Redirect ruined domain to new domain without passing link juice

[jasonwdexter]

A new client has a domain which has been hammered by bad links, updates etc and it's basically on its arse because of previous SEO guys.

They have various domains for their business (brand.com, brand.co.uk) and want to use a fresh domain and take it from there. Their current domain is brand.com (the ruined one). They're not bothered about the rankings for brand.com but they want to redirect brand.com to brand.co.uk so that previous clients can find them easily.

Would a 302 redirect work for this? I don't want to set up a 301 redirect as I don't want any of the crappy links pointing across.

Thanks!

[jasonwdexter]

I feel that there should be some form of redirect that can be conducted without passing on link juice value.

From my perspective, it's not gaming the system or trying to game Google. My client doesn't want any link juice passing on, but wants to keep the old domain for people accessing the domain directly.

It's a shame really. Google holds a massive grudge, even though these guys trusted a big name in the SEO industry.

[jasonwdexter]

Sorry it's taken a bucket load of time to get back to you!

Ideally, they're looking at some form redirection to avoid any form of user interaction.

A meta-refresh might be the best route to go down, I'm going to noindex/nofollow the website and put forward a meta-refresh solution to them.

I don't think a second or two in lag would be a problem, as users hitting the .com version of the website will slowly phase out anyway.

Thanks buddy!

[UnderRugSwept]

I don't think I ever realized that forwarding also can return a 301. That's really good to know. Thanks.

[Carson-Ward]

I'd just warn that most domain forwarding ends up returning a 301 response code anyway, and some return a 302. You could always test it out to see what happens. I checked (non-masked) domain forwarding on two hosts and found 301s in the header in both cases. I believe this is fairly common.

One controversial solution might be a JavaScript redirect that search engines can't understand instead. It's obviously cloaking if the content is different, but maybe not if the content is similar. See https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721217?hl=en&ref_topic=2371375

Unfortunately, there's not a redirect method that would prevent both versions of the site from being indexed. Even with a penalty, the old site could out-rank the new one for branded and long-tail traffic.

Perhaps the best/safest option is to simply noindex/nofollow the pages, then show a warning with a link to the new version of the page. Yes, it requires a new click from users, but it's simple enough that there's little to worry about.

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

I'm not sure that any redirect is guaranteed that Google won't pass on the links to the .uk domain.  The two options I could think of which would probably be the least likely for Google to pass on the links would be,

1. You could setup a meta-refresh redirect on the .com.  Make sure it's a few seconds and not instant.

2. Redirect everything from the .com site to a single landing page on the .com site.  Put a message on that landing page that tells visitors the site has moved and provide a link to the new site.

Neither of these solutions are great from a user experience standpoint, but their the least likely for Google to pass on all the bad links from the .com site.

[UnderRugSwept]

Why don't you try domain forwarding? That may be your only option as there is growing evidence that Google passes links from 302 redirects as well. You can find the domain forwarding option in the control panel where the domain name is hosted. Instead of doing a redirect, the change will take place with the DNS.

Here's some info: http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/422/forwarding-or-masking-your-domain-name

Make sure you choose forwarding without masking.