Too many 301 redirects?
-
Hey,
My company currently has one chief website with about 500-600 other domains that all feature the same material as the chief website. These domains have been around for about 5 years and have actually picked up some link traffic.
I have all of these identical web-pages utilizing rel=canonical but I was wondering if I would be better served, from SEO purposes, to 301 redirect all of these sites to their respective pages on our chief website? If I add 500 301 redirects, will the major search engines consider this to be black-hat link-building even though the sites are related and technically already feature the same content?
For an example, the chief website is www.1099pro.com and I would 301 redirect the below sites to the chief site:
-
Michael I don't think you will get anymore benefit from a 301 than you're getting from the cross-domain rel canonical tags that are already in place.
However, I think the fact that you already have these cross-domain rel canonical tags i place, and that the content is identical, will make it much less likely that 301 redirecting those domains would be seen as any type of spam.
If it were me, just so all of my users were on the same domain - and to keep the problem from getting worse over time - I would go ahead and 301 redirect the other domains, but on a page-to-page basis. In other words, each page would link directly to the page it is currently referencing as the rel canonical. This would be much better than redirecting them all to a single landing page, and would send signal that is consistent with the current one you are sending via the cross domain rel canonical.
You might try this one domain at a time. Let the dust settle on that domain and, if all goes well, move on to the next. It may take a year to complete the project, but it might be the safest way to go.
Alternatively, you could just continue to leave the other sites up with the cross domain rel canonical tag - but the problem is likely to just worsen over time as more people link to the other domains, and they develop their own sources of traffic via direct links, social, bookmarks, etc... outside of the SERPs.
-
PS you have a decent thing going with your links already and you are not in a bad spot for page rank.
| Page Authority (PA) | 53 | Domain Authority (DA) | -- | 46 |
| MozRank (mR) | 5.94 | Domain MozRank (DmR) | 4.81 | 4.72 |
| MozTrust (mT) | 5.83 | Domain MozTrust (DmT) | 4.51 | 4.30 |
| Total Links | 1,635 | Total Links | 15,333 | 52,916 |
| External Followed Links | 1,589 | External Followed Links | 10,939 | 12,132 |
| Internal Followed Links | 39 | Linking Root Domains | 566 | 701 |
| Linking Root Domains | 399|
I would not jeopardize you have that's my $.02.
-
301 redirecting is not bad at all in itself.
It is simply a method of redirecting links. However because of the quantity of exact match sites I believe you can only put yourself in danger Google is getting and more aggressive every day I would rather sleep soundly if I were you or myself obviously. And not redirect possibly spamish websites to my main site where I do business.
If this was not regarding 500 duplicate sites I would say go for it
unfortunately I believe that you will open yourself up for a possible penalty from Google.
The immense amount of duplicate or identical content that I don't know if you use Google Webmaster tools am assuming that you do but do have it set up for all 500 websites?
That will tell you if you have a penalty.
My thinking on this is you created a bunch of identical websites 500 of them. Whenever you make large changes to a website Google reevaluates it looks at it.
In my opinion by 301 redirecting 500 sites page 2 page or even to homepage you're just asking for a possible Extremely bad penalty or you might get away with it I don't know but if it were me I would not do it.
The real question is what is the chief site worth?
would you be okay with it being penalized because you 301 redirected all of the sites?
if the answer is this is a valuable website to me I would not risk it.
The problem is you did something that is very far into the black hat arena I'm not judging however you want to show Google you're not going to continue to try to take advantage of any part of the search engine in order to gain rank when the parts that your talking about our exact match duplicate content that you created.
I honestly would kill the content on the sites than 302 redirect them if you want to have the traffic from the links.
What you said about a 301 is pretty much where the money however you're going to open yourself up to a possible penalty or even removal from Google's index which is what happens with most penalties.
It's up to you however I would not do it.
Best of luck to you,
Thomas
-
301 redirecting entire identical sites to different pages sounds extremely dodgy, just to the homepage was bad enough.
-
So if 301 redirecting all of them is seen as negative, what is the best way to consolidate all of these sites? I thought the purpose of a 301 redirect was to permanently transfer traffic from one site to another - which would mean that a 301 redirect would be the ideal method for consolidating multiple versions of an identical site.
In essence, is there a way to gain at least some advantage from the links that these sites of garnered over time?
-
I agree with Alex on a lot of it
however 500 of the same website with identical content is extremely black hat
it would depend on how much traffic is coming from these domains? Which one of them is performing the best? There must surely be a standout hopefully if it's not a lot of traffic I would delete the content on the other domains and pray that Google is not going to penalize you. By 301 redirecting any of those sites to your current chief site used and only to lose quite a bit from Google this is something that will happen if you are using the same hosting providers or not they will consider this less than good
-
Hey,
I would be redirecting each entire site to a specific page on my chief website. Admittedly, this means that there is some precision lost because each site is a copy of the chief site but all the affiliated pages on a copy link to only one landing page on the chief site. For instance:
- www.1099softwarepro.com and all affiliated pages would redirect to www.1099pro.com/software.asp
- www.W2Professionals.com and all affiliated pages would redirect to www.1099pro.com/prodw2pro.asp
-
In 2011 Matt Cutts said there isn't a limit. 500-600 sounds A LOT. If I was in this situation I'd just 301 the domains that have the most traffic and best links.
Are you redirecting each page on the other websites to the matching page on the chief website?
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
-
301 Redirect - Rank Recovery Examples?
Hi All, I recently did a 301 redirect. Page to Page and the notified google via its console. Its been 6 days since. The home page and one other high traffic page swopped out with the new domain on google search index with 3-4 drops in ranking for each. The rest of the sites pages have been indexed but still reflect the old domain when searched. Recently today my home page dropped even further to the second page of google index for the specific keyword. Can you share similar experiences and how long it took you to recover rank fully? and how long for all pages to swop out on google search's index? Regards Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeBlue10 -
Relaunching website in two phases - 301 redirect approach
Hey Mozzers, Interested to know your thoughts on the following situation. I am relaunching a website with an updated URL structure in TWO phases. Phase one will be a much smaller version of the site, with 30% of the pages going live - the remaining 70% of page won't be available until Phase two. In Phase one, these 30% of pages will be 301 redirected from their like-for-like versions - old site to new site. The remaining 70%... because the like-for-like pages won't be available until Phase two, which is likely to be launched in 3 months time, should I do a temporary redirect on these pages (302) to the new homepage for the time being, until the new versions of the pages are live - and then implement the 301 from old url to new url. A bit of a messy situation, and not ideal for SEO, but my hands are tied as the organisation is pushing ahead with this phased approach. So, interested to hear your thoughts on an appropriate 301 migration plan.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RWesley0 -
301 redirects in Wordpress vs. making old posts that you no longer want your audience to see private.
I'm working on Wordpress at the moment changing the content of a page on my website. The page has a lot of educational information and each section is unique. I had to go through and edit each section on google documents and now I'm posting all the new pages and making the old pages private on wordpress. Is this a good idea? I'm worried google will still crawl my private education pages and think these are duplicates since the new pages somewhat resemble the old. Also, should I be 301 redirecting all the old education pages to the corresponding new ones even if they are private on wordpress? I understand that the 301 redirect should only be used if you want the old page to go to a new one. What i don't understand id weather this will still be relevant or work if I've already made the old page private on wordpress. Thank You!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SapphireCo0 -
What is the Proper Use of 301 redirects for SEO purposes?
I heard and read from different sources that 301 redirects from aged domains with healthy link profiles is great to boost a sites rank as oppose to building a site around the page and linking it to the domain you want to rank. Whats is the best practice for this strategy? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | junkcars0 -
301 redirect or Robots.txt on an interstatial page
Hey guys, I have an affiliate tracking system that works like this : an affiliate puts up a certain code on his site, for example : www.domain.com/track/aff_id This url leads to a page where the hit is counted, analysed and then 302 redirects to my sales page with the affiliates ID in the url : www.mysalespage.com/?=aff_id. However, we've noticed recently that one affiliate seems to be ranking for our own name and the url google indexed was his tracking url (domain.com/track/aff_id). Which is strange because there is absolutely nothing on that page, its just an interstatial page so that our stats tracking software can properly filter hits. To remove the affiliate's url from showing up in the serps, I've come up with 2 solutions : 1 - Change the redirect to a 301 redirect on his track page. 2 - Change our robots.txt page to block all domain.com/track/ pages from being indexed. My question is : if I 301 redirect instead of 302, will I keep the affiliates from outranking me for my own name AND pass on link juice or should I simply block google from crawling the interstatial tracking pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CrakJason0 -
2-stage 301 redirects
Dear colleagues, I have quite an unusual situation with one of my client's websites, and I could use an advise from someone who experienced the same circumstances: They are currently planning on launching a new site under the same domain (by September), when several key current pages are intended to be replaced with new equivalent pages under new URLs. So far it's pretty simple, BUT - due to a merger with another company they will be migrating their entire website to a different domain within a year. My question is - what would be the optimal solution for redirects? We are considering a 301 from the current pages to the new pages under the same domain, and once the new domain is activated - aside from defining 301 redirects from the new pages under the same domain to the new domain, we will cancel the original 301 from the old pages to the new pages on the same domain, and instead define new 301 for those pages to the new domain. What do you think? Is there a better solution - like using 302 redirects for the first stage? Has anyone tried such a procedure? Your input will be highly appreciated! Thanks in advance, Omer
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Usearch0 -
Not allowing me 301 Redirect
I am trying redirect my old site to my new site, both on the same domain. For one reason or another, I am having a hard time redirecting the some of the old urls to the new site. Please let me know how I can fix this issue. Below are the following old urls that are not allowing me to redirect: <colgroup><col width="636"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/press/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/press/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/accommodations/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/dining/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/entertainment/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/events/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/flintstones/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/beach.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/dining.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/pools.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html |0 -
Tread of backlinks after 301
After 301-ing a domain to a new domain, how should we tread the changing of the backlinks to the old domain? We might be able to have a certain amount changed rather quickly. Should we consider the new domain as a "new" domain, and in this sense, not have them changed quickly, (afraid to trip any filter) Or wil Google see the new domain (after indexing) with the authority of the old domain, so , if the backlinks are direct or coming through a 301 will make no difference? Hope my question is clear and excuses for my english 😛 Thanks for reading and hoping for input,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | elgoog0