Buying existing domain: 301 or keep site?
-
I have the opportunity to buy a domain in the same vertical as my own (real estate) which has a decent link profile and good SERPs.
What are the pros and cons of keeping the existing domain and tweaking the content versus 301ing the domain to my existing domain or a page on my domain?
-
interlinking different domains targeting the same keyword universe can get you penalized, so if you're going to play the "more than one horse in the race" game keep them as independent as possible and know what you're doing and understand the risks.
-
Thanks for your thoughts Adam.
1. This other site doesn't have great content. It has a lot of links from pages with decent authority, but it didn't earn these links because of great content.
We are a small shop and creating content is a challenge just for one site. 301ing would certainly be easier.
2. This other domain has a focus on a nearby town that really isn't our area of focus. I think we could get lots of leads by getting this site up and running, but we really don't have the staff to handle this new geographic area.
From a keyword perspective, there is an interesting overlap. The subject domain focuses on Wenatchee Washington. Our site is about Leavenworth Washington, which includes Lake Wenatchee (which is an hour from Wenatchee, but shares the Wenatchee keyword.)
Geordie
-
Keep in mind however that links and rankings can degrade over time. If you aren't building new content on the new domain then the advantage may begin to fade after a while. It can be difficult to develop unique, fresh content for both domains.
It depends on how close your branding of each will be and if it's meant to drive sales leads then you also have to make sure to focus on the user experience for both.
-Jason
-
I'm massively in favour of keeping these domains rather than using a 301 redirect. Although you can gain some short term benefits from the link juice passed on with a 301 redirect, you are much better off in the long term by keeping the domain and creating links to your site from the domain. Here's why:
-
If you 301 redirect the domain, no new content will be created on that domain and in all likelihood, no new links will be created for that domain and you may even lose links. Whereas if you keep the domain, you can continue to build new content that attract more links.
-
If the domain is in the same industry and has good rankings in search engines then why not capitalise on that opportunity? Now you can have two sites that rank well generating more sales/conversions for your single business.
That's my thoughts,
Adam.
-
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
-
How long will old pages stay in Google's cache index. We have a new site that is two months old but we are seeing old pages even though we used 301 redirects.
Two months ago we launched a new website (same domain) and implemented 301 re-directs for all of the pages. Two months later we are still seeing old pages in Google's cache index. So how long should I tell the client this should take for them all to be removed in search?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Liamis0 -
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 | | cuarto7150 -
When moving a site from HTTP to HTTPS, will i lose value from the 301 redirect?
I am looking at moving my site from HTTP to full HTTPS, so i will 301 redirect any HTTP requests to their HTTPS counterpart. All my pages in the Google index are HTTP, so will that 301 redirect reduce the value of the pages? Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOhmygod0 -
New site. How important is traffic for a new site? And what about domain age?
Hi guys. I've been building a new site because i've seen a real SEO opportunity out there. I'm a mixing professional by trade and so I wanted to take advantage of SEO to help gain more work. Here's the site: www.signalchainstudios.co.uk I'm curious about domain age. This site fairly well optimised for my keywords, and my site got pretty good content on it (i think so anyway). But it's no where to be seen on the SERP's (link at all). Is this just a domain age issue? I'd have though it might be in the top 50 because my site's services are not hard to rank for at all! Also what about traffic? Does Google want to see an 'active' site before it considers 'promoting' it up the ranks? Or are back links and good content the main factor in the equation? Thanks in advance. I love this community to bits 🙂 Isaac.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | isaac6631 -
Getting Rid Of Spammy 301 Links From An Old Site
A relatively new site I'm working on has been hit really hard by Panda, due to over optimization of 301 external links which include exact keyword phrases, from an old site. Prior to the Panda update, all of these 301 redirects worked like a charm, but now all of these 301's from the old url are killing the new site, because all the hyper-text links include exact keyword matches. A couple weeks ago, I took the old site completely down, and removed the htaccess file, removing the 301's and in effect breaking all of these bad links. Consequently, if one were to type this old url, you'd be directed to the domain registrar, and not redirected to the new site. My hope is to eliminate most of the bad links, that are mostly on spammy sites, that aren't worth linking to. My thought is these links would eventually disappear from G. My concern is that this might not work, because G won't re-index these links, because once they're indexed by G, they'll be there forever. My fear is causing me to conclude I should hedge my bets, and just disavow these sites using the disavow tool in WMT. IMO, the disavow tool is an action of last resort, because I don't want to call attention to myself, since this site doesn't have a manual penalty inflected on it. Any opinions or advise would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alrockn0 -
Is a 301 to a 301 ok?
I have a site that has a lot of url differences. Due to coding we sometimes have to 301 to a page that is 301'd to another. Is there any danger in doing this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
New Domain name vs Low Ranked Existing Site
I am going to build a new site. I could hang it off an existing site with similar content or buy a new keyword rich domain and start over. The existing site does not have much trust or authority beyond the domain being registered for 5 plus years. I would prefer to start over and build linksfrom scratch but I realize we are starting at the bottom. The keywords we will be competing against are not super competetive so I think we can get ranking within 6 months or so. These post Panda days I am rethinking everything so any input is appreciated. I did a similar niche site a few years ago and found the site ranked well fairly quickly for its little nice. Today though it may be different. I have no experience in buying domains and would have no idea where to start there. New or existing? Thanks for any input.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Reportcard0 -
2 sites or one sites: 2 locations
Hello, I have a dog training client who is offering services in 2 separate locations. We're looking to be first in the non-local search results and also rank well in google places. Would it be better to go for 2 separate sites or one site and try to rank for 2 different locations with one site? There's both local and standard search results when we type in our keywords. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0