Is domain authority lost if you create a 301 redirect but mark it as noindex, nofollow?
-
Hi everyone,
Our company sells products in various divisions. While we've been selling Product A and Product B under our original brand, we've recently created a new division with a new domain to focus on a Product B.
The new domain has virtually no domain authority (3) while the original domain has some (37). We want customers to arrive on the new domain when they search for key search terms related to Product B instead of the pages that previously existed on our main website.
If we create 301 redirects for the pages and content on the main site and add noindex, nofollow tags, will we lose the domain authority that we have from our original domain because the pages now have the noindex, nofollow tags?
I read a few blog posts from Moz that said there isn't any domain authority lost with 301 redirects but I'm not sure if that is true if the pages are noindex, nonofollow. Do you follow?
Apologies for the lengthy post. Love this community and the great Moz team.
Thanks,
Joe
-
Thanks Mike. How do we preserve any 'link juice' from the existing page that will have the redirect? Do the noindex and nofollow tags hurt the passing of link equity vs. just having the 301 redirect without those tags?
-
Hi Joe,
If we create 301 redirects for the pages and content on the main site and add noindex, nofollow tags, will we lose the domain authority that we have from our original domain because the pages now have the noindex, nofollow tags?
If you create 301 redirects for pages on the main site, the "noindex,nofollow" tags will have no impact (bc they'll never be visible to Googlebot or other clients). The pages would have to load (200 status code) for Google to discover and make use of the Meta Robots tag or any other directive/content.
So if you're planning to create 301 redirects for these pages, I wouldn't bother with the "noindex,nofollow" tags - once Google encounters the 301 redirect they should index the new pages and remove the old pages.
One caveat: if Google detects a large disparity between the old and new pages (topic/intent is clearly different), the authority might not translate over to the new pages. We usually see this work fine, but it's something to keep in mind.
Best,
Mike
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
-
301 redirect recovery
Hello Please understand that English is poor. I used to run a site called A This time, I am running a site called B. I need to set up a temporary 302 redirect from A to B
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jinseok
I accidentally set a 301 redirect Site A has many spam links
For now I have removed the 301 redirect source to B. Will A's spam links affect site B?
For your reference, Site B is putting a lot of effort into SEO. Help me.0 -
Possible issues with 301 redirecting to a new domain name
Ive got a current domain and after a bit of a rebrand Im considering 301 rediecting the current site to a newly purchased domain. Id redirect each age to idential pages. Am I likely to see any issues. I know this is the recomended way from Google but just wondering how smoothly it works and whether Im likely to see any ranking drops or other problems?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | paulfoz16090 -
Website Not Ranking Organically - Not Links, Not Domain Authority...
This is regarding the domain: http://lesliekays.com We got a new client about 5 months back who had a website that was hacked. It took several months, but we've cleaned up most of the spammy links and completely rebuilt their website. We have been successful with every other client that we have ever done getting our customers to rank well organically, but we just can't figure this one out. I'm willing to offer a REWARD to the single person who can figure this out for us. (Let's not get carried away, a small reward). This customer has great quality links to their site too. We are looking for answers other than: 1. Backlinks 2. Content 3. Malware 4. Domain or Page authority 5. 404 errors 6. We have utilized Googles Webmaster tools endlessly It is something else and we can not identify it! Let me know what you think! I will give a public shout out to the person who helps us identify this issue!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tosten0 -
Domain Name Redirect Question
My agency just built a new website for a client who is a franchisee. It's not launched yet - it's currently under an IP address. I suggested to client that he buy a keyword-rich domain name for it, which he did. Then he found out that the franchisor will not allow it to be his main domain name. They want him to use a domain name with the franchisor name in it. But they WILL allow him to put a 301 redirect on that franchisor-approved domain name, and redirect it to his keyword-rich domain name. He is interested in having my agency perform an SEO Campaign for this new website. But would SEO and link marketing work for a website that has a new non-keyword domain name that 301 redirects to a new keyword-rich domain name?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netsites0 -
Problems with a NoIndex NoFollow Site
For legal reasons my website is going to launch non-branded websites. We do not have the capacity to make these site sufficiently unique from the main site so we are planning on having them be NoIndex NoFollow. Are there any potential SEO problems here? What will the implication be if in ~1-2 years from launching the NoIndex NoFollow we make the site unique, take away the tag and want to start promoting these sites organically. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Effect of 301 redirect to a relative url to homepage?
One of our new clients recently encountered a site-wide ranking drop for many keywords and I'm pretty confident regarding their link profile as to being 98% legit. Background: 1. Client full site is https, and all http pages are 301 redirected to their https counterpart 2. Client has ~50 links partners (all legitimate sites + schools etc) links to client with urls such as www.example.com/portal/123.aspx that redirects to www.example.com. 3. Client homepage 301 redirects from www.example.com to www.example.com/default.aspx and then 301 redirects to the relative url "/Home.aspx". 4. Client launched some testing with Google website optimizer tool. ~1-2 months ago. Symptoms: 1. Rankings dropped for basically many/all 30-40+ keywords by ~15 positions 2. Seomoz reports close to a double of existing pages + (600+) duplicate content in the same date range. Webmasters only report 80 duplicate titles though. 3. Domain authority by seomoz reduced a bit + backlinks recorded by seomoz to the website nearly halved in the past 2 months. I'm not sure if I narrowed this towards the right direction, and it isn't clear when the relative url 301 redirect was implemented: 1. The 301 redirect to the relative page (www.example.com/default.aspx to "/home.aspx") is accounting for the loss of links recorded by seomoz. 2. The ~50 links the client currently use (www.example.com/portal.123.aspx 301 redirecting to www.example.com, also relative) as a tracking tool is being considered 301 redirect abuse. 3. Maybe something went wrong with the usage of google optimizer tool for SEO purposes? Visitor traffic to each of the tested pages looked fine. I would greatly appreciate any advice/insights on what I might be missing in terms of direction / factors. Thanks! Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sixspokemedia0 -
Subdomain and domain authority
I have Domain A (main content site, lots of content), with a domain authority of 91, and Domain B (blog of the first site, lots of content), with a domain authority of 82. I'm merging the blog into the main domain. Would it be best to keep it as a subdomain, or under a directory?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smorrison0 -
Any way to find which domains are 301 redirected to competitors' websites?
By looking at the work from an SEO collegue it became clear that his weak linkbuilding graph probably is not the cause for his good rankings for a pretty competitive keyword. (also no social mentions where found) I was wondering what it could be, site structure and other on page optimization factors seems to be ok and I don't think there will be exceptionally good or bad user behavior... Finally I looked at the competitors and found that they have more links, better content en better design, so I got a little stuck. The only reason I can think of is that he is doing 301 redirects (or is rel=canonical tags). Is there a way to trace these redirects back to the source in order to include this important variable in your competitor research? thnx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djingel10