How long before I can use a redirected domain without taking back link juice?
-
We recently moved our website to a new domain that better matched our brand. I want to use the old domain at some point for another aspect of our business.
How long after we do the domain redirect will it be safe to use the old domain again--without affecting the seo of the new domain?
Thanks!
Harriet
-
Thank you, Jane. You rephrased my question much better.
You're correct that the old site wasn't being penalized (rebranding was the reason we moved it.)
I have plenty of time to improve the new site before I need to use the old domain.
Thanks again,
Harriet -
This was my impression as well @zharriet. If you haven't yet gotten an answer, letting us further understand the problem will help us to give you a good answer.
-
I didn't get the impression from this question that the old site / domain was penalised. Correct me if I'm wrong, zharriet, but I got the impression that what you're saying is that you changing domains, redirected www.oldsite.com to www.newsite.com, but that at some point in the future, you want to use **www.oldsite.com **at some point in the future for another part of the business. As such, you want to know when you can "turn off" the redirect without harming the new rankings of www.newsite.com, using www.oldsite.comfor new content.
The answer to this is really hard to give: some sites don't seem to benefit much from having old domains pointed at them. Others benefit for a period before that benefit seems to disappear (meaning that you will have needed to build a good number of news links to the new domain).
It is impossible to say what the effect of removing a 301 redirect at some point in the future will be, but the safest way you can ensure that this doesn't harm the new site is by building a robust platform of good on and off site SEO for that new site so that it can withstand having any benefit of the old site's 301 taken away.
-
There really is no expiration date on the link equity that goes through a redirect. If you're worried about penalized links then they will always be present and if you redirect one site to the other then you'll be redirecting all of those links as well.
BeanstalkSEO's solution probably would work. If you want to be able to redirect the site without having a splash page you can also do it by redirecting through an intermediary page that is blocked by robots.txt.
-
Is there a reason that you aren't doing a redirect right away?
-
I assume the old domain has a penalty and thus the concern with the redirection (not judging, just noting the premise of the answer). While in these events I am hesitate to connect the dots at all, going back to my affiliate marketing days (when I had a much more cowboyish approach to SEO) I would have done the following:
1 - Put up a one page splash page on the old site.
2 - Disallow the site in the robots.txt file
3 - Put the noindex,nofollow on the splash page
4 - Use a meta refresh on the splash page directed to the new site
5 - if it was a link issue add a disavow file on both domains for the links to the old domainThe splash page should read something like, "This site has been moved to a new domain. If you are not redirected in x seconds (x being however long you've selected for the refresh) please click here." (where "click here is a nofollowed link to your new domain.
This all said, anytime you link two domains there is always the chance the Google will connect the dots now or in the future so there is an element of risk. You have clearly shown that you don't want weight passing so that's a perk but it all depends on risk tolerance.
I'll be interested to hear any additional thoughts or techniques. I haven't done anything like this in many many years.
Good luck !!!
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
-
How can I avoid too many internal links in my site navigation?
Hi! I always get this notification on my pages 'Avoid Too Many Internal Links' when I run the Page Optimization Score. And this is the message I get how to fix it: Scale down the number of internal links on your page to fewer than 100, if possible. At a minimum, try to keep navigation and menu links to fewer than 100. On my website I got a desktop navigation menu and a mobile variant, so in the source this will show more internal links. If I hide those links with CSS for the view, is the problem then solved? So Does Google then see less internal links? Or does Google crawl everything? I'm curious how I can fix this double internal links issue with my navigation menu.
Technical SEO | | Tomvl
What are you guys ideas / experiences about this?0 -
Will doing a 301 redirect for one domain to another give the latter domain the formers links?
I have some websites that I built a few years ago that are still in existence, but I no longer have access to the sites as they weren't hosted by myself. These sites all carry a "Designed by Me" text on the footer with a link to my (now old) website. I have since done 301 redirects on the domain names that are used in the footers of these sites so they link directly to my new site. However, will these websites now show up on Google Webmasters for example as external links to my site?
Technical SEO | | mickburkesnr0 -
A while back there was a strategy presented about developing games or widgets and then using them for link bait. Is this still a viable strategy to improve ranking?
We are developing a game (might be an app or a widget or both) and are looking for the latest advice about how to leverage it for seo benefit. Can anyone share their recent experience with this? I know it was a strategy used in the past, but what considerations should we be looking at (technically and strategically) as we begin developing. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Technical SEO | | larahill0 -
Using canonical for duplicate contents outside of my domain
I have 2 domains for the same company, example.com and example.sg Sometimes we have to post the same content or event on both websites so to protect my website from duplicate content plenty i use canonical tag to point to either .com or .sg depend on the page. Any idea if this is the right decision Thanks
Technical SEO | | MohammadSabbagh0 -
Old documents online as link juice
Each month I upload my auction catalog in different formats (word, pdf and rtf). I have about 9 years of catalogues online that have all been indexed by Google. In each catalog there is a link to my terms and conditions page (which has made the page authority for that page quite high in some unusual, but desired keywords), there is also many, many mentions of non-desired keywords in each of those documents and links to my domain. Is it worth updating all these old, previously indexed catalogues with better keyword juice and more relevant links ? Would they even get re-visited by google ? I suppose that leads to the next question... is it worth adding each of these pages to my sitemap ? To this point I have only added my major pages, not any of the subordinate pages etc.
Technical SEO | | blinkybill0 -
Specific Link Page in Domain
Hi everyone: I have seen that many SEO Agencies have contacted my business (Also SEO but In- House) in order to interchange links. They have created a specific page on their site with the Label "Links" or similar, and on that page they add multiple links of the competence. I have heard that you can only do that if you make sure you add two things: No follow in links. Not inserting links of websites that have nothing to do with our sector. Either way, I have never found this amusing. I always recommend people not to do this but I have my doubts after all. ¿Could some one give me their opinion? Cheers !
Technical SEO | | Tintanus0 -
302 Redirect of Home Page - Lost Link Juice?
I've got a new client whose site is set up to redirect the home page to another URL, like www.example.com, redirecting to www.example.com/home/, using a 302 redirect. Am I correct in assuming that links pointing directly to www.example.com are not passing their full value because it is being redirected with a 302 rather than 301? (In a nutshell, I want to make sure this resource is still accurate: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection)
Technical SEO | | kpclaypool0 -
What link tracking solution do you use?
What solution do you use to keep track of links that you have acquired or purchased?
Technical SEO | | qlkasdjfw0