for with regards to dodgy backlinks? What are the tell tale signs?
I'd be happy to go through my backlinks in WMT and check each one, but not entirely sure what I'm looking for. I know all the theory behind good backlinks, but it all seems a bit wooly when it come to bad links, is there an easy way to spot sure fire offenders. Then when I find one, what can I do about it?
Cheers
Will
-
Will do!
-
I'd start by checking your backlinks, both to your domain and the one you redirected. After that, expand your investigation from there.
-
Thanks Cyrus, that's a very comprehensive answer!
I basically uploaded the copy on to new pages on my site, and manually put a 301 every page of the old site to the page on my site that has the same copy.... If that makes sense!?
I'm only concerned because I've suddenly (over the last couple of days) seen a hit in my google search referrals by about 70%. This migration happened months ago but I'm trying look under every stone.
I'll do as you suggested and see how I get on. Thanks again.
Will
-
It sounds like basically you did a domain migration? I'm a bit confused because you said you redirected to relevant pages on your website, but you also said the content is the same. So I'm wondering if you redirected to existing pages on your own site, or simply redirect the old URLs over to new URLs with the content from the old site. (Yeah, it doesn't make sense, but I'm on my first cup of coffee)
Generally, a large amount of redirects won't hurt you if it's for a legitimate reason - especially if you're migrating content from one domain to another. Where you get in trouble is when you 301 redirect URLs with low-quality backlinks. Those links then become YOUR links.
It might also look suspicious if you redirected multiple domains in a short period of time to your new domain, but this doesn't sound like the case.
Regardless, the best way to handle this is to claim ownership of both sites in Google Webmaster Tools before the redirect, then file a change of address for the old domain. You can actually still do this after the fact - you simply need to stop the 301 for the homepage long enough to claim ownership.
You likely want to file sitemaps for both the old URLs and new URLs so search engines can "process" the 301s. You can find more helpful tips here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos
I wouldn't expect this to effect your traffic in a negative way or cause a penalty, but keep an eye on your traffic and rankings just in case. If anything does go wrong, you can revert the changes you made.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
Cyrus
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
-
Blog article cannibalizes our home page
Hello there, We're having a rather big SEO issue that I’m hoping someone here can help us with, perhaps having experienced the same thing or simply understanding what's going on. Since around June, our website's home page has lost the majority of its most important rankings. Not just dropping, but losing them entirely and all at once. We think it was self-inflicted: Almost at the same time, a blog article of ours (which we had recently updated) started ranking for almost all the same keywords. While our home page is a commercial page highlighting only our own product, the article that usurped the position is a comparison article, comparing our own solution to competitors. The reason we created that article is because we noticed a trend of Google increasingly favoring such comparison articles over dedicated product pages. But of course we didn’t plan to cannibalize our own home page with it. My question is whether anyone has experience with such a case? Is there a way to "tell"/influence Google to rank our home page again, instead of ranking that article? Thanks a lot, Pascal
Technical SEO | | Maximuxxx1 -
Home Page Blog Snippets - Duplicate Content Help?
Afternoon Folks- I have been asked to contribute to a new site that has a blogfeed prominently displayed on the home page. It's laid out like this: Logo | Menu HOME PAGE SLIDER Blog 1 Title about 100 words of blog 1 Text Blog 2 Title about 100 words of blog 2 Text Blog 3 Title about 100 words of blog 3 Text Footer: -- This seems like an obvious duplicate content situation but also a way I have seen a lot of blogs laid out. (I.E. With blog content snippets being a significant portion of the home page content) I want the blogs to rank and I want the home page to rank, so I don't feel like a rel canonical on the blog post's is the correct option unless I have misunderstood their purpose. Anyone have any ideas or know how this is usually handled?
Technical SEO | | CRO_first0 -
Reverse proxy a successful blog from subdomain to subfolder?
I have an ecommerce site that we'll call confusedseo.com. I created a WordPress blog and CNAME'd it to blog.confusedseo.com. Since then, the blog has earned a PageRank of 3 and a decent amount of organic traffic. I am considering a reverse proxy to forward blog.confusedseo.com to confusedseo.com/blog/. As I understand it, this will greatly help the "link juice" of the root domain. However, I'm concerned about any potential harm done to the existing SEO value of the blog. What, if anything, should I be doing to ensure that the reverse proxy doesn't hurt my "juice" rather than help it?
Technical SEO | | bedbugsupply0 -
Google ranks my sitemap.xml instead of blog post
Hello, For some reason Google shows sitemap results when i search for my blog url website.com/blog/postwhy is Google ranking my sitemap but not a post, especially when i search for full URL? Thanks
Technical SEO | | KentR0 -
Changing a blog url from subdomain to subfolder
I am abou to change my company blog from a subdomain (blog.mydomain.com) to a subfolder (mydomain.com/blog), from suggestions from this awesome community! Not only that though, because the current blog is on another server than the main site I have to move my blog between servers as well. This will be a big hassle for me, and means a big risk for errors as I don't have a clue what I am doing on the development part. Hint: I'm no developer. My blog is fairly new, having posted 18 blog posts so far. There is no major linking to or from the blog as it has been basically no activity on the blog. It has been fairly good optimized for SEO, with custom plugin settings for Wordpress SEO plugin and similar. Also followed advice from Rand regarding wordpress SEO. So I guess my question is: Would it be a big loss for me to just start over with a new blog on the subfolder domain? And move content over from the old blog manually (and then deleting the old one). Or would It be plain stupid taking that route? Thankfull for all help I can get!
Technical SEO | | danielpett0 -
Guest Blog Posts (Originally Seen on . .)
We are making a push to get our blog posts featured on other blogs, and bring in guest bloggers. We figured we could just repost a blog post on our blog, and link back to the original post. Obviously this provides some link juice, but do you think it's a bad idea because of duplicate content? Specifically, I'm also a Huffington Post blogger, so I have the option of writing an article, posting it on our site and HuffPo, and linking back to the original to give us links. Any advice?
Technical SEO | | moziodavid0 -
Too Many On Page Links Error On Wordpress Blog
I have a wordpress blog. I am getting an error message from SEOmoz "too many on page links" However SEOmoz is counting a full month of blogs as one page. For example-3 onpage internal links in each blog times 30 different blog article in a month is recorded as 90 on page links. Is there any mechanism to fix this on wordpress
Technical SEO | | wianno1680 -
Could Having Blog Posts as Home Page Cause Keyword Dilution?
Something I've never been a fan of is having a blog as the home page of a site. I've always thought that it's a bit like walking into someone's house through the kitchen out back.
Technical SEO | | WilliamBay
If it's a vistors first time, it can be a little disconcerting or ackward even if they are not familiar with the writers style. But something just dawned on me, and I'd love a second opinion on this. For websites that focus on multiple keywords (in my most of my client's case it's usually a mix of Wedding Photography, Engagement Photography, Portrait Photography, Family Photography, etc). A lot of these clients will include the photos in a blog post along with a snippet of text that may talk about the people they're photographing and maybe a bit about where they photographed. But they're usually optimizing for the overarching keyword (Wedding... Portrait..., etc as per above). Now I'm wondering if having three or 5 posts on the home page, where most of them are focusing on a specific keyword like New York Wedding Photographer, is actually diluting the keyword they are trying to rank for. My theory is that if I have them move their blog to a domain.com/blog, and solely focus on the desired keyword on the home page, that they would do substantially better in the SERPs. Can anyone subtantiate this? Thanks!0