301 Re-direct Implementation & Its Possible Aftermaths
-
Hi all,
I'm currently working on a domain that seems to be 'unofficially' blacklisted by Google. The reason behind my belief are,
-
Ranking process of KW became stagnant.
-
Current crawling and indexing rate has been decreased.
-
Site performance deteriorate after every Search engine update or major data refreshes.
-
And few major indications pointing out that search engines might started doubting its authority.
The site is live n running for about 10+ yr and consists of 6000+ pages out of which 5000+ pages are indexed.
The site also have some serious issues like,
-
The site has been 2 times penalized by Google.
-
The link ratio & inbound link quality of the site is quite unnatural (mostly directory links, links form spammy sites, bad-neighborhood links etc. )
-
The site is in flat file and not CMS, thus making it extremely difficult to maintain and update it.
Due to the above reasons I was thinking of implementing 301 re-direction. I would like to redirect this poor performing existing domain to a new fresh one keeping the URL structure and files same and maintaining 1:1 redirection rules.
I've read an awesome article by Danny Dover on 301 Re direction of a site here in SEOMOZ. It seems that if any one follow the steps mentioned there can actually get benefited by the overall re direction process. Now I'd like know your suggestion about following points:
1. Considering the factors that I've stated, do you think that it would be good to go with this re direction idea?
2. If 301 is implemented then what can be its immediate effects on current rankings and site performance?
3. Assuming that the ranks drowned or gets completely vanished from SERP, after what approx time period can be regain back?
4. Any other suggestion that might help me out to better understand the situation.
-
-
Thanks Mark,
We have actually decided to get rid of the old domain and move forward with the new one. Your suggestions are really useful and it helps a lot during this transition.
-
One thing to bear in mind is that you are never going to retain all of the link juice that you've got with the old site when redirecting to the new site.
If I were you, I would really try to clean up the backlink profile of the site as much as possible before doing any sort of redirection. I would argue that you might even be able to salvage the existing site's rankings by doing some rescue work in terms of your link profile.
One very important consideration is that your domain is 10+ years old already, which is in itself a pretty good authority indicator.
My suggestions to you:
-
Clean up really spammy links by using a tool such as Open Site Explorer to find and weed out the bad links. Follow whatever process is required to remove some of these links. (Contact the administrator of the site, remove your URL from the directory etc.)
-
Help dilute the effect of the spammy links by building new, higher quality backlinks to your site. Diversification is very important. If you have 100 spammy links, but 200 really good links, I don't feel like the Big G will worry too much.
-
Check your on-page factors. What sort of content do you have on your site? Are you stuffing keywords everywhere? Are you using unique content, or spun nonsense? Do you have title tags and headings that are both relevant and unique? Are you duplicating any content throughout your site?
The problem, however, with salvaging the site is that, like you say, you're running on a static platform.
If your rankings are really that bad now, perhaps it would be a good idea to start fresh. Just bear in mind that this won't be a quick fix, particularly if you're using a new domain.
If you insist on creating a new site (CMS based) and using the same content, then you'll have to do the redirect to avoid duplicate content issues. I would just take a long, hard look at your content to ensure that it's really worth copying across rather than starting fresh.
Put it this way, I would use the 301 redirect to inform the search engines that the site has been transferred and is under a new domain now. I wouldn't use the 301 redirect to try and salvage much link juice.
-
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
-
AMP - The what, why and how of it
Hi There, In our company, we never had AMP implemented on sites that we SEO for. We want to start doing that now. I know the basics of AMP and their requirements, however, I need to know a lot more about it from an SEO perspective of this before I actually get developers onto it. I want to know all the 1) risks involved, 2) the best ways to implement it (plugin etc.), 3) why it is worth it. I also want to know how to see if a developer knows what he is talking about - and really will do it the right way without messing me up? Are there any specific questions I should ask, or information he should be aware of? Also, is there a way for it it be done for pages that have more than just text like quote forms, sliding headers etc.? Should we only do it for the blog section of our site? I would greatly appreciate any links to additional resources on this topic, (not why to use AMP, but everything else) I greatly appreciate you taking the time to answer my question
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ruchy0 -
Several 301 Redirects to Same Page
Hi, I have 3 Pages we won't use anymore in our website. Let's call them url A, url B and url C. To keep their SEO strength on our domain, I've though about redirecting all of them to url D. For what I understand, when 301 redirecting, about 85-90% of the link SEO juice is passed. Then, if I redirect 3 URLs to the same page... does url D receive all the link SEO juices for URLs added up? (approximately)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading1
e.g. future url D juice = 100% current url D juice + 85% url A juice + 85% url B juice + 85% url C juice Is this the best practice, or is there a better way? Cheers,0 -
301 redirects cross domains
Hi Moz Community. We have a client that has Website A and Website B. Website A is going to be replaced by Website C, a new website and brand. Some products sold on Website A are going to be split out to Website B & C. i.e. Say Website A sells eight products - then four will go to Website B and four to Website C. OUR QUESTION Technically we know we can 301 redirect the Website A products to the relevant Website B & Website C products. 1. Given this convoluted structure, will there be any negative ramifications for SEO? and; 2. Which website would you redirect the homepage to, B or C?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WCR0 -
Pages that 301 redirect to a 404
We are going through a website redesign that involves changing URL's for the pages on our site. Currently all our pages are in the format domain.com/example.html and we are moving to stip off the .html file extension so it would just be domain.com/example We have thousands of pages as the site deals with news so building a redirect for each individual page isn't really feasible. My plan is to have a generic rewrite rule that redirects any page that ends .html to the stripped off version of this. A problem I can see with this is that it will also redirect pages that don't exist. So for example, domain.com/non-existant-page.html would 301 to domain.com/non-existant-page which would then return a 404 status. What would the SEO repercussions be for this? Obviously if a page doesn't exist already then it shouldn't show up in the search engine indexes and shouldn't be a problem but I'm a bit worried about how old pages that currently legitimately 404 will be treated when they start to 301 redirect to a 404 instead. Not sure if there any other potential issues from this that I've missed either? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbb0240 -
Should we 301 redirect old events pages on a website?
We have a client that has an events category section that is filled to the brim with past events webpages. Another issue is that these old events webpages all contain duplicate meta description tags, so we are concerned that Google might be penalizing our client's website for this issue. Our client does not want to create specialized meta description tags for these old events pages. Would it be a good idea to 301 redirect these old events landing pages to the main events category page to pass off link equity & remove the duplicate meta description tag issue? This seems drastic (we even noticed that searchmarketingexpo.com is keeping their old events pages). However it seems like these old events webpages offer little value to our website visitors. Any feedback would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Is it OK to Delete a Page and Move Content to a Another Page without 301 re-direct
I have a page "A" that I want to completely delete and move the written content from A" to page "B". Since I am deleting "A" (not keeping page) is it OK to upload the content from "A" to page "B" and search engines will give "B" credit for the unique content? Or, since the content has already once been indexed on "A", "B" may struggle to get full credit for this new unique content, even though page "A" is deleted?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Affiliate & canonicals
Hi, any help with this one would be great.... www.example.com sells widgets online. They are also promoted on a 3rd party website www.partner.com. Currently www.partner.com links to a page on www.example.com that is completely branded with the 'partners' design, style and unique copy (you would think you were still on 'partner' website). I saw this interesting article from 2011: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-seo-value-from-your-affiliate-links (in particular idea 1) Do you think adding a rel=canonical on www.example.com's partner page is still safe? All the best & thank you, Richard
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Richard5550 -
301 vs Changing Link href
We have changed our company and want to 301 old domain from new domain in order to transfer the benefits of backlinks (DA: 50, 115 Linking Root Domains). I have the ability to modify around 50% of the backlinks. So my question is: Instead of redirecting all the links, should I update the 50% to link to the new domain instead of relying on redirects? Would this possibly trip an algorithmic filter and devalue these links? Or should I just do a 301 and not worry about modifying the links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Choice0