Penguin hit Website - Moving to new domain

[FedeEinhorn]

Hey!

I am working on a Penguin hit Website. Still ranking for all brand keywords and blog articles are still being returned in Google SERPs, but the website is showing up for only 3 or 4 money keywords. It is clearly a penguin hit as it was ranked 1st page for all money keywords before latest update (3.0). We already did a link cleanup and disavowed all bad backlinks. Still, the recovery process could take over 2 years from previous experience, and in 2 years, the site will suffer a slow death.

Solution: We own the .com version of the domain, currently being served on the .net. We bought the .com version about 6 years ago, it is clean and NOT redirected to the .net (actual site).

We were thinking about moving the whole Website to the .com version to start over. However, we need to make sure Google doesn't connect the 2 sites (no pagerank flow). Of course Google will notice is the same content, but there won't be any pagerank flowing from the old site to the new one.

For this, we thought about the following steps:

1. Block Googlebot (and only googlebot) for  the .net version via robots.txt.
2. Wait until Google removes all URLs from the index.
3. Move content to the .com version.
4. Set a 301 redirect from .net to .com (without EVER removing the block on googlebot).

Thoughts? Has anyone went over this before? Other ideas?

Thanks!

[FedeEinhorn]

Thanks so much for listening my tweet and coming in here to drop a few lines Marie

I think i'll do a mix of both techniques. First, an extensive link cleanup. Then follow my first post's steps (adding the noindex meta tags in all pages as you suggested below) and then do the 301 redirect.

Will also add to the mix a redesign, just so the site looks renewed for both users and SE.

Will share insights once we complete the migration.

Thanks again!

PS: will keep an eye for the article on SEW

[MarieHaynes]

This is risky.  The problem is that you can't guarantee that you've cleaned up 100% of the bad links.  I personally think that this is one of the reasons why some sites are not recovering from Penguin...because there are unnatural links hidden that none of the backlink checkers can find.  I have sites for which I do monthly backlink cleanup and every month I find old links from as far back as 2006.

You may see improvement and then run the risk of seeing a decline with a future Penguin update.

[MarieHaynes]

Keep an eye on Search Engine Watch this week.  I have an article coming out, probably Wednesday that answers your question perfectly.  What you are planning to do really should work though.  It's important that you wait until the old site is completely out of the index before starting the new.

Rather than just blocking by robots though what I would do is put a noindex tag on all of the pages, do a url removal request for each page and then put the block on.  Otherwise, the pages may still remain in the cache and then Google may see the .com as a duplicate of the .net.

[FedeEinhorn]

Thanks Matt. Do you mind if I PM you with some insight questions, just to make sure I get the idea, don't wanna end up burning the other domain.

Thanks!

[MattAntonino]

Correct - just do a cleanup, 301 the domain, and treat the new domain like you would a brand new one (but with more authority.)

Be careful not to do much that is negative in the first (month? 3 months? year) after a 301. It has a lot of authority but not as much (there's no word for it) "native" juice of its own so any bit of spam seems to be accentuated.

[FedeEinhorn]

I'm sure this is a Penguin hit, 100%.

Very bad link profile, some cool links, but 90% junk. The traffic drop happened the day Penguin 3.0 was released and the site is not being outranked, it is just not ranking for those money keywords. Content is still working great, lots of hits to the blog and ranking places of the best pieces are steady and haven't change at all. Branding still doing strong too.

[FedeEinhorn]

Thanks Matt,

So you say no robots disallow and no disavow file on new domain and just a 301 after a FULL link cleanup?

[MonicaOConnor]

Are you sure this was Penguin and not Panda? Did you actually get a penalty? I would really make sure you are dealing with a penalty before you put all of this work into something that it doesn't necessarily need.

If you are experiencing a loss in traffic and impressions and keyword rankings without an actual penalty I would run a new SERP analysis and find out what kind of competition is kicking you out of your top spots. With two major updates just rolling out in Sept/Oct there is a chance that your site was not penalized but being outranked by better sites. With the way that Penguin works, you can be suffering from another sites Penguin 2.0 recovery.

Do you update your content regularly? Is what you have on the site truly unique and informative? You said you are going through a disavow right now, that could definitely effect the rankings and search traffic.

Before you decide to completely abandon ship and jump on a whole new site, make sure you are truly dealing with a Penguin penalty and not just mediocre on page SEO coupled with a weak link profile.

If you truly feel moving domains is the solution, then I would select a domain completely unrelated and unattached to any webmaster property that might have a Penguin penalty. Select a domain with some age and that is clear of any nefarious link profiles. Use OSE or Ahrefs to investigate before you buy. Keeping things unrelated will be the best way to ensure you have no negative link juice following you around.

Is it possible that one of your link sources suffered a Penguin Penalty? That could really effect your rankings. 3.0 really targeted link neighborhoods. You could have back links that have terrible link profiles and are now causing you grief. Use OSE or Ahrefs to kind of check your link profiles back links. I would start here if you have no actual penalty.

[MattAntonino]

Do a thorough link clean up & disavow on the .net, then 301 redirect over to the .com - you will keep the majority of traffic, get rankings back quickly and when Google connects the two, you're only redirecting a cleaned up domain to your new .com - happens every day.

So clean up first - then do your redirects. We've done this for hundreds of clients and had very quick recoveries that have survived multiple Penguin updates now.  Google wants it clean so do it right and don't worry about having to start from scratch.

[FedeEinhorn]

Thank you for your response.

Although starting from scratch kind of hurts, here I think is not a good option. The site is very well known in its niche, with over 100K customers and 20K regulars, so we are trying to keep the same name (also trademarked, DBA, LLC, etc).

Building a new image for the site and new content isn't the problem, however, I wonder how far Google may take their "penalty-flow" if we start a new Website just using the same name, going from domain.net to domain.com (content and design will be different), but a 301/302 or javascript redirect will be placed in domain.net after all pages are deindexed and there are no traces of the new site.

I must add this is an algorithmic penalty, not a manual. There are no manual actions applied.

[maestrosonrisas]

I was hit by penguin years ago due to a company that was not doing the think the right way without my knowlege. All the content were made by me and were a very good content so i was raking first for almost everything.

When i got hit i did not know how and did not understand until i discovered what the company i had contracted were doing due to personal cuts.

I immediatly stop working with them, i tried to recover from the penalty. From more than one year i was sending and recieving email from webmaster tools.

After removing almost every known link i still recieved email from webmaster that there were bad links. And some of them were from competitors that directly copy pages of mine, with my link included on them.

That was when i sadly decided to give up (i had worked personaly on that domain for more then 10 years) was a reference and the first one on the sector.

That was the best decisión. What i did was a litle bit diferent:

1-º I started a new domain with new fresh and added value content (not coping directly from old website, has it had lots of content copied from competitors and i did not want relation)

2- I still mantain for 6 months old website to give me time to create new content and start raking new site (I it very difficult to give up something that you loved and were proud).

The condition of not placing any link from old domain to new domain. And new site were in another server. In the old site i just placed a picture without any link saiyng that the company had a  new website.

3- completly prohibited to do any redirection from old domain to new domain, as if i do that you will also pass bad links that you havent discovered or that you dont know that are bad

4- in about one year i manage to achive almost same positions with the new domain that i had before