301 redirects and old domain names
-
Thanks to the great advice i've received on this forum, I'm combining 50 different truck sites into a single, ultimate truck website. So my question is how long should I make a website 301 redirect to the appropriate page on my new website?
My thought is that if it works well to have a single website, it might be nice to eventually sell off some of the old domain names that I won't be using anymore.
Thanks!
Andy
-
Some good advice from Google on changing domains here: https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=83105&hl=en
I have never 301'd 50 different sites either, however I wouldn't just leave it up to the 301s to inform Google - use the 'Change of Address' function in Webmaster Tools. If you haven't already got Webmaster Tools set up on all of the old sites, I'd say that's an essential task to do first. Then you can tell Google manually that the new site is replacing the old one/s. You'll have to repeat the process 50 times but it's quick, easy and well worth the effort.
Google suggest that you leave the 301s in place on the old site/s for at least 180 days - but probably better to listen to Marcus and Alan; 12 months won't do any harm.
I'd also get the new site up and running concurrently for a few weeks first, if it's a new domain or if it hasn't had any content on it for a while. A client recently immediately killed their old site upon launching the new domain, found out the new domain had previously been burnt, and it tool 6-8 weeks to recover rankings for the new site after a 'reconsideration request'. It cost them organic traffic and extra PPC spend.
Maybe others would advise against this? Realise it's potentially duplicate content but a short cross-over period would enable the old sites to continue providing temporary value as the new site registers.
-
My thoughts exactly Marcus. A 12 month rule of thumb is what I go by, with the monitoring being key.
-
Hey Andy
There is no real concrete answer to that question so you need to play it by ear. Set up the redirects and watch them over time. Query the to ensure that the additional sites have all disappeared from the search engine result pages. You can also check the web logs on these domains to see if they are picking up traffic from search at all and if so, continue to leave them as long as it takes.
I would be prepared to leave them all for at least 12 months and then review them all and make your decisions.
Additionally, try not to worry about the 301's too much and concentrate on the new main site. Start building up some good links and if possible see if you can get valuable links pointing to the old sites all pointing to the new site. Get some great content on there as well and start promoting that and this will all help the new site supersede the older sites.
As an aside, I have never 301'd fifty sites into one so it would be interesting to hear if anyone else has any experience of combining so many sites into one.
Hope it helps & be prepared for a bit of wait.
Marcus
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
-
Changing title tags, do we need 301 redirects
I found many duplicate title tags and I'm in the process of changing it Do I need 301 redirects in place when I switch it? I am only changing the title tag. Also, we are switching over to a new site very soon, I am worried that we might be using too many 301 redirect "hops" because we are doing a lot of optimization as well. (video from matt cutts describing 301 redirects and hops: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA. Does anyone have any experience in doing too many redirect hops that it affected your rankings? Any good ideas to avoid this?
Technical SEO | | EcomLkwd0 -
301 Redirect Have no ranking
Hi Guys wonder if you can help my site www.economy-car-leasing.co.uk has just been 301 from www.economyleasinguk.co.uk The reason for the move is the site is going to be structured for both cars and vans separately we did the 301 around 8 weeks ago and initially we thought everything went well, all the new site was indexed within 24 hours, we updated WMT on the old site we monitored around 150 keywords many were top 10 in Google 99% were top 5 pages However 8 weeks on we do not rank for hardly anything, i have confirmed all the redirects are working, we have 200 ok from the home page and all the other canonical pages return 301 we just implemented the canonical tag to all pages. we did factor that we will get some down time but not 8 weeks worth, i have done a 301 on this scale before with no real loss of rankings (Different site) Really tempted to put the old site back however its not what i want to do, Bing seems to have picked up on the change really well but im thinking Google just needs time The change looks like its done perfectly and everything is working as it should however it looks like that none of the original rankings or juice has been pushed over from Google yet and im wondering how long does it typically take to get the site ranking again site have gone from 17k unique s per month to less than 2k Paul
Technical SEO | | kellymandingo0 -
301 Redirect From Dynamic Page To Static
I want to 301 redirect all "id" and "type" numbers from my page dynamic.php page (I have thousands of IDs and thousands of Types) all to a single URL. So for example the following.... www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=1&type=5 www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=2&type=5 www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=3&type=5 www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=1&type=6 www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=2&type=6 www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=3&type=6 ...would all be sent to: www.mysite.com/page.html How can this be done without doing a redirect for each ID/Type?
Technical SEO | | TheDude1 -
How to force a trailing slash after the domain name
My campaign analysis is predictably listing domain.com and domain.com/ as repeated content. I've searched and searched but cannot find a way to force a trailing slash on the end of the domain name unless there's a file or directory after it.. Is there a way to accomplish this using .htaccess
Technical SEO | | JollyBoy0 -
Quick Seo question regarding 301 redirect
Hi everyone and thank you for showing interested in my problem and for helping me out with this easy thing i have going on Here is how it puts out : I have 2 websites, same niche, mostly same keywords. Site #1 holding strong on google #2 ranking for months now. Site #2 was holding strong in google top 10 rankings until 2 weeks ago when it got sandboxed for some reason I want to use a 301 permanent redirect from Site #2 to Site #1 to pass all the link juice onto Site #1 and hopefully beat the #1 spot The question: Will this affect Site #1 is anyway, considering Site #2 is in somehow sandbox ( i assume that, since he dropped more then 70 positions over night ) Is thins a good think to do or i risk damaging Site #1 by doing this ? Thanks allot in advance. Best regards,
Technical SEO | | caw_ro
Trinca Alexandru0 -
Google Webmaster redirect vs 301 redirect
OK assuming a client's website has the right tracking script (hopefully analytics isn't effected by this issue), ... what happens if the htaccess file has a 301 redirect to the www-address, but within Google Webmaster Tools, the address chosen to crawl by Google is the non-www address? How will Google handle and which address takes precedence in this situation? _Cindy
Technical SEO | | CeCeBar0 -
Removing 301 Redirects
Is it safe to remove old 301 Redirects from an SEO standpoint and can 301s dramatically affect seo? Prior to switching our old domain over to our new domain, we had (and currently still do) tons of 301 redirects, because of optimizing our file names and structure. Then our old domain was redirected to our new domain in the same redirect file. So that being said, now that our new domain has been up and running for about 3 months, would it be safe for me to get rid of the old 301 redirects and redirect anything that was on our old domain to our new domains home page? This would clean up our redirects tremendously and I hope would help with SEO.
Technical SEO | | hfranz0 -
Too many 301 redirects - good or bad?
Hi, Currently, page A is redirecting to page B. I am in the process of developing new site for the same domain and this time page B will be redirected to page C. This is gonna happen on many pages. Is it correct or should i adopt some other strategy? Will it have adverse effect on the speed of my site? Page A -----> Page B ------> Page C Regards, Shailendra
Technical SEO | | IM_Learner0