• seohunters9

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
        4. Splitting one Website into 2 Different New Websites with 301 redirects, help?

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        Splitting one Website into 2 Different New Websites with 301 redirects, help?

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO
        3
        5
        4708
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • Hyrule
          Hyrule last edited by

          Here's the deal. My website stbands.com does fairly well. The only issue it is facing a long term branding crisis. It sells custom products and sporting goods. We decided that we want to make a sporting goods website for the retail stuff and then a custom site only focusing on the custom stuff. One website transformed and broken into 2 new ones, with two new brand names.

          The way we are thinking about doing this is doing a lot of 301 redirects, but what do we do with the homepage (stbands.com) and what is the best practice to make sure we don't lose traffic to the categories, etc.? Which new website do we 301 the homepage to?

          It's rough because for some keywords we rank 3 or 4 times on the first page. Scary times, but something must be done for the long term. Any advise is greatly appreciated.

          Thank you in advance. We are set for a busy next few months 🙂

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • AdamThompson
            AdamThompson @Hyrule last edited by

            I'd go for quality over quantity. Some guest blogs, perhaps, or maybe links from vendor or partner websites. I'd be very careful to use a natural mix of anchor text, too. Don't want to give Google any reason at all to be suspicious.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Hyrule
              Hyrule @AdamThompson last edited by

              Adam,

              I am highly considering 301-ing the homepage to our main source of revenue and because it actually ranks along with our other pages. If we do this i am guessing we'd be taking more of a hit on our other new website, which i am willing to do.

              This sounds like the best option to keep revenue a float while we build these brands back up. Assuming I will be launching everything in August, how many links to recommend I build to each domain?

              Thanks,

              Paul

              AdamThompson 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Matthew_Edgar
                Matthew_Edgar last edited by

                Hi Paul,

                I went through a very similar situation at the end of last year with a client of mine. That client's business broke apart into two other companies. It was scary because that old company's website had a lot of authority, ranked for many, many terms (long tail and head terms).

                Adam's recommendation of getting links to the new domains is critical. In the case of my client, one of the new websites did have a few links (a dozen or so) while the other website had no links. The website without links did not perform as well. I would recommend you start that process now, even if those links point to a "coming soon" type home page on those new domains.

                For the home page, we created a splash page that offered visitors a choice of going to one company or the other. We did put deeper links into both sites on this page, though that was more a usability consideration. I wouldn't redirect the home page to either website, unless there is a clear usability case to be made for doing so. That way the splash page acts a communication to users and Google about the new direction of the website.

                Also, so that you know...Google still has that page indexed but after the first 2-3 months, that page started to lose rankings and traffic from search. I'm not sure if it lost rankings because of it being a splash page or because we started changing links (I suspect the links though the change in the content of the home page certainly played a role). Either way, that was the desired intention; you don't want the splash page to rank.

                All the other pages on the site were 301 redirected to the appropriate pages of the new websites. We had no troubles redirecting to multiple domains. Adam is right though that this may be seen as spammy so be careful with this. We started out in small batches of pages as a test before going full on into the redirects. If you can, I'd start with that. Measure, test, repeat with another small batch, etc.

                Finally, I will tell you that we did see a drop in rankings/traffic to the two new websites (that is, the total Google and Bing activity for the two sites was less than where we had been with the old website). We are now at the seven month mark and starting to regain steam. Not quite where it was this time last year, but I am seeing gains. SO, make sure that you brace for impact and plan for a slowdown when you do this.

                I hope I was able to help you out. Thanks,
                Matthew

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • AdamThompson
                  AdamThompson last edited by

                  A few suggestions:

                  • Anything you can do to get the new domains indexed and a few links built to them well in advance of the redirect might be a good idea. I've never had it happen myself, but I've heard of a few cases of lost rankings when redirecting to a fresh domain.
                  • Once you do the redirects, try to get your most important links changed to the new domain. (Redirects to lose some link juice and/or decay over time.)
                  • Make sure you are redirecting each page on the old site to the most relevant page on the new site.
                  • I've never redirected every single URL on one domain to pages on two other domains. You might want to ask around to see if Google might frown upon that (I can imagine this is a tactic spammers might try to use to pass link juice to a bunch of domains). I'm sure someone else has done this and could advise.
                  • Any chance of keeping your current domain for one of the two sites?

                  I can think of a few options for the homepage:

                  • Don't redirect it. Create a splash page with a "which do you want" option and links to both domains.
                  • Redirect it to the domain that is most important to you.
                  • Redirect it to the domain that will be most relevant to the highest number of users.
                  • Redirect it to the domain that will be most relevant to the keywords the homepage currently ranks for.

                  Hope this helps!

                  Hyrule 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • Kahuna_Charles

                    Someone redirected his website to ours

                    Hi all, I have strange issue as someone redirected website http://bukmachers.pl to ours https://legalnibukmacherzy.pl We don't know exactly what to do with it. I checked backlinks and the website had some links which now redirect to us. I also checked this website on wayback machine and back in 2017 this website had some low quality content  but in 2018 they made similar redirection to current one but to different website (our competitor). Can such redirection be harmful for us?  Should we do something with this or leave it, as google stop encouraging to disavow low quality links.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kahuna_Charles
                    1
                  • cuarto715

                    Google Is Indexing my 301 Redirects to Other sites

                    Long story but now i have a few links from my site 301 redirecting to youtube videos or eCommerce stores. They carry a considerable amount of traffic that i benefit from so i can't take them down, and that traffic is people from other websites, so basically i have backlinks from places that i don't own, to my redirect urls (Ex. http://example.com/redirect) My problem is that google is indexing them and doesn't let them go, i have tried blocking that url from robots.txt but google is still indexing it uncrawled, i have also tried allowing google to crawl it and adding noindex from robots.txt, i have tried removing it from GWT but it pops back again after a few days. Any ideas? Thanks!

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cuarto715
                    0
                  • MJTrevens

                    Will 301 Redirects Slow Page Speed?

                    We have a lot of subdomains that we are switching to subfolders and need to 301 redirect all the pages from those subdomains to the new URL. We have over 1000 that need to be implemented. So, will 301 redirects slow the page speed regardless of which URL the user comes through? Or, as the old urls are dropped from Google's index and bypassed as the new URLs take over in the SERPs, will those redirects then have no effect on page speed? Trying to find a clear answer to this and have yet to find a good answer

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MJTrevens
                    0
                  • mobic

                    What is the difference between Multilingual and multiregional websites?

                    Hi all, So, I have studied about multilingual and multiregional websites. As soon as possible, we will expand the website languages ​to english and spanish. The urls will be like this: http://example.com/pt-br
                    http://example.com/en-us
                    http://example.com/es-ar Thereby, the tags will be like this: Great! But my doubt is: To /es-ar/ The indexing will be only to spanish languages in Argentina? What about the other countries that speak the same language, like Spain, Mexico, etc.I don't know if it will be possible develop a Spanish languages especially for each region. Should I do an multiregional website or only multilingual? How Google sees this case? Thanks for any advice!!

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mobic
                    1
                  • CayenneRed89

                    Help! The website ranks fine but one of my web pages simply won't rank on Google!!!

                    One of our web pages will not rank on Google.  The website as a whole ranks fine except just one section...We have tested and it looks fine...Google can crawl the page no problem.   There are no spurious redirects in place. The content is fine.  There is no duplicate page content issue.  The page has a dozen product images (photos) but the load time of the page is absolutely fine.  We have the submitted the page via webmaster and its fine.  It gets listed but then a few hours later disappears!!!  The site has not been penalised as we get good rankings with other pages.  Can anyone help?  Know about this problem?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed89
                    0
                  • BrandLabs

                    Redirect old .net domain to new .com domain

                    I have a quick question that I think I know the answer to but I wanted to get some feedback to make sure or see if there's additional feedback. The long and short of it is that I'm working with a site that currently has a .net domain that they've been running for 6 years. They've recently bought a .com of the same name as well. So the question is: I think it's obviously preferable to keep the .net and just direct the .com to it. However, if they would prefer to have the .com domain, is 301'ing the .net to the .com going to lose a lot of the equity they've built up in the site over the past  years? And are there any steps that would make such a move easier? Also, if you have any tips or insight just into a general transition of this nature it would be much appreciated. Thanks!

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandLabs
                    0
                  • JustinTaylor88

                    Duplicating an existing website - new name and reskin

                    Would re-skinning, duplicating an exising ecommerce website with a new domain name cause any ranking issues? The plan would be that all product data, pricing info etc would be identical, the site would have a minor redesign to change colours, logos etc and all duplicate content would be rel=canonicaled to the original site. In case you are wondering the reason for this is a customer with an existing site wants to try out a new brand without incorporating a massive development costs. The majority of traffic would be driving through google shopping, a bit of PPC, social etc. Is this site duplication likely to harm the original site or will setting up rel=canonical to point to the original site going to be sufficient enough to prevent this happening? Is there anything else is should consider? Many thanks for your help

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JustinTaylor88
                    0
                  • brianmcc

                    Reverse Proxy better than 301 redirect?

                    Are reverse proxies that much better than 301 redirects? Should I invest the time in doing this? I found out about reverse proxies here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-a-reverse-proxy-and-how-can-it-help-my-seo

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianmcc
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.