302 redirects - redirecting numerous domains into main primary domain
-
302 Redirects - We are a digital agency carrying out some SEO analysis for a potential client. The client has bought over 150 different domains and redirected (302) them into his main domain. The domains were bought up based on relevant industry keywords and protection.
On first instance this seems like a Black hat technique that Google would most definitely punish - buying up domains and redirecting them to main website.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Thanks...
-
Hi Sean,
If these are just domains they bought that never had any content, there's nothing to worry about here. Lots of brands buy their .net/.co/.etc versions, spelling variations, and any branded/product terms to prevent squatters from moving in. Redirects of any sort are fine in this case.
If they're buying companies along with their domains, also don't worry about it. In fact, I'd say use a 301 redirect in those cases. Google does a decent job of understanding formal purchases and looking for official proof, and they're not going to penalize someone who redirects the site of a company they've purchased to their own.
Finally, if they're buying domains based on the link profile, i/.e. just for the sake of links, then you need to start worrying. It's less problematic with 302 redirects, but I would recommend against this type of domain buying altogether. Some people use expired domains as a method of indirect link buying.
Here's a still-relevant piece from Danny:
http://searchengineland.com/do-links-from-expired-domains-count-with-google-17811
-
Thanks for for your feedback guys! It's greatly appreciated
As I mentioned on first instance this strategy screamed Black Hat at us. We decided to carry out some research in to 302 redirects to see if anything cropped up. The general consensus was that 302 redirects were not harmful for SEO and did not pass any link juice. So this planted a tiny seed of doubt in our minds to completely categorizing this as black hat. So I came to the SEOmoz community to get some concrete answers and you guys confirmed our initial thoughts.
At the moment based on your feedback I think we wil recommend culling the irrelevant domains and redirecting a couple of the relevant domains to an affiliate site and then redirecting that site to the main site (just like you suggested Shledon). I completely agree with you when you say relevancy is key.
Any more thoughts on the issue are more than welcome..
Thanks again
-
I'd say you covered all the bases, Brad. I don't know what you could have done to protect yourself any more. Sean, I think your client is playing a dangerous game. My advice would be to first cull any of those additional sites that aren't highly relevant to their own. Write them off as a bad investment. One thought that occurs to me is that rather than setting a 302 from all the remaining sites to the client's site, maybe you could redirect them to a selected site from their recent acquisitions. Then redirect THAT site to the client's site. Using 302s is still safer, IMO, while you go through the process of requesting changes on link destinations. Relevance is obviously the key... stretching that is treading on thin ice. My approach to that is, if it needs any statement of justification.... it's not justifiable.
-
This is pretty dangerous business. Not sure what they spent on all those domains but I could quickly see Google stripping out all the value if this isn't handled properly.
I recently acquired a small competitor. There were good business reasons for the acquisition but we still wanted to tread carefully with the new domain. Here is what we are doing.
The domain was actually a website that we did not want to maintain so we 301 redirected all the urls up to the homepage and then placed an announcement on that page of our acquisition. The announcement is an image that clicks through to our website. We intentionally did not include any anchor text. Next we issued a press release of the acquisition. The press release is a good line in the stand in case Google did anything crazy to us. We would be able to point back to the date and let them know this was a business move. Next we started reaching out to all the backlinks and making a friendly request to move their links from the previous name to ours. In our eyes any site that moves it to us is a long term win because the risk of the value being stripped out goes way down. Next we sent an email to the customer base informing them of the acquisition and a discount code for trying out our services. Finally, once the outreach to change links is done and the smoke clears (3,6, 12 months down the road) we will place the 301 redirect on the domain to our site.
This is the only way I would suggest buying domains and redirecting. Buying domains for search purposes is blackhat, period. Buying competitors or other sites that help your business but also could help you in search is not. We have decided to take a safer approach to maximize value and mitigate risk.
-
I'd agree that it's a bad idea, particularly at that scale. If relevance of the redirected domains is high, and it's just a couple of domains, I imagine it wouldn't be a problem. The fact that they're using a 302 will afford them some protection, but how long are they planning to leave that "temporary" redirect in place?
-
Im in favor of buying domains that are close to your brand and redirecting, but buying over 100+ domains to redirect isn't smart. Unless they have a strategy built around populating unique content around them - its not a good move.
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 Redirect Backlinks from Forbes,CNN.
Hello, I have seen on many places people are selling 301 Redirect Links Via Top Authority websites Like Forbes,CNN etc . How do they do it? and is it safe to have such links? I have researched a lot but not found any useful information to implement it. Any Idea how to do it? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ademirates0 -
Should I disavow links to a dead sub domain?
I'm analyzing a client's website today and I found that they have over 300 spammy sites linking to a subdomain of their main site. So for example, say their site is clientsite.com, well they have hundreds of links pointing to deadsite.clientsite.com. That subdomain was used at one time as a staging site, and is no longer active. Are those hundreds of spammy sites hurting or potentially hurting my client's SEO? Or is it a non-issue because the links point to a dead subdomain? We believe that that staging sub domain site was hacked at one time, and thats where all those spammy links came from. Should I disavow them?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | rubennunez0 -
Redirecting from https to http - will pass whole link juice to new http website pages?
Hi making permanent 301 redirection from https to http - will pass whole link juice to new http website pages?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Aman_1230 -
Pages linked with Spam been 301 redirected to 404\. Is it ok
Pl suggest, some pages having some spam links pointed to those pages are been redirected to 404 error page (through 301 redirect) - as removing them manually was not possible due to part of core component of cms and many other coding issue, the only way as advised by developer was making 301 redirect to 404 page. Does by redirecting these pages to 404 page using 301 redirect, will nullify all negative or spam links pointing to them and eventually will remove the resulting spam impact on the site too. Many Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Modi0 -
Cross-Site Links with different Country Code Domains
I have a question with the penguin update. I know they are really cracking down on "spam" links. I know that they are wanting you to shift from linking keywords to the brand name, unless it makes sense in a sentence. We have five sites for one company in the header they have little flag images, that link to different country domains. These domains all have relatively the same domain name besides the country code. My question is, linking these sites back and fourth to each other in this way, does it hurt you in penguin? I know they are wanting you to push your identity but does this cross-site scheme hurt you? In the header of these sites we have something like this. I am assuming the best strategy would probably be to treat them like separate entities. Or, just focus on one domain. They also have some sites that have links in the footer but they are set up like:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AlliedComputer
For product visit Domain.com Should nofollows be added on these footer links as well? I am not sure if penguin finds them spammy too.0 -
Domain Structure For A Network of Websites
To achieve this we need to set up a new architecture of domains and sub-websites to effectively build this network. We want to make sure we follow the right protocols for setting up the domain structures to achieve good SEO for the primary domain and local websites. Today we have our core website at www.doctorsvisioncenter.com which will ultimately will become dvceyecarenetwork.com. That website will serve as the core web presence that can be custom branded for hundreds. For example, today you can go to www.doctorsvisioncenter.com/pinehurst. Note when you start there, you can click around and it is still branded for Pinehurst or spectrum eye care. So the burning question(s). - if I am an independent doc at www.newyorkeye.com, I could do domain forwarding but Google does not index forwarded domains so that is out. I could do a 301 permanent redirect to my page www.doctorsvisioncenter.com/newyorkeye. I could then put a rule in the HT Access file that says if newyorkeye.com redirect to www.doctorsvisioncenter/newyorkeye and then have the domain show up as www.newyorkeye.com. Another way to do that is we point the newyorkeye DNS to doctorsvisioncenter.com rather than a 301 redirect with the same basic rule in the HT Access file. That means that, theoretically, every sub page would show up, for example, as www.newyorkeye.com/contact-lens-center which is actually www.doctorsvisioncenter.com/contact-lens-center. It also means, theoretically, that it will be seen as an individual domain but pointing to all the same content under that individual domain just like potentially hundreds of others. The goal is we build once, manage once and benefit many. If we do something like the above which will mean that each domain will essentially be a separate domain, but, will google see it that way or as duplicative content? While it is easy to answer "yes" it would be duplicative, it is not necessarily the case if the content is on separate domains. Is this a good way to proceed, or does anyone have another recommendation for us?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JessTopps0 -
Multiple domains pointed at one site
I know things are changing and the things Google thinks are cheating searchers from finding what they are really looking for are changing too. So, I have multiple domain names that are related to my site, but not the actual site name. For instance, I have a certification program called Certified NetAnalyst that has a few domains for it... .com, .org and other derivatives like NetAnalyst. I would like to point the domains to my main company web site and not create a site just for the certification. Does Google think it is cheating to point domain names with my company branding names to my main web site? What about domain name forwarding to a specific URL, like taking the certification name domains and pointing them to the certification page instead of the main site? Wondering if one could no follow (don't know how to do that) the domain forwarding links so it is not duplicate content? Is that possible in some way? Could you put another robots.txt file with excludes in the domain forwarding url landing page so it would not be duplicate content? For the future I want all SEO "juice" to go to the main domain, but the keyword value of the domain names is valuable. I sure would be grateful if someone that has a good understanding and specific recent experience with Google policy and enforcement could offer some sage and practical advice and perhaps a case study example where Google "likes it" or on the other hand a good explanation of why I may not wish to do this! Thank You! Bill Alderson www.apalytics.com
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Packetman0071 -
Geotargeting a new domain without impacting traffic to existing domain
I had previously asked this as a 'private question' and couldn't make it a 'public question' automatically-- hence reposting it as a new question: We have an existing site, let's say www.xyz.com --- which attracts traffic from all over the world (including the US), though it's primary audience is the UK/ Europe. Most of this traffic is via organic search results on Google. Now, there is a business case to launch a US-centric website -- www.xyz.us, which will have most of its content from the original site (probably with some localization). Our goal is that on day 1 when the new site xyz.us is launched, we want all traffic originating from the US (and may be some other North American countries) to be directed to the .us domain instead of the .com domain. We don't want to lose any search engine traffic; equally importantly, we want this to be done in a manner that is seen by the search engines as a legitimate technique. What are the best options to do this such that the new .US site automatically inherits all of the traffic from the .com site on day 1, without either of these sites getting penalized in any form. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ontarget-media0