Launching a new website. Old inherited site cannot be saved after lifted penalty. When should we kill the old site and how?

[peteboyd]

Background Information A website that we inherited was severely penalized and after the penalty was revoked the site still never resurfaced in rankings or traffic.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?

[gazzerman1]

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!

[PatrickDelehanty]

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!

[PatrickDelehanty]

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!

[peteboyd]

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?

[PatrickDelehanty]

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!

[peteboyd]

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.

[PatrickDelehanty]

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!

[peteboyd]

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.

[EcommerceSite]

Is the old site generating any revenue currently?