1000 Pages on old website. What to do with the 301 redirects for this domain?

[snorkel]

Hi Moz Community,

I have a 301 redirect question...

I just acquired an old domain:

• Totally in my niche

• Domain is 14 years old

• Website exists of 1000 pages

• Great amount of backlinks

• Website is offline since about 2 weeks

• Will place a new website online asap with new url structure

For the 50 best scoring pages I wrote a new, but fully comparable/related article. I will put a 301 redirect from those old to the new pages.

My question: What to do with the 950 other url's?

• Should I put a 301 redirect to the homepage?

• Should I forward those pages to the 404 page?

• Should I divide the 950 url's with a 301 redirect to the 50 new ones?

• Another solution maybe?

Any idea what would be the best solution so we can save as much Google juice as possible?

Thanks in advance!

[Hurf]

Of course, you've acquired the domain and not the old site; that makes sense. If I was desperate I would consider scraping what content I could from cached versions of the site (I'd outsource that)- if there are no legal implications in doing so. If that isn't possible/feasible, I'd direct what you can to the most relevant pages where possible and take the hit. I think your plan to create matching pages for the top 50 pages is sound. Whatever you do beyond that with 301s is of limited value if you can't match the content so in that case, I'd consider saving some time and creating redirecting everything else to your home page (or product overview page, for example, if this is of greater value and has higher engagement potential).

The best you can do in each case is match as closely as you can to the content on the new site, where that isn't possible, consider the user's experience - can you deliver them to a page of interest where you can engage and potentially convert them into customers? You should always but the user's experience first, as this is what Google values most. After all, they want to do exactly the same for their customer - deliver relevant and engaging content.

Worst case, if you've captured the biggest chunk of the value with those top 50 pages, you're going to salvage some value, at least. Consider the rest a bonus.

Good luck

[snorkel]

Hi, thanks for the answer.

An archive of some kind is not possible. The content itself from the old site is not ours and we can't use it.

In a perfect world with lots and lots of free time I would rewrite all 1000 pages and put a 301 on each one of them to the new page. But I don't have the resources to rewrite another 950 pages. And I know I will lose a lot of value because of this. But I want to lose as less as possible.

So my question kind of stays... What should I do with the 950 url's I do not have a specific page to redirect to? Homepage, 404, divide over the new 50 articles or something else?

[Hurf]

I'd be extremely reluctant to let any of those old pages die.

I would suggest you move them across to an appropriate section of the site (possibly an archive section, for example, if the content doesn't fit in so well with your new site structure) and create 301s to all of them. (Bear in mind, you will get the best value keeping the content, URL structure, etc. as close to the original as possible to retain the highest value from the redirects - Linking to loosely matched pages is less valuable and matching to unrelated content has negligible value. Remember, the purpose of the 301 is to indicate the content you were looking for now lives somewhere else, and then seamlessly guide your visitor to it. Using it in any other way gives the visitor a poor experience and your engagement statistics will show this. How engaged users are with your content is of significant value in SEO terms.

This assumes, as you state, that the old site was a good match to your new site and there's no detriment to having the old copy in place on your new site. There's no shame in letting links to irrelevant content die - technically, you could create 410 redirects to indicate that the content has been removed, but often you'd just 301 these, too and take a hit on the PR. (https://moz.com/community/q/should-i-implement-301-redirects-vs-410-in-removing-product-pages)

Now that 301 redirects pass on 100% of PageRank, you've got even more reason to maintain the links from old to new. (Caveat: PR is not the only ranking factor, so you're still going to take a bit of a hit when you redirect, but not as much as you will if you let that content wither and die.)

Some useful reading: https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection

https://moz.com/blog/301-redirection-rules-for-seo

I hope that helps and good luck!