301 Redirect domain with penalty
-
Wondering if I could get a few views on this please...
I have added an affiliate store to a domain I own, however I forgot to noindex the product pages which were duplicate content of the merchants. Despite a good deal of backlink building the site will not do much in the engines at all, doesn't even come up on the first few pages for it's own name!
This suggests to me that I have a duplicate content penalty. Try as I may I cannot get it removed so am thinking of cloning the domain to a new domain, however, I do not want to lose the links I collected so I am planning on 301ing them.
While I will not get all the link power moved over, I should at least get credit for some of them which will kick start the new domain.
Can anyone forsee any potential issues with doing this? Is there a danger of 301ing a site with a penalty that the penalty would be carried over? I know there is no penalty on the links, no WMT warnings etc, it is the content causing the issue.
Thanks,
Carl
-
It sounds like you are mostly concerned about the Panda algorithm. A site with lots of duplicate content and nothing else of value other than the duplicate content could definitely be affected by Panda. While it is true that redirecting a Penguin hit site to another will pass on the algorithmic issues to the new site, redirecting a Panda hit site really should not. With that being said, it doesn't make sense to do a redirect. If the issue was that you had page after page of non-original content then noindexing that content should do the trick. The next time Google refreshes Panda (which is usually monthly) then you should be in the good books as far as Panda is concerned. Putting the same content on a new domain, and noindexing the duplication wouldn't really work any better IMO.
However, you have to have good, useful content there in order to rank. If all you've got is affiliate content that adds no unique value, then you're in trouble.
There are things other than Panda that can affect rankings though too. You may want to look at your analytics data and sort it by Google organic traffic to see if you can pinpoint the day of your decline. Then, compare that to known Panda/Penguin dates.
As mentioned by others, if you have been building links then you should look at the Penguin algorithm as well.
-
As Michael said, a 301 will carry the penalty to the new domain, if it didn't everyone would do it without actually fixing the issues.
Instead, take another approach, try to fix the issue. If it is an algorithmic penalty, once you fix everything you think could be causing the "penalty" (as you are not 100% sure), noindex the entire store or the pages using a meta tag or the robots.txt.
Are those pages within the same subdomain? domain.com/penalized-pages or is it a subdomain? penalized-pages.domain.com
-
Are you sure that it's a duplicate content issue? There's some useful insight here:
If you've been "link building" are you sure that it isn't a Penguin issue.
Alternatively, if the content is duplicate is may not be a penalty as such, might just be the case that Google is not indexing/returning the pages as it does not see any value to them?
Seen plenty of websites hit by Penguin (algorithm) with no warning or notice in WMT (manual ?).
Would agree with Michael that a 301 will almost certainly carry forward any penalty/bad reputation issues.
Chris.
-
Michael. thanks for the reply.
I'm 99% sure it is a duplicate content penalty. A couple of years back, through an old company, I used to run affiliate review sites which would get lots of datafeeds and build auto stores from them. These were very profitable until google clamped down on dup content, after that the sites wouldn't rank for anything.
The current site seems to be along the same lines, all seems ok for the links but it seems to have a minus x place penalty on it. I have no indexed all the affiliate pages on the new site (an oversight when making it) so, in time, I would expect the penalty to be removed, however cannot be sure if this will be weeks, months or never
-
If you 301 a toxic domain then the toxicity will pass on to the new domain.
The first thing to do is determine if there is an algorithmic penalty applied to the domain, which could relate to either content or the link profile.
-
Oops not sure how I ended up with a pound sign in the title
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
-
301 Domain Redirect And Old Domain to a New one including pages
Hi, I need to 301 an old domain to a new one (new website) I need to 301 the domain to a new page not the new domain direct for example www.olddomain.co.uk to www.newdomain.co.uk/pagenew Then I need to also 301 all the other pages on the old domain to the new one for example... www.oldmain.co.uk/oldpage to www.newdomain.co.uk/newpage Issue is I can do one or the other not both, I can get the other pages to redirect but then the main domain wont redirect to the correct new page. Or I can get the old domain to redirect but not the internal pages. Thanks
Technical SEO | | David-Sharpe0 -
Redirect 301 issue. I changed my domain name and Google is killing me.
Hello SEO community: I have this problem, and I don't know exactly what to do. I recently changed my domain from uclasificados.net to uclasificados.com uclasificados.net was a free classified ads for USA in spanish, and was my most affortable site, so I wanted to convert it to .com because I thought it could get more popular with the .com domain. uclasificados.com was before a free classified ads website for Colombia, but was not very popular and had poor traffic so I moved the Colombian content to uclasificados.co. Since I changed my domain from uclasificados.net to uclasificados.com I have lost a lot of ranking, and l my traffic every day is getting lower. I have already checked the 301 redirections and they are working correctly, but even thought I keep getting less traffic and less money. I have also checked with moz tools both sites link juice, and it says that uclasificados.net have better reputation. So I was wondering if I change it back and redirect uclasificados.com to uclasificados.net but I worrie that if I do that, maybe I can make things worse. What do you recommend me?
Technical SEO | | capmartin850 -
Changing a domain name, pages redirection
when changing a domain name, should we redirect all the pages to their new pages or only the indexed pages? Thanks
Technical SEO | | bigrat950 -
301 Redirect
Hello Moz Community, I have a question regarding 301 redirecting a new domain that contains keywords relevant to my website. However, I do NOT want to change my current domain. My main question is, by just redirecting this new domain to my current website, will those keywords in the new domain help with ranking in anyway? Thanks in advance for any help!
Technical SEO | | WyzeOwl0 -
Importance of 301 Redirects
Hello, I have been brought in at the last minute to consult for an e-commerce client who is about to relaunch their website. The site currently receives 8000 visits a month, 3100 of which are from organic search. They have a few thousand product pages. The web development firm they are using is changing all of the old product page urls and using 'search engine friendly' urls for the new site, which is expected to launch in a few weeks. However, they did not/are not planning on including 301 redirects from the old URLs. Other than simply stating 'this will be bad for your SEO', what would be a correct way of explaining to the client how much of a problem it will be if their new site launches without 301s. For example, is this a big enough issue to delay the launch of the site / get in a contract dispute with the web developer?
Technical SEO | | stageagent0 -
301 Redirect & Linking Root Domain Count
Howdy Mozzers! If I do a 301 redirect from a domain that say has 200 linking root domains, to a fresh domain will the fresh domain now (when updated) have a linking root domain count of 200? Also, is it beneficial or detrimental to do a 301 redirect for an unrelated website i.e. garden hose website, to a children's playgorund equipment website in order to capture the link juice? Best
Technical SEO | | clickfactory0 -
Why is a 301 redirected url still getting indexed?
We recently fixed a redirect issue in a website, and although it appears that the redirection is working fine, the url in question keeps on getting crawled, indexed and cached by google. The redirect was done a month ago, and google shows cached version of it, even for a couple of days ago. Manual checking shows that its being redirected, and also a couple of online tools i checked report a 301 redirect. Do you have any idea why this could be happening? The website I'm talking about is www.hotelmajestic.gr and its being redirected to www.hotel-majestic.gr
Technical SEO | | dim_d0 -
301 Redirect NOT Working as Expected - HELP!
Hi! I just launched our newly coded site and just realized the installed 301 is NOT working. The URL string is the same EXCEPT for the removal of /shop/. Here is the code in .htaccess: ############################################ enable rewrites Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine on #RedirectMatch 301 ^/shop?/$ http://hiphound.com/ RedirectMatch 301 ^/shop?/$ http://hiphound.com ########################################### When I go to Google and click on an old link I get a 404. No bueno!! Here is an example: http://hiphound.com/shop/rubit-dog-tag-clip I thought (and was told) that the installed 301 would send this page to: http://hiphound.com/rubit-dog-tag-clip It's not. Please HELP!! 🙂 What am I doing wrong??? Lynn
Technical SEO | | hiphound0