301ing Pages & Moving Content To Many Other Domains
-
Recently started working with a large site that, for reasons way beyond organic search, wants to forward internal pages to a variety of external sites.
Some of these external sites that would receive the content from the old site are owned, admin'd and/or hosted by the old site, most are not. All of the sites receiving content would be a better topic fit for that content than the original site. The process is not all at once, but gradual over time. No internal links on the old site to the old page or the new site/url would exist post content move and 301ing. The forwarding is mostly to help Google realize the host site of this content is not hosting duplicate content, but is the one true copy. Also, to pick up external links to the old pages for the new host site.
It's a little like domain name change, but not really since the old site will continue to exist and the new sites are a variety of new/previously existing sites that may or may not share ownership/admin etc.
In most cases, we won't be able to change any external link pointing to the original site and will just be 301ing the old url to the contents new home on another site.
Since this is pretty unusual (like I wouldn't get up in the morning and choose to do this for the heck of it), here are my three questions:
-
Is there any organic search risk to the old site or the sites receiving the old content/301 in this maneuver?
-
Will the new sites pick up the link equity benefit on pages that had third party/followed links continuing to point to the old site but resolving via the 301 to this totally different domain?
-
Any other considerations?
Thanks! Best... Mike
-
-
This is a great metaphor:
"Finally, will moving all of this content damage Site A? Yes. This is cutting out body parts similar to arms and organs. When this content leaves the traffic flow into Site A will drop. The number of linking domains and pages will drop. The offer of this content to entertain existing visitors will be gone. The size of that loss will determine the impact. Rankings of remaining content might fall if the loss is great. If arms and legs or heart or brain are extracted then expect Site A to suffer. But if lesser things are lost then the damage will be lower but some damage will happen. Search engines and visitors will all notice. Enthusiastic visitors will find the content in its new home and they might move with it."
Will definitely be using this for future explanations!
-
Yes, thanks Dana!
Best... Mike
-
Hi Mike,
EGOL's answer is a good one. You should mark it so (hint, hint, nudge,nudge, know what I mean?)
Cheers,
Dana
-
Hi Egol,
Once again I am acquainted with why you are objectively ranked #1 in the Moz community. That was encyclopedic!
Yes, I should have mentioned that I understand site A losing externally linked content would hurt site A.
What I was really getting at, which you answered, is that it's no search crime against humanity to effectively part-out a site. It's not viewed by Google as "what the heck are you doing?" ... for all concerned.
Thank you for the insight.
Best... Mike
-
Will this help the sites that receive the content? Yes. They will acquire content that they can display to their visitors. That content should appear in the search engines and pull in traffic. The 301s will redirect links that might help rankings and deliver click-through traffic.
Will the content rank in the search engines as well on the new sites as it did on the old sites? Maybe better, maybe worse, probably not the same. When you move content from Site A to Site B, that content loses the domain authority that it enjoyed on Site A. If Site A is powerful, authoritative and topically relevant to the moved content and Site B is not, then lower rankings in the search engines for the content on Site B would be expected. If Site B is more powerful, authoritative and topically relevant then rankings might be higher there, Maybe. No guarantees.
The value of the redirected links is questionable. The links into the content on Site A that will be redirected. If they duplicate the domains or pages of the links already hitting Site B then the lift that they will give to Site B will be minimal. However, if they are all uniquely new to Site B then their lift should be positive.
Finally, will moving all of this content damage Site A? Yes. This is cutting out body parts similar to arms and organs. When this content leaves the traffic flow into Site A will drop. The number of linking domains and pages will drop. The offer of this content to entertain existing visitors will be gone. The size of that loss will determine the impact. Rankings of remaining content might fall if the loss is great. If arms and legs or heart or brain are extracted then expect Site A to suffer. But if lesser things are lost then the damage will be lower but some damage will happen. Search engines and visitors will all notice. Enthusiastic visitors will find the content in its new home and they might move with it.
Content moves from one site to another happen often. Sometimes the content is moved for strategic purposes, sometimes tactical purposes, sometimes it is sold for a nice price. There are many reasons. The alternative to the 301 is the rel=canonical. Each has its advantages, risks and shortcomings. The rel=canonical allows Site A to continue to use the content but any ranking value supposedly transfers to Site B. How much? Only the search engines know how they process that. My experience with rel=canonical is that it is valuable to consolidate the power of content that appears in multiple places on a single site. I don't see it sending a lot of value from one domain to another. Just an observation. I don't know of anyone who has written the results of carefully controlled experiments.
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
-
Redirects & Authority when Updating Product Pages
Hi Quick question on SEO & product pages. We're changing suppliers, so discontinuing their range, adding new - but the products will be very similar - almost identical in some cases. I don't want to lose authority built up from current product pages, the only way to reuse these pages is to reuse SKUs - which we can't do. If I am redirecting these pages to new products which are similar, I know page authority will be passed - so is this the best option? Our links on the website will actually point to the final URL, rather than going through a redirect - if this is the case will it still pass authority? Thank you Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Minimum amount of content for Ecommerce pages?
Hi Guys, Currently optimizing my e-commerce store which currently has around 100 words of content on average for each category page. Based on this study by Backlinko the more content the better: http://backlinko.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/02_Content-Total-Word-Count_line.png Would you say this is true for e-commerce pages, for example, a page like this: http://www.theiconic.com.au/yoga-pants/ What benefits would you receive with adding more content? Is it basically more content, leads to more potential long-tail opportunity and more organic traffic? Assuming the content is solid and not built just for SEO reasons. Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowork2140 -
Domain Authority... http://www.domain.com/ vs. http://domain.com vs. http://domain.com/
Hey Guys, Looking at Page Authority for my Site and ranking them in Decending Order, I see these 3 http://www.domain.com/ | Authority 62 http://domain.com | Authority 52 http://domain.com/ | Authority 52 Since the first one listed has the highest Authority, should I be using a 301 redirects on the lower ranking variations (which I understand how works) or should I be using rel="canonical" (which I don't really understand how it works) Also, if this is a problem that I should address, should we see a significant boost if fixed? Thanks ahead of time for anyone who can help a lost sailor who doesn't know how to sail and probably shouldn't have left shore in the first place. Cheers ZP!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mr_Snack0 -
Imange name and html page name same are count spammy contents ?
Imange name and html page name same is count spammy contents ex. watertreatment - plan.jpg watertreatment - plan.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Poojath0 -
Duplicate Content for Deep Pages
Hey guys, For deep, deep pages on a website, does duplicate content matter? The pages I'm talk about are image pages associated with products and will never rank in Google which doesn't concern me. What I'm interested to know though is whether the duplicate content would have an overall effect on the site as a whole? Thanks in advance Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevinliao1 -
Duplicate content within sections of a page but not full page duplicate content
Hi, I am working on a website redesign and the client offers several services and within those services some elements of the services crossover with one another. For example, they offer a service called Modelling and when you click onto that page several elements that build up that service are featured, so in this case 'mentoring'. Now mentoring is common to other services therefore will feature on other service pages. The page will feature a mixture of unique content to that service and small sections of duplicate content and I'm not sure how to treat this. One thing we have come up with is take the user through to a unique page to host all the content however some features do not warrant a page being created for this. Another idea is to have the feature pop up with inline content. Any thoughts/experience on this would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | J_Sinclair0 -
Home Page or Internal Page
I have a website that deals with personalized jewelry, and our main keyword is "Name Necklace".
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm
3 mounth ago i added new page: http://www.onecklace.com/name-necklaces/ And from then google index only this page for my main keyword, and not our home page.
Beacuase the page is new, and we didn't have a lot of link to it, our rank is not so well. I'm considering to remove this page (301 to home page), beacause i think that if google index our home page for this keyword it will be better. I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but i know that our home page have a lot of good links and maybe our rank will be higher. Another thing, because google index this internal page for this keyword, it looks like our home page have no main keyword at all. BTW, before i add this page, google index our main page with this keyword. Please advise... U5S8gyS.png j50XHl4.png0 -
Will pages irrelevant to a site's core content dilute SEO value of core pages?
We have a website with around 40 product pages. We also have around 300 pages with individual ingredients used for the products and on top of that we have some 400 pages of individual retailers which stock the products. Ingredient pages have same basic short info about the ingredients and the retail pages just have the retailer name, adress and content details. Question is, should I add noindex to all the ingredient and or retailer pages so that the focus is entirely on the product pages? Thanks for you help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ArchMedia0