Is it safe to 301 redirect old domain to new domain after a manual unnatural links penalty?
-
I have recently taken on a client that has been manually penalised for spammy link building by two previous SEOs.
Having just read this excellent discussion,
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience
I am weighing up the odds of whether it's better to cut losses and recommend moving domains.
I had thought under these circumstances it was important not to 301 the old domain to the new domain but the author (Lewis Sellers) comments on 3/4/13 that he is aware of forwards having been implemented without transferring the penalty to the new domain.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience#jtc216689
Is it safe to 301?
What's the latest thinking?
-
Thanks Karl.
-
Thanks Francis, that example is useful.
-
Ok, you'll probably be able to get the good links for your new domain then. Good luck with it all.
-
My skepticism is based on what I have tested myself by redirecting a single page with too many spammy links (I would say, an infected page) to a new page tanked the traffic of the website. If you scale that, redirecting a penalised old domain to a new domain may give you the same bad result. Simple logic on my part.
I would rather work on reviving that established same old domain. Keep going. Do what you are supposed to do - clean it, brand build it further, etc.
-
Hi Carson,
Thanks for your considered reply.
I was very interested to hear your opinion about unnatural links warnings via GWT and whether they can be necessarily interpreted as manual penalties.
As usual there are conflicting opinions and the particular wording in the warning I saw is different from the wording I have seen quoted in other examples on the web. It has a feel of being slightly more tailored ... although algorithms can do tailoring!
It seems logical that Google would use an algorithmic approach wherever possible in the interests of economy and consistency but there have to be sanity checks by real people so maybe GWT emails can be triggered by algorithm or human override.
The first sentence in both your "manual penalties" and also your "refreshing adjustments" suggest to me that it might not be possible to outmanoeuvre penalties by side-stepping (domain switching).
Maybe there's also an argument here that what's best for the user should be what's best for SEO?
What's best for the user must surely be not to confuse them or change domains so maybe that's the best approach also from an SEO POV.
Oh boy. I love SEO but I think I'll do some gardening tomorrow.
-
Hi Karl,
Thanks. The situation is I reckon > 90% low quality or spammy links. I estimate I might be able to get between 10% and 30% deleted with several days work but which still produces no certainty of a successful re-consideration request. There are only a handful of good links which I know I could get re-coded to a new domain. This is a small business so flogging a dead horse is precious money down the drain .
The domain is businessnamemainkeyword.com and I could host on businessname-mainkeyword.com i.e. only difference is the dash.
-
Hi Scott,
Thanks for your answer.
Undoubtedly the safest decision is to take no risk at all i.e. use no redirects. That might not be the decision with the most profitable expected outcome. What if you knew, with hindsight, that you could have used redirects with only a 2% probability of a minor adverse impact on the new domain? That could have been a big opportunity lost by taking the safest option..
Again, I'm trying to get away from hunches and better understand the size and nature of the risks (probably by reference to empirical data i.e. specific cases) to give the best chance of making the best decision.
-
Hi Francis,
Thanks for your answer. From what you say, you have seen cases where redirects have been fine but you're skeptical which is a slightly mixed message.
I am aware that there might be a risk of 'infecting' the new domain. I'm just trying to get some kind of handle on the level of that risk (if that is possible).
Would you say:
1. Don't touch a 301 with a barge pole under any circumstances or
2. You should be OK under 'these circumstances' or
3. It's pot luck or
4. No need to worry about the consequences of 301s because Google will give you a fresh start. They know your motive for ditching the old domain and will filter the bad links from impacting the new domain, recognising you're a business that's been established for 1,000 years (from your business name, address, telephone number, company number etc.). Yeah, I know that last bit is probably my idealism getting the better of me.
How to quantify the risk to make the best decision?
-
Hi Ewan,
This is a question that probably deserves a blog post at some point, along with a number of related questions about link-based penalties. I've been gathering info for some time, and have seem many instances of redirecting sites that have been penalized. I wish I could collect data on penalized sites more scientifically, but we work with what's available.
Manual Penalties
Manual penalties appear to carry through to new domains almost instantly when redirected to pages housing the same content. Google appears to use a number of signals to make sure that the redirect is to the same site and not to a competitor.
Some Googlers have claimed that if you received an "unnatural link" warning in WMT, it's manual. I'm not entirely convinced of this, but it's now harder than ever to differentiate between manual link-based penalties and Penguin algorithmic adjustment. That brings us to...
Refreshing Adjustments (Penalties)
Panda, Penguin, and a few other updates are a little different. We've seen instances where a user makes a big change (a complete redesign for Panda, or redirecting the entire site); the trend seems to be a brief recovery followed by a drop once the algorithm refreshes.
The obvious up-side here is that if you were going to recover from the penalty anyway, you may start to recover a bit sooner and don't have to wait for the next refresh. The downside is that it's a lot of work to do correctly, and it might be a very short-lived change.
--
Generally, I'd say it's best to clean up the site and keep going on the same domain. If you have a lot of bad links pointing to a specific page, you may want to 410 that page and start a new one, then mention this in your reconsideration request. Otherwise, it's the old process of removal (keeping notes) and using disavow if reconsideration and clean up prove insufficient.
-
The best thing would be to clean up the bad links, file a reconsideration request and then 301 the old domain to the new one...that is if you have some good links to the old domain. If you only have spammy links then starting afresh would probably be easier.
-
We were in a similar situation and opted not top take the chance. We started from scratch and did not 301. Better safe than sorry.
-
I have seen a certain case I analysed who did 301 redirects. They were fine but I am still skeptical doing such move.
Personally, to 301 redirect a penalised site to a new domain may mean acquiring the spammy links from the old domain. I will not recommend it. If you think the old domain is no longer worth reviving then simply start a new website. This is a matter of calculating your resource spend vs benefits.
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
-
Redirection of 100 domain to Main domain affects SEO?
Hi guys, An email software vendor managed by a different area of my company redirected 100 domains used for unsolicited email campaigns to my main domain. These domains are very likely to get blacklisted at some point. My SEO tool now is showing me all those domains as "linking" to my main site as do-follow links. The vendor states that this will not affect my main domain/website in any way. I'm highly concerned. I would appreciate your professional opinion about this. Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anagentile0 -
301 redirects and impact on page authority
I need to restructure a section of my website, changing some page titles and moving some pages to other sections. This will then change the URLs but the CMS I use will automatically create 301 redirects so the old URLs still work. The question is, will this have any negative impacts on page authority/page rank? From what I've read, it seems having 301's used to have a negative impact but doesn't anymore?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ciehmoz0 -
301 vs 410 for subdirectory that was moved to a new domain, 2-years later
Hi all, I've read a lot about 301 vs 404 and 410s, but the case is pretty unique so I decided to get some feedback from you. Both websites are travel related but we had one destination as a subdirectory of the other one (two neighboring countries, where more than 90% of business was related to the 'main' destination and the rest to the 'satellite'). This was obviously bad practice and we decided to move the satellite destination to its own domain. Everything was done 2 years ago and we opted for 301s to the new domain as we had some good links pointing to satellite content. (All of the moved content is destination specific and still relevant) Few weeks back we figured out that google still shows our subdirectory when doing specific 'site:' search and looking further into it, we realized we still get traffic for satellite destination through the main website via links acquired before the move. Not a lot of hits, but they still sporadically occur. A decision was made (rather hastily) to 410 pages and see if that will make satellite subdir pages not show in google searches. So 3 weeks in, 410 errors are climbing in GWMT, but satellite subdirectory still shows in google searches. One part of the team is pushing to put back in place 301s. The other part of the team is concerned with the 'health' of the main website as those pages are not relevant for it, and want them gone . What would you do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | halloranc0 -
Redirecting to a new domain... a second time
Hi all, I help run a website for a history-themed podcast and we just moved it to its second domain in 7 years. We've had very good SEO up until last week, and I'm wondering if I screwed up the way I redirected the domains. It's like this: Originally the site was hosted at "first.com", and it acquired inbound links. However, we then started to host the site on blogger, so we... Redirected the site to "second.blogspot.com". (Thus, 1 --> 2) It stayed here for about 7 years and got lots of traffic. Two weeks ago we moved it off of blogger and into Wordpress, so we 301 redirected everything to... third.com. (Thus, 1 --> 2 --> 3) The redirects worked, and when we Google individual posts, we are now seeing them in Google's index at the new URL. My question: What about the 1--> 2 redirect? There are still lots of links pointing to "first.com". Last week I went into my GoDaddy settings and changed the first redirect, so that first.com now points to third.com. (Thus 1 --> 3, and 2-->3) I was correct in doing that, right? The drop in Google traffic I've seen this past week makes me think that maybe I screwed something up. Should we have kept 1 --> 2 --> 3? (Again, now we have 1-->3 and 2-->3) Thanks for any insights on this! Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomNYC1 -
301 Redirect from unused domain
Hi All First question here so go easy.. I have a property site which is working well so far considering it;s early days, unfortunately some of my earlier efforts did not go so well and one in particular I pretty much destroyed in my attempts to improve the site SEO. Lucky enough my SEO skills have improved quite a bit lately, largely thanks to the great tools, tutorials and experts here at Moz 🙂 My question is whether I can use a 301 redirect to pass the domain authority and any link equity from an unused site to the one that ive done a better job on? it would seem a little sketchy to me and I would prefer not to get slapped and penalized "again" for doing something dodgy... Thanks everyone and thanks for all the help over the last 6 months or so.. Wes Dunn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wesdunn19771 -
Manual action penalty revoked, rankings still low, if we create a new site can we use the old content?
Scenario:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peteboyd
A website that we manage was hit with a manual action penalty for unnatural incoming links (site-wide). The penalty was revoked in early March and we're still not seeing any of our main keywords rank high in Google (we are found on page 10 and beyond). Our traffic metrics from March 2014 (after the penalty was revoked) - July 2014 compared to November 2013 - March 2014 was very similar. Question: Since the website was hit with a manual action penalty for unnatural links, is the content affected as well? If we were to take the current website and move it to a new domain name (without 301 redirecting the old pages), would Google see it as a brand new website? We think it would be best to use brand new content but the financial costs associated are a large factor in the decision. It would be preferred to reuse the old content but has it already been tarnished?0 -
Reverse Proxy better than 301 redirect?
Are reverse proxies that much better than 301 redirects? Should I invest the time in doing this? I found out about reverse proxies here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-a-reverse-proxy-and-how-can-it-help-my-seo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianmcc0 -
301 Redirect shenanigans.
So our website (www.FrontlineMobility.com) Has a canonical link redirect to the non www. version. However when I put in website.com it comes up with a small list of links and says this site links to www.website.com. So I'm curious if I used to wrong canonical linking method( that is the method I tried and I placed it in the Head Tags.) I greatly appreciate any assistance in this matter ^.^
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FrontlineMobility0