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.
Redirect ruined domain to new domain without passing link juice
-
A new client has a domain which has been hammered by bad links, updates etc and it's basically on its arse because of previous SEO guys.
They have various domains for their business (brand.com, brand.co.uk) and want to use a fresh domain and take it from there. Their current domain is brand.com (the ruined one). They're not bothered about the rankings for brand.com but they want to redirect brand.com to brand.co.uk so that previous clients can find them easily.
Would a 302 redirect work for this? I don't want to set up a 301 redirect as I don't want any of the crappy links pointing across.
Thanks!
-
I feel that there should be some form of redirect that can be conducted without passing on link juice value.
From my perspective, it's not gaming the system or trying to game Google. My client doesn't want any link juice passing on, but wants to keep the old domain for people accessing the domain directly.
It's a shame really. Google holds a massive grudge, even though these guys trusted a big name in the SEO industry.
-
Sorry it's taken a bucket load of time to get back to you!
Ideally, they're looking at some form redirection to avoid any form of user interaction.
A meta-refresh might be the best route to go down, I'm going to noindex/nofollow the website and put forward a meta-refresh solution to them.
I don't think a second or two in lag would be a problem, as users hitting the .com version of the website will slowly phase out anyway.
Thanks buddy!
-
I don't think I ever realized that forwarding also can return a 301. That's really good to know. Thanks.
-
I'd just warn that most domain forwarding ends up returning a 301 response code anyway, and some return a 302. You could always test it out to see what happens. I checked (non-masked) domain forwarding on two hosts and found 301s in the header in both cases. I believe this is fairly common.
One controversial solution might be a JavaScript redirect that search engines can't understand instead. It's obviously cloaking if the content is different, but maybe not if the content is similar. See https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721217?hl=en&ref_topic=2371375
Unfortunately, there's not a redirect method that would prevent both versions of the site from being indexed. Even with a penalty, the old site could out-rank the new one for branded and long-tail traffic.
Perhaps the best/safest option is to simply noindex/nofollow the pages, then show a warning with a link to the new version of the page. Yes, it requires a new click from users, but it's simple enough that there's little to worry about.
-
I'm not sure that any redirect is guaranteed that Google won't pass on the links to the .uk domain. The two options I could think of which would probably be the least likely for Google to pass on the links would be,
1. You could setup a meta-refresh redirect on the .com. Make sure it's a few seconds and not instant.
2. Redirect everything from the .com site to a single landing page on the .com site. Put a message on that landing page that tells visitors the site has moved and provide a link to the new site.
Neither of these solutions are great from a user experience standpoint, but their the least likely for Google to pass on all the bad links from the .com site.
-
Why don't you try domain forwarding? That may be your only option as there is growing evidence that Google passes links from 302 redirects as well. You can find the domain forwarding option in the control panel where the domain name is hosted. Instead of doing a redirect, the change will take place with the DNS.
Here's some info: http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/422/forwarding-or-masking-your-domain-name
Make sure you choose forwarding without masking.
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
-
Redirection of 100 domain to Main domain affects SEO?
Hi guys, An email software vendor managed by a different area of my company redirected 100 domains used for unsolicited email campaigns to my main domain. These domains are very likely to get blacklisted at some point. My SEO tool now is showing me all those domains as "linking" to my main site as do-follow links. The vendor states that this will not affect my main domain/website in any way. I'm highly concerned. I would appreciate your professional opinion about this. Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anagentile0 -
Migrating Subfolder content to New domain Safely
Hello everyone, I'm currently facing a challenging situation and would greatly appreciate your expertise and guidance. I own a website, maniflexa.com, primarily focused on the digital agency niche. About 3 months ago, I created a subfolder, maniflexa.com/emploi/, dedicated to job listings which is a completely different niche. The subfolder has around 120 posts and pages. Unfortunately, since I created the subfolder, the rankings of my main site have been negatively impacted. I was previously ranking #1 for all local digital services keywords, but now, only 2 out of 16 keywords have maintained their positions. Other pages have dropped to positions 30 and beyond. I'm considering a solution and would like your advice: I'm planning to purchase a new domain and migrate the content from maniflexa.com/emploi/ to newdomain.com. However, I want to ensure a smooth migration without affecting the main domain maniflexa.com rankings and losing backlinks from maniflexa.com/emploi/ pages. Is moving the subfolder content to a new domain a viable solution? And how can I effectively redirect all pages from the subfolder to the new domain while preserving page ranks and backlinks?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davidifaso
I wish they did, but GSC doesn't offer a solution to migration content from subfolder to a new domain. 😢 Help a fellow Mozer. Thanks for giving a hand.0 -
Getting SEO Juice back after Redirect
Hi, On my website, many product pages were redirected over time to its product category, due to the product being unavailable. I understand with a 301 redirect, the final URL would have lost about 15% of the link juice. However - if after some time (e.g. 2 months, or 1 year) I remove the redirection - is the original page going to have any SEO juice, or did it already lose all of it? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading10 -
Can you redirect specific sub domain URLs?
ello! We host our PDFs, Images, CSS all in a sub domain. For the question, let's call this sub.cyto.com. I've noticed a particular PDF doing really well, infact it has gathered valuable external links from high authoritative sites. To top it off, it gets good visits. I've been going back and forth with our developers to move this PDF to a subfolder structure.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs
For example: www.cyto.com/document/xxxx.pdf In my perspective, if I move this and set up a permanent redirect, then all the external links the PDF gathered, link juice and future visits will be attributed to the main website. Since the PDF is existing in the subdomain, I can't even track direct visits nor get the link juice. It appears in top position of Google as well. My developer says it is better to keep images, pdf, css in the subdomain. I see his point and an idea I have is to: convert the pdf to a webpage. Set up a 301 redirect from the existing subdomain to this webpage Upload the pdf with a new name and link to it from the webpage, so users can download if they choose to. This should give me the existing rank juice. However, my question is whether you can set up a 301 redirect for just a single subdomain URL to a folder structure URL? sub.cyto.com/xxx.pdf to www.cyto.com/document/xxxx.pdf?0 -
Do links to PDF's on my site pass "link juice"?
Hi, I have recently started a project on one of my sites, working with a branch of the U.S. government, where I will be hosting and publishing some of their PDF documents for free for people to use. The great SEO side of this is that they link to my site. The thing is, they are linking directly to the PDF files themselves, not the page with the link to the PDF files. So my question is, does that give me any SEO benefit? While the PDF is hosted on my site, there are no links in it that would allow a spider to start from the PDF and crawl the rest of my site. So do I get any benefit from these great links? If not, does anybody have any suggestions on how I could get credit for them. Keep in mind that editing the PDF's are not allowed by the government. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft0 -
Is it safe to 301 redirect old domain to new domain after a manual unnatural links penalty?
I have recently taken on a client that has been manually penalised for spammy link building by two previous SEOs. Having just read this excellent discussion, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience I am weighing up the odds of whether it's better to cut losses and recommend moving domains. I had thought under these circumstances it was important not to 301 the old domain to the new domain but the author (Lewis Sellers) comments on 3/4/13 that he is aware of forwards having been implemented without transferring the penalty to the new domain. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience#jtc216689 Is it safe to 301? What's the latest thinking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ewan.Kennedy0 -
Infinite Redirect Loop without trailing slash, please help
I've been searching for an answer all day, I can't seem to figure this out. When I Fetch my blog as Google(http://www.mysite.com/blog) WITHOUT a trailing slash at the end, I get this error: The page seems to redirect to itself. This may result in an infinite redirect loop **HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently** When I Fetch my blog as Google WITH the trailing slash at the end(http://www.mysite.com/blog/), it is fine without errors. When I pull it up in a browser comes up fine both with and without the trailing slash. My .htaccess file in the root directory contains this: RewriteEngine On
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | debc
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.htm\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.htm$ http://www.mysite.com/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [R=301,L] My .htaccess file in the blog directory contains this: BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^./index.php/. [NC]
RewriteRule ^index.php/(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/blog/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress Do I have something incorrectly coded in these .htaccess files that could be causing this? Or is there something else I should look at? Thank you for any help!!0 -
Buying an existing domain with higher ranks for redirecting
I've recently came across one of my competitors who's looking to sell their domain. Now they currently rank higher than my primary site for a few keywords we are targeting. Would it be wise to buy the domain and do a name server change over to my primary domain? Would it even help boost ranks for the keywords they rank higher for? Or will the link juice be minimal? Any thoughts would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | upick-1623910