(Australia) Changing .net.au to .com.au - web dev is refusing to do a 301 redirect and wants to run two sites?
-
After years using a .net.au site, my client has purchased the .com.au version of the same domain. I've now set up a new, responsive website using a wordpress template with new content, but used a similar page structure.
I've asked their web developer to now do a 301 permanent redirect on each old page from .net.au site to it's new .com.au page, but he has refused, saying it would be bad for long term SEO. Instead, he says they should run both sites (which I thought would cause duplicate content issues).
Both domains are hosted with the same company.
I thought as long as the 301 redirects were done on a page by page basis, there were no issues? I'm no SEO expert, (which he claims to be), so I just wanted to get another opinion on what best practice would be in this instance.
-
I am sure you won't get into any issues by keeping them both separate - but it doesn’t make any sense in doing that. You should definitely 301 redirect the old one .. page by page to the new site.
It doesn’t make sense to keep them both and you will lose since Google might start to rank one page from the com.au and for another query one from net.au. They should for sure consolidate everything into one single side.
Keeping them separately there migt also be some branding issues - as users might get confused. "oh, last time I was on the other Screento - let's look for those guys again"
So, you won't get into issues from Google with Duplicate content or anything else but you might shoot yourself in the foot by not 301 redirecting the old pages to the new ones since you will compete with each other and it just doesn’t make sense to keep them both.
So to make the long story short: Consolidate with 301 and you will be in good shape. Don't do it and you will be safe but you will lose on branding and rankings.
Hope it helps.
-
Wow - thanks for your quick response.
The new domain is www.screenco.com.au and the old one is www.screenco.net.au
Just for reference - these are the "SEO expert's" actual words: "leave it there and run both sites, putting a 301 redirect will harm the site in the long run. 301 redirects from other domains are now believed to be bad links – from the same domain they are considered ok, as they are redirecting pages that are now not working or temporary created by php or similar".
So do I take it he either a) is confused between a temporary and permanent redirection, or b)just doesn't want to spend half an hour doing the actual redirections?
-
Hi,
You said the new domain has new content ? Then it should be ok to have them separate - and no need for a 301 redirect. There are no issues with duplicate content if there is no duplicate content
(as you said - the new domain has new content). Structure is not an issue if it's the same.
Can you post the two domain names so we can have a look ?
Cheers.
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
-
Change domain.com to www.domain.com - influence on linkbuilding, seo, etc.
Hello, Do you know what can happen when i change domain.com to www.domain.com? Will it have an influence to my link-building portfolio (external links to domain.com), position on google search, etc. Thank you for help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Reyzer0 -
Redirect wordpress.com and internal link ?
Hi Moz Fans, First of all, I need to say thanks to all of answer to previous post. And today i also have the another question that similar to that post. Because our website using Wordpress.org as our CMS for blog post then easier to redirect by point to new site, According to setting site URL ? However in our each blog articles also have anchor text as internal link that link to another blog post, Which mean those link will be automatic redirect to new URL. So once Google bot re-crawl our website when we tell the Google by webmaster tools and the redirection we using 301. What will be happen when Google Bot crawl those link again We need to changes those link as well Keep same with redirection. Nothing happen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ASKHANUMANTHAILAND0 -
Tags: 301 Redirect, Rel Canonical, or Leave Them Alone?
The title is pretty self explanatory ... we have cornerstone pages ( such as a page for "Widget A") that rank for a certain keyword and then relevant articles that all link to that particular cornerstone page. Each of those articles has the same tag ("Widget A") to tie them together. If you click on that tag, it creates a list of all articles with that tag. We think that this may be siphoning off some of that keyword Google Juice from our Widget A cornerstone page. Our question is, should we 301 redirect that tag to point to the Widget A cornerstone page, use a rel canonical pointing to the Widget A cornerstone page, or just leave it alone like we are doing now? Our goal is to have the Widget A cornerstone page receive the most Google Juice possible and not be diminished by the tags. Note* - We don't want to stop Google from crawling the tags because some of our tags rank highly for other keywords. Also, we tried 301 redirecting the tags before and our ranking dropped significantly ... however, we made a lot of site changes at the same time so we are not sure if the drop in rank was due to redirecting the tags or the site changes. Help please ... thanks in advance 😉
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Humanovation0 -
Multilingual Site and 301 redirection
Hey there awesome people of Moz I have this site that has many languages in it. The main language is English and my developer did the following www.example.com ( is the main site ) which redirects with a 301 to www.example.com/en if your geo location is supported by our languages then you will automatically be redirected to whatever language you have in your country but does the first language with is english have to 301 redirect to www.example.com/en ? I thought that the right way is to just leave /en at the root file. Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis0 -
Why is this url redirecting to our site?
I was doing an audit on our site and searching for duplicate content using some different terms from each of our pages. I came across the following result: www.sswug.org/url/32639 redirects to our website. Is that normal? There are hundreds of these url's in google all with the exact same description. I thought it was odd. Any ideas and what is the consequence of this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sika220 -
How to redirect an url in .htaccess when "redirect 301" doesnt work
I have an odd page url, generated by a link from an external website, it has: %5Cu0026size=27.4KB%5Cu0026p=dell%20printers%20uk%5Cu0026oid=333302b6be58eaa914fbc7de45b23926%5Cu0026ni=21%5Cu0026no=24%5Cu0026tab=organic%5Cu0026sigi=11p3eqh65%5Cu0026tt=Dell%205210n%20A4%20Mono%20Laser%20Printer%20from%20Printer%20Experts%5Cu0026u=fb ,after a .jpg image url, and I can't get it redirect using the redirect 301 in .htaccess to the properly image url as I use to do with the rest of not found urls eg: /15985.jpg%5Cu0026size=27.4KB%5Cu0026p=dell%20printers%20uk%5Cu0026oid=333302b6be58eaa914fbc7de45b23926%5Cu0026ni=21%5Cu0026no=24%5Cu0026tab=organic%5Cu0026sigi=11p3eqh65%5Cu0026tt=Dell%205210n%20A4%20Mono%20Laser%20Printer%20from%20Printer%20Experts%5Cu0026u=fb to just: /15985.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Status0 -
What is the Proper Use of 301 redirects for SEO purposes?
I heard and read from different sources that 301 redirects from aged domains with healthy link profiles is great to boost a sites rank as oppose to building a site around the page and linking it to the domain you want to rank. Whats is the best practice for this strategy? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | junkcars0 -
Quoestion about 301 redirect
Hey, I have interesting questions regardin 301 redirect (At least I think it's Interesting:) ) So i have this websites that compares different lenders, url below 🙂 If you go to the homepage then the first thing you see is different loan amounts in 50-99 euro range. Also you can check out different loan amounts like 100-149€, 150-199€, 200-249€ and so on. For now i have used 301 redirect and Noindex and Nofollow for all the different "loan amounts" urls. Examples below etc Is it a good idea to use 301 on all such pages to point to the homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TauriU0