Launching a new website. Old inherited site cannot be saved after lifted penalty. When should we kill the old site and how?
-
Background Information A website that we inherited was severely penalized and after the penalty was revoked the site still never resurfaced in rankings or traffic. Although a dramatic action, we have decided to launch a completely new version of the website. Everything will be new including the imagery, branding, content, domain name, hosting company, registrar account, google analytics account, etc.
Our question is when do we pull the plug on the old site and how do we go about doing it? We had heard advice that we should make sure we run both sites at the same time for 3 months, then deindex the old site using a noindex meta robots tag.We are cautious because we don't want the old website to be associated in any way, shape or form with the new website. We will purposely not be 301 redirecting any URLs from the old website to the new.
What would you do if you were in this situation?
-
My site got a revoke in May 2013 and took until the refresh in Oct 2014 for it to show recovery in SERPS
One way around this is to use hreflang and set your main site to x-default and create a new site that targets your main language.
Basically set your new domain to hreflang "EN" and you should see an instant recovery!
-
Hi
If you are getting traffic and conversions still on your old site, leave it up and build equity in your new site by taking the steps above. But that's a business decision for you and your team. I don't know anything about how your site is performing other than what you have told me here.
Branded domains tend to do better than exact match domains, especially as search engines crack down on exact match. Just something to consider. Here are some best practices from Moz.
Good luck!
-
Hi
If you are getting traffic and conversions still on your old site, leave it up and build equity in your new site by taking the steps above. But that's a business decision for you and your team. I don't know anything about how your site is performing other than what you have told me here.
Branded domains tend to do better than exact match domains, especially as search engines crack down on exact match. Just something to consider. Here are some best practices from Moz.
Good luck!
-
Thanks again for replying.
No, the old domain name is not branded. Just curious why you ask?
Alright so since we are not migrating the site, flipping the switch on the new and shutting down the old will be fine to do?
-
Hi again
Is the old domain a branded domain?
You can play the waiting game for a few months if you're ultimately going to kill off the site and noindex it.
If you're not migrating the site, you should be fine.
Hope this helps - good luck!
-
Thank you for taking the time to address my question.
I apologize if I didn't explain the original scenario clearly. Even though we were able to have the manual action penalty lifted for the old website, we were never able to see rankings for our main keywords appear again. The website never fully recovered from the penalty. We had waited months after the penalty had been revoked but no progress in the rankings were made.
Although a drastic measure to kill the site, we decided that the old website was forever tarnished (and the client didn't want to keep pumping money into trying to revive the website) so we wanted to start fresh.
The point of the new website is to be in no way associated with the old. Are there any precautions or steps that we should take when launching the new website and shutting down the old? Should we literally flip the switch on the new site and then close down the old? Our biggest concern is that Google is going to pass on the poor reputation of the old website to the new one.
-
Hi there
I would first go through a backlink audit and change any old valuable URLs to the new domain you are choosing to develop.
I would also go through a content audit and update, consolidated, or remove any content based on the criteria in the resource.
From there, I would do a local SEO audit to make sure your citations and listings are upto date and contain correct information.
I do have to ask, why if the site is no longer penalized are you trying to completely sever ties from it? Just wondering.
Hope this helps - good luck!
-
The old site is actually still the current site and it's not generating much revenue at all. The new site is still in development.
-
Is the old site generating any revenue currently?
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
-
New blog on a separate server to the main website?
We have a potential client who operates a jobs board in a niche sector in the UK. They want to start a blog but don't want to set it up on the same server as the main jobs site. Discussion started around Wordpress, and their preference is for the WP.com hosted version in a directory or subdomain of the TLD. Our concerns are around the different locations of the two sites (impact of two diff server locations and IP addresses?) but also the limitation of WP.com to interlink the two sites enough that they provide a decent customer experience. Thoughts, musings, advice - all welcome! Tks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AB-Marketing0 -
What's the best way to A/B test new version of your website having different URL structure?
Hi Mozzers, Hope you're doing good. Well, we have a website, up and running for a decent tenure with millions of pages indexed in search engines. We're planning to go live with a new version of it i.e a new experience for our users, some changes in site architecture which includes change in URL structure for existing URLs and introduction of some new URLs as well. Now, my question is, what's the best way to do a A/B test with the new version? We can't launch it for a part of users (say, we'll make it live for 50% of the users, an remaining 50% of the users will see old/existing site only) because the URL structure is changed now and bots will get confused if they start landing on different versions. Will this work if I reduce crawl rate to ZERO during this A/B tenure? How will this impact us from SEO perspective? How will those old to new 301 URL redirects will affect our users? Have you ever faced/handled this kind of scenario? If yes, please share how you handled this along with the impact. If this is something new to you, would love to know your recommendations before taking the final call on this. Note: We're taking care of all existing URLs, properly 301 redirecting them to their newer versions but there are some new URLs which are supported only on newer version (architectural changes I mentioned above), and these URLs aren't backward compatible, can't redirect them to a valid URL on old version.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | _nitman0 -
.Com version of my site is ranking better than .co.uk for my UK Website for branded search. 301 redirect mess
Dear Mozzers, I have an issue with my UK Website (short url is - http://goo.gl/dJ7IgD ) whereby when I type my company name in to google.co.uk search the .com version returns in Search as opposed to the .co.uk and from looking at open site explorer the page rank of the .com is higher than the .co.uk ?. Infact I cant even see the .co.uk homepage version but other pages from my site. The .com version is also 301'd to the .co.uk. From looking at Open Site Explorer, I have noticed that we have more links pointing to .com as opposed to .co.uk. Alot of these are from our own separate microsites which we closed down last year and I have noticed the IT company who closed them down for some reason 301'd them to the .com version of our site as opposed to the .co.uk but If I look in http://httpstatus.io/ (http status checker tool) to check one of these mircosites it shows - 301 - 302 - 200 status codes which to me looks wrong ?. I am wondering what it should read ... e.g should it just be a 301 to a 200 status code ?. My Website short url is - http://goo.gl/dJ7IgD and an example of some of 10 microsites we closed down last year which seems to be redirected to .com is http://goo.gl/BkcIjy and http://goo.gl/kogJ02 As these were redirected almost a year ago - it is okay if I now get them redirected to the .co.uk version of my site or what should I do ? They currently redirect to the home page but given that each of the microsites are based on an individual category of my main site , would it be better to 301 them to the relevant category on my site. My only concern is that , may cause to much internal linking and therefore I wont have enough links on my homepage ? How would you suggest I go about building up my .co.uk authority so it ranks betters than the .com- I am guessing this is obviously affecting my rankings and I am losing link juice with all this. Any advice greatly appreciated . thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Merging 4 websites into one for a new site release (301 question)
Hi guys and girls, I have a client that has 4 very outdated websites with about 50 pages on each. They are made up like: 1 brand group and 3 for each individual key service they offer, so let's call them: brand.com (A) brand-service-1.com (B) brand-service-2.com (C) brand-service-3.com (D) We've rebuilt the main site and aggregated all the content from the others (99% re-written). Am I correct in thinking the process for the new lauch would be: 1. Launch the new site on brand.com (A) and 301 all the old brand.com (A) pages to the related pages on the new site. 2. Redirect the other websites (B,C,D) on a domain level to the new site on the brand.com (A) domain. 3. Clean up the old URL's, sitemaps, errors in Google WMT Is this right? Anything I missed/better practices? I was also wondering if I should redirect B,C,D in stages, or use page level redirects.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shloy23-2945840 -
Backlinking 3 sites from same domain and backlinking main site too
Hello, we have 4 sites, in which 1 is a main site and rest 3 are niche sites All these 3 sites have dofollow links to main site from home page We got a high quality backlink - through which all 3 niche sites have got it from that domain Is it worth to add backlink from that domain to main site too, despite the fact the 3 sites already have recvd it and they all link to main site many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Penalties forcing us to move to a new domain
My ecommerce company has been under an unnatural link penalty for some time now. Over 2 months, removing 13,000 back links and submitting two reconsideration requests we have still been denied. We think the best route to take is to start a new domain. Does anyone have advice, resources, articles or anything else that can help us with this transition? Just a recap : we want to move our existing site to a new site and pass no negative "link juice". Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brads070 -
Hit by Penguin, Can I move the content from the old site to a new domain and start again with the same content which is high quality
I need some advice please. My website got the unnatural links detected message and was hit by penguin.. hard. Can I move the content from the current domain to a new domain and start again or does the content need to be redone also. I will obviously turn of the old domain once its moved. The other option is to try and identify the bad links and change my anchor profile which is a hit and miss task in my opinion. Would it not be easier just to identify the good links pointing to the old domain and get those changed to point to the new domain with better anchors. thanks Warren
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | warren0071 -
New Site: Use Aged Domain Name or Buy New Domain Name?
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peterwhitewebdesign
I have the opportunity to build a new website and use a domain name that is older than 5 years or buy a new domain name. The aged domain name is a .net and includes a keyword.
The new domain would include the same keyword as well as the U.S. state abbreviation. Which one would you use and why? Thanks for your help!0