Merged websites issue
-
Hi
Before my time, company big.com took over company small.com.
They decided to replicate big.com web pages onto small.com - so both websites have identical pages and copy, just different domains.
Within the small.com sitmap.xml they list only big.com urls.
They are also using big.com google analytics tracking code on small.com.
I have no idea what happened to the original content on small.com or if they put 301 redirects on.
I am thinking: do a 301 redirect on small domain to big domain. A) Agree?
Small domain is likely to have valuable historic inbound links which are now going to 404 pages.
After I do the 301 should these then appear in big.com SEOMoz campaign and on big.com webmaster tool for me to fix? B) Views?
Or should I get up webmaster tool on small.com and fix that first? C) Views?
Many thanks in advance guys, sorry its a long statement!
Richard
-
Hi Ben & Robert
Many thanks again.
I have now found at least two more websites the big company has done this on ie ditched the original small company web pages and content for a copy of the Big company web pages content.
In each case the small company sitemap.xml lists the big company pages BUT many of those are wrong URLS.
I think I'll take my time on this....
Cheers
Richard
-
Richard,
Remember, first I said wait.
Look at what Ben says here. He is correct (except on domain 301). You have enough weight that you do want to move it if at all possible. If it is a thousand pages, I would at least pick my strongest and get them 301'd.
Be methodical.
Use the correct urls from small to go to large.
Homepage to homepage will only help with homepage.You cannot do domain to domain, even in .htaccess. Here is a source: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection
You have to direct url to url. If you were simply setting the www. to non, etc. yes that can be done.
Hope it helps you out,
-
I would say that redirecting has value with that amount of domain authority. A redirect would make use of the weight acquired, switching it off would lose all of this completely.
If you are worried about the amount of work involved in matching old to new URL then you always have the option to redirect to homepage. This will still pass on the weight to the site although not as effectively.
How many URLs are we talking about?
Also I'm pretty sure you can do a domain replacement via .htaccess without having to do individual 301's - can someone correct me if this isn't the case?
-
Hi Robert, many thanks for taking the time to write a reply (and to Ben to)
Re your points, I have only just started with BIG company.
Your 'before and after' is how I assume it was. They must have done then change about 7 months ago.
I tired Archive.org but nothing much indexed and has redirects on it. Both websites had a legal notice overlay appear that had to be accepted before seeing the content.
On small.com the sitemap.xml is listing all the big URLs, its using 0.9.
OSE has approx 40 inbound links from sites with 20-30 page authority and 30-40 domain authority.
I will try Xenu link sleuth as you mention (I'll dig out my old Windows PC first!)
I suspect as you mentioned in the caveat, might be better to just turn off small!
Many thanks again
Richard
-
Richard,
One question is how long ago was before your time?????
That will be a factor in all of this. Next, Advice:
Do nothing first. Sit for a moment and develop a Plan. Find out where you are on the map before you take off to another direction. Know the variables.
So that we may understand:
Before you had and you hadSitesmall.com/pg1 SITEBIG.com/pgA
Sitesmall.com/pg2 SITEBIG.com/pgB
Sitesmall.com/pg3 SITEBIG.com/płC up until highly successful BIG bought up and comer small.
Each site had separate sitemap, content, urls, GA tracking code.
Then you had:
Sitesmall.com/pgA SITEBIG.com/pgA
Sitesmall.com/pgB SITEBIG.com/pgB
Sitesmall.com/pgC SITEBIG.com/pgC and this was simply because someone changed all on Sitesmall to look and feel identical to SITEBIG?
I cannot understand how you have a SITEBIG.com sitemap for Sitesmall with BIG urls? Are you simply saying the domain is different but url sub directories are the same on sitemap? Are they following 0.9 from Sitemaps.org? Otherwise I cannot see how this is constructed. (Look at Sitemaps info in GWMT)
As to GA code being the same, have you looked at analytics on both and does it make any sense? Have you looked for occurrence of GA code in other places (head and body, etc.) on both sites?
FIRST THE BIG CAVEAT: you may save yourself a ton of work, trouble, and time... by turning off sitesmall.com and going to work on SITEBIG.com....... get it SEO perfect using all the time this will take.
On the historic, I would go to archive.org and see what is there using wayback machine. Look at what was there - when. So if the old site was six months ago, you at least know where you are reaching to and can look at old urls.
On the, did they 301? I would first for ease of looking put current homepage url in OSE and see if it says anything about redirecting. Then I would run the whole thing through Xenu link sleuth to see what is/ is not there. So Sitesmall.com then SITEBIG.com run both and see what you will see. Lot of answers there. Response codes, etc. I do not think you will find 301's as the way they changed the urls would not seem to make sense for same.
You can look to see if they used 301's in the .htaccess file, but I do not believe you will find them.
Once I knew what I was dealing with only then would I develop a plan.
Assuming SiteSmall had some Auth, PR, links, etc. and some of that still existed, I would begin the redirect plan. In the SEOmoz search bar I would place the query How to use 301 redirect? You will find a wealth of information. There are also numerous sites with code laid out, etc. in a simple search query online.
Note, I would not be using 301 of current to current as that is without value. You have to try and reconstruct old to new. Real Sitesmall.com to SITEBIG.com as it is now. Remember this is not a .com to .com redirect as that does not work. 301's are url to url. You need to know what the url was with the juice and use it.
For GA code, I would definitely change it prior to 301 if you can get it to old that might help.
This is the way to clean up the site duplication, capture a bit of juice, and possibly correct a mistake.
Hopefully, given there are some unanswered questions from what you stated, this is still helpful.
For your A. As per above.
B. Read above
C. Read above
Best
-
Hi Richard,
My thoughts would initially be:
a) yes a 301 redirect is probably the best way to avoid the duplicated pages and pass the weight on
b) if you have 301 redirected them they won't be 404 errors, the weight of the previous URLs will be passed on (although there is a slight decay factor involved with redirects so you won't get 100% of the weight)
c) I can't see how there will be too many errors as long as you 301 small.com to big.com sitewide. If anything big.com should get a boost from any links that the small.com pages had. Also this should help clear up the duplicate content issues.
Hope that helps,
Ben
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
-
Unsolved Backlinks issues.
I am hoping this is the right forum to ask this question. But, I was looking at my backlinks and noticed that I had some go to a page that resembles my site, but had porn words on it. however, it would link to a place on my site. Under more information it has a real link to my site. What is this? I noticed the domain authority was in I believe the 70's; but PA was in 40's. I am new, so can someone explain this. Thank you. example below:
Moz Pro | | Fashion220 -
Why my website internal links on moz is 0?
My Web site: https://www.basictrailers.com.au/ I have been using Moz for almost 3 months, from the start to now, the internal links are always 0. However, if I check the links on my Google Search Console, it is over 1500. So what is the problem? If Moz is trying to make its algorithm similar to Google, why that they even cannot find my internal links. That is ridiculous. 0fhTnQG
Moz Pro | | Lilycharlie2 -
Ive been using moz for just a minute now , i used it to check my website and find quite a number of errors , unfortunately i use a wordpress website and even with the tips , is till dont know how to fix the issues.
ive seen quite a number of errors on my website hipmack.co a wordpress website and i dont know how to begin clearing the index errors or any others for that matter , can you help me please? ghg-1.jpg
Moz Pro | | Dogara0 -
How to utilize Moz during website relaunch?
Hi folks - we're relaunching our website and have been sure to make it SEO optimized -- descriptive copy, new readable URLs, keyword-laden page metadata, and the like. However, I'm new to Moz Pro and unsure how to utilize it during this transition. My questions for those of you -- assuming many -- who have gone through a redesign: **How did you use Moz to track the success of your redesigned website? What do you wish you'd done? ** Any campaigns or resources you can suggest will be helpful, as I am new to the functionality!
Moz Pro | | meghanennes0 -
New Website & DA Score
We are preparing to build a new website for a branch of our company. According to Neil Patel (whom I highly respect) our DA should come in around 30 (categorizing us as a startup, see chart below). So I ask: Why do our current sites DA Score below 30? (20 & 29 respectively) Our sites were redesigned in 2013 and are responsive, pass the Google Mobile Friendly test and I've improved load speed by over 25% by compressing images. I have used Moz as guidance for 10 months on both 7 + yo sites, HP.com is 14 yo, our pages score in the high 90's and I have disavowed bad backlinks for 6 months (now only every other month). I thought we would be in or close to the 50 range by 2017 after a solid year of improvements, but I don't see that happening. Our scores go up a point or two, then back down, we have floundered 2 points either way for 10 months. Most important question: What do I do now to raise our DA? Lastly, my plan is to take all the lessons learned from the past years and apply it to the new site, measure the success and then redesign the other two sites in accordance to the new model. But that may be a year away. KJr www.heritageprinting.com www.heritageprintingcharlotte.com | DA | Rating |
Moz Pro | | KevnJr
| 1-10 | Poor – Your site is young and weak. You have a lot of growing to do. |
| 11-20 | Decent. Your site isn’t stellar, but you’re doing better. It would be good to grow. |
| 21-30 | Fair. Your site shows signs of SEO, but there are many things you can and should do to improve. |
| 31-40 | Competitive. A lot of startups find themselves in this DA range. It’s not bad, and you’re beginning to get close to the sweet spot. |
| 41-50 | Good. Now, you’re getting somewhere. This is a nice place to be, and many good e-commerce sites find themselves squarely in this category. |
| 51-60 | Strong. As you swing out of the lower half of the scale, you’re beginning to get much healthier. This is a good place to be. |
| 61-70 | Excellent. A DA at this level represents a great site with a lot of recognition, a lot of link backs, and a considerable authority in its niche. Many .edus are in this space. |
| 71-80 | Outstanding. You’re dominating in the SERPs and owning your niche. Quick Sprout is a 73. |
| 81-90 | Very outstanding. You’re in the upper echelons of authority. You can consider yourself to have arrived. |
| 91-100 | Rare. These sites are household names — Wikipedia, Facebook, New York Times, etc. Your site will probably never attain this level. Only a miniscule fraction of a percentage of sites on the Internet ever get this high. | https://www.quicksprout.com/2014/04/09/how-to-score-your-websites-seo-in-10-minutes-or-less/0 -
Complex Rankings Issue For A Law Firm Site
Be warned, this is a complex issue that I have and will require someone who has some advanced knowledge about 301s and link penalty’s. I have a law firm client whose site is having some issues. There are some very complex details here so I'm going to articulate them in bullet points in hopes of making the issues easy to understand. So here's my root problem: We have poor organic rankings (4th, 5th, 6th page for most terms) despite Domain Authority of 32 (avg. 1st page competitor is 28) and some very strong white hat link building the last 60 days or so. How's their backlink profile look, you ask? When you look at their backlink profile in OSE, their spam score is a 1/17 (not sure if that's credible in any way). Lot's of links that score 5's on the spam score make up about 10% of their OSE links. Here’s where it gets tricky; those links are not directed the client's New URL, they are links that go to some old URLs the client used to have, for which they had an SEO guy who built all those crappy links. Those URLs with the crappy links (we'll call them The Crappy URLs) were 301'd (can we all agree 301'd is a verb?) to the NEW URL for just a couple of months. Shortly after that, NEW URL dropped almost completely out of Google, so the client turned off the 301s. So despite those 301s being turned off, OSE still shows all the links going to The Crappy URLs but is giving The New URL credit for them. Keep in mind, the 301s were turned off about 6 months ago so it’s a little strange that OSE still shows those 301s. This has led me to the conclusion that the Domain Authority that OSE shows of 32, is not a “real” number since it is seemingly based off links inherited from 301s that no longer exist. So now I’m trying to create an action plan for this client that will hopefully help us start to make some real progress in our rankings. This client does not have the budget to wait another 6 months for some sign of hope so time is of the essence. Here’s my theoretical action plans I’m choosing from and would like the communities input on which, if any, they feel is best (Also, if I’m missing something or you have an idea, I’m all ears): **Potential Action Plans: ** Do nothing, keep building quality links, creating quality content, monitor crawl reports/gwt for issues. That strategy is going to win long term. #1 + Create one page sites on The Crappy URLs, setup GWT for them, submit sitemaps thus forcing Google, OSE and other web crawlers to index them, thus removing any potential residual penalties from the 301s. NOTE: Currently The Crappy URLS are just landing on GoDaddy’s default landing page which is of course not being indexed by Google or OSE. #2 + Disavow all the bad links going to The Crappy URLS. Then once the bad links no longer appear in the OSE profile for each of The Crappy Sites, 301 them again, thus inheriting the good links but not the bad. #1 + 301 the Crappy URLS back to the New URL, while also disavow any links going to The Crappy URLs. The logic here is that if the road back to recovery is going to be a few months away no matter what, when the 301 knocked them back 6 months ago no reputable link building was being done. I am cautiously optimistic the linkbuilding we are doing will eventually off set any penalty’s coming from the 301s. Plus now we’ll know the 32 Domain Authority OSE is giving us is real. This is the one I’m leaning towards quite frankly because I think it will reduce the recovery time and we’ll know somewhat quickly (30-60 days) if it’s actually working. 1-3 could each take 90 days before we know if it’s working. So please, if you have any expertise with any of this, your help or advice would be appreciated. I’d rather not share The New URL for obvious reasons but if you must know, simply message me and as long as you’re legit, I’ll share it with you.
Moz Pro | | BrianJGomez0 -
Does it make sense to have multiple campaigns for one website?
I'm new to SEO and SEOMoz. While setting up my campaigns, I was a bit confused. Do I need to setup separate campaigns for different pages of my site? For example, I run a proofreading service: www.kibin.com I obviously want to track keyword on the main page (like proofreading service), however, I also want to track keywords (like 'essay editing') on www.kibin.com/essay-editing Should these be two separate campaigns or do I just put all the keywords into one campaign for kibin.com? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | Kibin0 -
On the Crawl Diagnostics Summary, its reporting over 100 "Title Missing or Empty" issues, but they all check out fine?
Wondering if there Is a bug with the crawler or known timeout issues? Site speed is fast, but we do run a couple of large cron jobs out of hours, which may be the cause of any timeouts, but shouldn't the crawler report that, rather saying no title tags on 100 pages, when there are? SEOmoz newbie, so still finding my feet 🙂
Moz Pro | | sjr4x40