Using copy from a current site on a new one
-
I have a client who is closing down his local business because he'smoving to another state. When he gets there he will launch a new website.On his current website, he put in a lot of work and has a ton of good copy, including blog posts that have helped gain him excellent rankings.He's asking me if he can use that copy on his new site and get original author credit for that, like he did on his current site.Can he use the same copy from his current website on his new websitewithout any problems — and get original author credit for it?Would it be best to shut down the old site or to 301 all of the pages beingmoved to the new corresponding pages?If 301's are the way to go, how long should he leave those in place?Thanks!Kirk
-
Thanks!
-
Hello Kirk,
As long as you point the root domain, all should be well. I went through the process a few months ago with a clients websites; no problems were encountered.
I've collated the articles I found useful prior to the process I went through.
-
Ta, with the old site going down, Joe's and Egol's advice is spot on. All straight forward.
Hope that helps.
-
Hi Joe, I apologize for the slow delay. I did not get any notifications of replies to my question.
Does your suggestion apply even if the old website will be taken down? (Which is the case)
thank you, Kirk
-
Thank you for this info!
-
Hi Don, The old site will be taken down. (I apologize for the slow delay. I did not get any notifications of replies to my question.)
-
If a thorough job of using 301s to redirect the site is done, as Joe Viveiros suggested, and those 301s remain in place forever, then all content can be safely moved and all link equity should follow. It will take a while for Google to figure this out, and possibly a lot longer for Google to appreciate the original author credit, but everything should be fine in a few to several months.
-
Hi
What is not clear is - is what is happening to the original site. Is the original site staying up? If so it is different advice as to a new site and simply transferring content.
Can you clarify?
-
By all means, use the copy especially if you're ranking well for it. I'd recommend:
- Creating 301s
- Updating the robots.txt file, after Go Live with the Disallow / command
- If you have access to the old version of GSC then you can repoint the whole domain over - old to new URL
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
-
301ing one site's links to another
Hi, I have one site with a well-established link profile, but no actual reason to exist (site A). I have another site that could use a better link profile (site B). In your experience, would 301 forwarding all of site A's pages to site B do anything positive for the link profile/organic search of the site B? Site A is about boating at a specific lake. Site B is about travel destinations across the U.S. Thanks! Best... Michael
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
New pages not ranking
I published some new landing pages about a month a go which are much better quality than previous pages and on an optimised URL. The old pages never ranked and the new pages aren't ranking either although they are much better. The old pages 301 redirect to the new pages. Any quick ways I can at least get them ranking? Not expecting Page 1 overnight but to at least see the new pages on Page 5 would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
Question about using abbreviation
Hello, I have this abbreviation inside my domain name, ok? now for a page URL name, do you recommend me to use the actual word (which shortened form of it is inside domain name) in a page name? Or when have abbreviation in domain name, then using its actual word in a page name is not good? It's all about how much google recognize abbreviation as the actual word and gives the same value of word to it? do I risk not using the actual word? Hope made myself clear ) thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mdmoz0 -
Duplicating a site on 2 different ccTLDs and using cannonical
Hello, We have a site that sells a certain product on www.example.com. This site contains thousands of pages including a whole section of well written content that we invested a lot of money in making. The site ranks on many KWs both brand and non-brand related. SERPs include the Homepage and many of the articles mentioned. We receive traffic and clients to this site from around the world, BUT our main geo-targeting is UK. Due to lack of resources and some legal needs we now have to create a new site - www.example.co.uk that all UK traffic will be able to purchase the product only from this site and not from the .com site anymore. We have no resources to create new content for the new .co.uk site and that is the reason we want to duplicate the site on both domains and use a canonical tag to point the .co.uk site as the primary site. Does anyone have experience with such activity? will this work across the whole site? We need to have a fast solution here, as we do not have too much time to wait because of the legal issue I mentioned. What is the best solutions you can offer to do this so we do not lose important SERPs. On the one hand since our main market is the UK, we assume the main site to promote will be www.example.co.uk but as said earlier, we still have users from other parts of the world as well. Is there any risk that we are missing here? Thanks James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tit0 -
HTML5 one page website on-site SEO
Hey guys, If for example, I'm faced with a client who has a website similar to: http://www.symphonyonline.co.uk/ How should I proceed with the on-site optimization? Should I create new pages on the website? Should I create a blog for the site to increase my reach? Please give me your tips on how to proceed with this kind of website. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BruLee0 -
Starting Over with a new site - Do's and Don'ts?
After six months, we've decided to start over with a new website. Here's what I'm thinking. Please offer any constructive Do's or Don'ts if you see that I'm about to make a mistake. Our original site,(call it mysite.com ) we have come to the conclusion, is never going to make a come back on Google. It seems to us a better investment to start over, then to to simply keep hoping. Quite honestly, we're freakin' tired of trying to fix this. We don't want to screw with it any more. We are creative people, and would much rather be building a new race car rather than trying to overhaul the engine in the old one. We have the matching .net domain, mysite.net, which has been aged about 6 years with some fairly general content on a single page. There are zero links to mysite.net, and it was really only used by us for FTP traffic -- nothing in the SERPS for mysite.net. Mysite.NET will be a complete redesign. All content and images will be totally redone. Content will be new, excellent writing, unique, and targeted. Although the subject matter will be similar to mysite.COM, the content, descriptions, keywords, images -- all will be brand spankin' new. We will have a clean slate to begin the long painful link building process.We will put in the time, and bite the bullet until mysite.NET rules Google once again. We'll change the URL in all of our Adwords campaigns mysite.net. My questions are: 1. Mysite.com still gets some ok traffic from Bing. Can I leave mysite.com substantially intact, or does it need to go? 2. If I have "bad links" pointing to mysite.com/123.html what would happen if I 301 that page to mysite.NET/abc.html ? Does the "bad link juice" get passed on to the clean site? It would be a better experience for users who know our URL if they could be redirected to the new site. 3. Should we put Mysite.net on a different server in a different clean IP block? Or doesn't matter? We're willing to spend for the new server if it would help 4. What have I forgotten? Cheers, all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DarrenX0 -
Question about copying content
Hi there, I have had a question from a retailer asking if they can take all our content i.e. blog articles, product pages etc, what is best practice here in getting SEO value out of this? Here a few ideas I was thinking of: I was thinking they put canonical tags on all pages where they have copied our content? They copy the content but leave all anchor text in place? Please let me know your thoughts. Kind Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Two Brands One Site (Duplicate Content Issues)
Say your client has a national product, that's known by different brand names in different parts of the country. Unilever owns a mayonnaise sold East of the Rockies as "Hellmanns" and West of the Rockies as "Best Foods". It's marketed the same way, same slogan, graphics, etc... only the logo/brand is different. The websites are near identical with different logos, especially the interior pages. The Hellmanns version of the site has earned slightly more domain authority. Here is an example recipe page for some "WALDORF SALAD WRAPS by Bobby Flay Recipe" http://www.bestfoods.com/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1 http://www.hellmanns.us/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1 Both recipie pages are identical except for one logo. Neither pages ranks very well, neither has earned any backlinks, etc... Oddly the bestfood version does rank better (even though everything is the same, same backlinks, and hellmanns.us having more authority). If you were advising the client, what would you do. You would ideally like the Hellmann version to rank well for East Coast searches, and the Best Foods version for West Coast searches. So do you: Keep both versions with duplicate content, and focus on earning location relevant links. I.E. Earn Yelp reviews from east coast users for Hellmanns and West Coast users for Best foods? Cross Domain Canonical to give more of the link juice to only one brand so that only one of the pages ranks well for non-branded keywords? (but both sites would still rank for their branded keyworkds). No Index one of the brands so that only one version gets in the index and ranks at all. The other brand wouldn't even rank for it's branded keywords. Assume it's not practical to create unique content for each brand (the obvious answer). Note: I don't work for Unilver, but I have a client in a similar position. I lean towards #2, but the social media firm on the account wants to do #1. (obviously some functionally based bias in both our opinions, but we both just want to do what will work best for client). Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | crvw0