Using DNS & 301 redirects to gain control over a rogue site
-
I'd appreciate peoples' views on the following please.
We have been approached by a client whose website does not rank # 1 for their own distinctive brand name due to this position being taken by a site they had developed for them by an affiliate some years back. The affiliate's site is clearly seen by Google as the definitive site for the brand - being older, having more links & in both Yahoo & DMOZ.
The relationship has soured with the affiliate & the client wants to take control of the affiliate site & have it 301 redirect to the 'real' brand site. The affiliate won't cooperate (funny that). However whilst the client doesn't have control over the affiliate's website, they do own the domain.
Given this, it seems that an option is to temporarily create a 1 page website on another server, change the affiliate website domain DNS settings to point to this, & in turn have that 301 re-direct to the client's website.
This is a bit of a round about approach, but necessary because the affiliate won't directly 301 the site they control - despite the client owning it. (As I say the relationship has soured).
If you think there's a better alternative approach to this problem (aside from litigation), I'd appreciate hearing it please.
Thanks.
-
Hi Ryan
Thanks for those useful comments & alternative ideas. I think we'll stick with the original idea & use the 301 approach rather than remove the listing if possible so the link juice can be directed to the client site.
Cheers
-
If you own the domain and the brand name trademark, you have many options.
As you suggested, you can take control over the domain, point it to a server you have control over and 301 it to your site. You don't actually have to put up a web page at all. Just add a redirect from the "old" domain to the new one.
You can also cancel the affiliation. The affiliate should be dependent upon getting his product from your client. Without the product there isn't a business.
You can contact Google and inform them there is a trademark dispute. Upon validating the product is your trademark, they can remove the listing.
Another option would be to take control over the domain, point it to a web server you control, then claim the domain in Google Webmaster Tools by uploading a file to your web server. Then you can point the domain back to the affiliate's website. In Google WMT, you can submit a request to remove the listing(s). The idea behind this method is it offers the least confrontational approach. Your issue is the listing, and this process would remove it.
I am not an attorney and the above information is being shared strictly as actions you could take to achieve the result you requested. Your client should speak with an attorney before taking any action as there may be legal consequences.
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 URL dynamic structure issue for new global site where I will redirect multiple well-working sites.
Dear all, We are working on a new platform called [https://www.piktalent.com](link url), were basically we aim to redirect many smaller sites we have with quite a lot of SEO traffic related to internships. Our previous sites are some like www.spain-internship.com, www.europe-internship.com and other similars we have (around 9). Our idea is to smoothly redirect a bit by a bit many of the sites to this new platform which is a custom made site in python and node, much more scalable and willing to develop app, etc etc etc...to become a bigger platform. For the new site, we decided to create 3 areas for the main content: piktalent.com/opportunities (all the vacancies) , piktalent.com/internships and piktalent.com/jobs so we can categorize the different types of pages and things we have and under opportunities we have all the vacancies. The problem comes with the site when we generate the diferent static landings and dynamic searches. We have static landing pages generated like www.piktalent.com/internships/madrid but dynamically it also generates www.piktalent.com/opportunities?search=madrid. Also, most of the searches will generate that type of urls, not following the structure of Domain name / type of vacancy/ city / name of the vacancy following the dynamic search structure. I have been thinking 2 potential solutions for this, either applying canonicals, or adding the suffix in webmasters as non index.... but... What do you think is the right approach for this? I am worried about potential duplicate content and conflicts between static content dynamic one. My CTO insists that the dynamic has to be like that but.... I am not 100% sure. Someone can provide input on this? Is there a way to block the dynamic urls generated? Someone with a similar experience? Regards,
Technical SEO | | Jose_jimenez0 -
Need Advice on Categorizing Posts, Using Topics, Site Navigation & Structure
Hey there, My site had terrible categorization. I did a redesign, and essentially decided to start over using Topics instead of categories - which appear as my site's main navigation. Now I need to assign a Topic to all my posts. Is it safe to assign posts to multiple parent Topics from an SEO point of view? I want to do it since it would be helpful for users to find them in multiple locations some of the time, but I certainly don't want any SEO issues. Also, should I de-categorize all of my posts since I'm assigning them to my new hierarchical taxonomy - Topics? This is very important to finalize. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Mike
Technical SEO | | naturalsociety0 -
Google not using redirect
We have a GEO-IP redirect in place for our domain, so that users are pointed to the subfolder relevant for their region, e.g: Visit example.com from the UK and you will be redirected to example.com/uk This works fine when you manually type the domain into your browser, however if you search for the site and come to example.com, you end up at example.com I didn't think this was too much of an issue but our subfolders /uk and /au are not getting ranked at all in Google, even for branded keywords. I'm wondering if the fact that Google isn't picking up the redirect means that the pages aren't being indexed properly? Conversely our US region (example.com/us) is being ranked well. Has anyone encountered a similar issue?
Technical SEO | | ahyde0 -
Redirects in site map
I have a site with the ace/sef ( creates friendly URLS) in a large data base site. It creates a site map dynamically. Yet I realize one issue which I am trying to think through. I recently changed my urls to include an ID number example: homepage/houses/1134-big-blue-house The prior url was: homepage/houses/big-blue-house the original url above redirects to the new one with the ID like I want. However the site map has both URLS in it which go to same page I am not sure but it seems rather stupid to have the new URL and OLD redirected URL in the site map. Yet beside stupid I am wondering if this is duplicate content and will cause a penalty from the google bot. What is your opinion ?
Technical SEO | | aimiyo0 -
Identifying a 301-redirect problem?
I was looking at the Search Engine Optimization reports for one of my clients in Google Analytics, and I saw that their two biggest landing pages are www.website.com and http://website.com. Does this mean that Google is serving both the 'www' and 'non-www' versions of the website, and thus harming the website's overall ranking? Thanks for any input!
Technical SEO | | williammarlow0 -
Can You 301 Unwanted Links to Another Site?
I am trying to clean up my link profile, and have noticed that a I have a lot of crappy inbound links linking to some of my old pages. And those old pages have since been 301'ed to current pages. My question is, is it worth trying to 301 those old pages, and thus those crappy links, to another website? Would this do anything to clean up my link profile?
Technical SEO | | red6marketing0 -
301 Redirect with an Exact Domain name Match
My Client had a site that ranked for a pretty competitive two word phrase, but for a variety of reasons had to transfer the site to a different domain name (with none of the previous keywords). We've 301'd everything just fine to the new site, but our traffic for that two word phrase, as well as related long tail traffic, is beginning to drop. Could the drop be related to something that we didn't do well in the transfer? Or is it due to the new domain name now not being an exact match? Sitenote question: Our Google Analytics is still set up for the former domain name and shows data just fine. Is there any reason to switch GA to the new domain? What are the pros/cons? Much thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | TrevorMcKendrick0 -
Worth Changing Redirect From 302 to 301?
Hi, I'm doing an audit on a site that had a redesign in Dec 2009. For some reason I looked to see what kind of redirects were used from the old pages to the current ones, and it looks like they used 302s, which obviously isn't ideal. Given that it's been so long and those pages have looong since been de-indexed, is it worth me suggesting that they change those old redirects to 301s? My thinking is that if those old pages were linked to externally then I should recommend it, but I can't find any link info on Linkscape/OSE, Majestic SEO or YSE. Any comments appreciated.
Technical SEO | | The_Heavies0