Minisites - 301 Redirect or Links to Main site
-
Not sure whether this is considered black hat or not but I know it is done and I would like to know which is the most effectrive method.
If you were to acquire multiple sites in the same niche to your main site (either by buying existing sites or perhaps registering expired domains) which already had strong aged backlinks, is it better to either:
a) 301 the new domain to the main site (or a subpage perhaps)
b) create 'minisites' on the new domains (trying to mirror the URL structure of the previous incarnation if possible to scoop up and remaining inbound backlink juice, on seperate IPs to the main site as well) and then place several links to the main site & subpages.
Would the decay of link juice through 301's mean you lose benefit that way or is it the same as a normal link? Would the 301 method mean any IBL's into URL's other than the homepage be lost? The homepage of the minisite will likely have 4 or 5 internal links so will this dilure the effect of the links to the main site?
Thanks in advance!
-
Thank Ryan,
Does that mean registering 100's of expired domains with backlinks and 301-ing them all to the main site would be a viable link building strategy? It shouldn't in theory because the original 'votes' were to the expired site not the new site.
But how would Google algorithmically work this out other than just devaluing heavily a 301 redirect from one domain to another. And if they did that surely the minisiste would be the best option?
Thanks again
David
-
If time isn't a factor, and you're able to create similar content on your own site, you could 301 all the old pages that had existing links into new, applicable pages on your site. This would probably grab you the most link juice in this scenario because you'd be attempting to address the most links and pages as possible.
Creating all those mini-sites wouldn't just be tedious from a time perspective, but also in terms of user experience and brand.
-
Impossible to say. Every site in every market is unique. Every topic within every site is even further unique. That's why the best practice is to go with the known quantity value. One site, laser focused effort all on that one domain.
-
Thanks for the quick reply. Agree with you entirely reagrding time and effort however, just for the sake of the exercise, if we take that out of consideration which do you think would have a greater effect.
Say 2 weeks after doing one or the other, which would have a better impact?
Thanks again
-
The amount of effort required to maintain several mini sites is not, in the long-run, usually worth the effort. Sure, you might get an initial bump in value for those inbound links, however it's nothing like it used to be. And over time, unless you continue to add new content to those sites, and build new unique inbound links to those, their initial value will fall off over time.
Better to try and get that content on the main site, and redirect page-to-page topical relevance with 301 redirects. Much more efficient use of time and energy. That way moving forward, you only need to focus on adding new content to one site, and building new inbound links to that one site. All the inbound links benefit the entire site, not just one mini-site's worth of one-off link value passing.
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 to Choose destination page for a 301 redirect?
I am doing some SEO for a wedding chapel in Vegas. There are some old packages that no longer exist and the bounce rate for the page is high so I am planning to 301 the page. How to best determine the best 301 destination? I have a few options. As an example the page was optimized for garden weddings. The page itself does not place well in the SERPS for garden weddings in Las Vegas, but our outdoor wedding packages in Las Vegas page places in the top 10. So that page is in an option. However, there is a different location that has a garden setting. Is that a better choice? Some content might match better than others, but any page I choose would be relevant content. Thank you so much 🙂
Technical SEO | | leslieevarts0 -
301 Redirect Review Nodes
I have a client who rents out vacation beach rentals. They currently have thousands of homes under management. Each property has its own internal reviewing platform. Reviews are not really intended to be viewed on their own, as in a stand alone page with just the review on it. The problem is that Drupal makes just about every type of node viewable on its own dedicated URL. I was just thinking about taking request to view stand alone reviews and 301’ing them to their respective property page, the context in which they are intended to be viewed. The website has about 2500 review nodes currently crawlable via Drupal that sit on their own URLs. Would there be a material impact to 301 them to their respective property page when any attempt to view them on their own is made to the site?
Technical SEO | | conversionpipeline20 -
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 -
301 redirects
Hi, I am a working on a new web site, and I want to redirect all the urls of another site (on a different host) to this one. According to both hosts it is "impossible" to do this for all urls. I don't believe that to be the case, but how do I do this? And, should both sites be hosted on the same server first?
Technical SEO | | vibelingo0 -
How long should I keep 301 redirects?
I have modified a the URL structure of a whole section of a website and used mod_rewrite 301 redirect to match the new structure. Now that was around 3 months ago and I was wondering how long should I keep this redirect for? As it is a new website I am quite sure that there are no links around with the old URL structure but still I can see the google bot trying from time to time to access the old URL structure. Shouldn't the google bot learn from this 301 redirect and not go anymore for the old URL?
Technical SEO | | socialtowards0 -
Where does Wordpress store the 301 redirects?
Hi, I've just created a campaign for my new wordpress blog and found 11 301 redirects which I was not aware of. It looks like wordpress has created them automatically. Does any one know how wordpress handles this issues or where are they stored so I can delete them? They are of no use for me. 9 of these redirects point to the same url with an added '/' and are in pages 1 is on a post. I've been changing the permalink and some urls several times and maybe one of these times the Wordpress has automatically created the 301 redirect. But why? I do not want to keep the old url. the last redirect is very strange it goes from http://www.mydomain.com/folder to http://www.mydomain.com where folder is the folder where I installed wordpress. But again, I want no one to type the url with the folder name or even know this folder exists. Any comment on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot, David
Technical SEO | | dballari0 -
Way to find how many sites within a given set link to a specific site?
Hi, Does anyone have an idea on how to determine how many sites within a list of 50 sites link to a specific site? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SparkplugDigital0