To link or redirect? That is the question.
-
I have a site that I don't really use any longer but still has some okay rankings.
I'd like to take advantage of the links point to that site. Is it better to redirect that site to my new one or to just place a link on the homepage pointing to my new site?
-
You should redirect by mapping the pages appropriately. The old sites seems like you are kind of abandoning it, so whatever rankings it currently has, will likely drop over time and the links will lose value. As long as you are staying active with the new site, everyone wins - visitors get to an active site that is being updated, instead of an abandoned one. You win because you are not going to have to worry about the old site or losing that traffic or losing link juice. The search engines win because when they send traffic to the old URLs, the visitor ends up on a better site with fresh content.
-
Try as best you can to do a 301 redirect page for page i.e. map out the structure and relevant page and then redirect it to the relevant page on your new site. That way you have the best chance of passing on the relevant juice and hopefully rankings for each page.
Just a link on the homepage will give you a far less juice through and little of the backlinking power to the old site that you are trying to harness for the new sites' rankings.
Hope this helps!
-
I have the same question that you. Good question, hope to see the answer of the most knowllege persons.
From my point of view the sites that are ranking well could pass good page rank and compete on google first page and give traffic to your brand.
On other hand if we redirect, the redirected site will lose rankings and will not get authority with time. Maybe i would prefer to place it on a domain parking instead of redirect
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
-
What is the feeliing of "Here's where our site can help" text links used for conversions?
If you have an ecommerce site that is using editorial content on topics related to the site's business model to build organic traffic and draw visitors who might be interested in using the site's services eventually, what is the SEO (page ranking) impact -- as well as the impact on the visitors' perceptions about the reliability of the information on the site -- of using phrases like "Here is where [our site] can help you." in nearly every article. Note: the "our site" text would be linked in each case as a conversion point to one of the site's services pages to get visitors to move from content pages on a site to the sales pages on the site. Will this have an impact on page rankings? Does it dilute the page's relevance to search engines? Will the content look less authoritative because of the prevalence of these types of links? What about the same conversion links without the "we can help" text - i.e., more natural-sounding links that stem from the flow of the article but can lead interested visitors deeper into the ecommerce section of the site?
Algorithm Updates | | Will-McDermott0 -
Google search console: 404 and soft 404 without any back-links. Redirect needed?
Hi Moz community, We can see the 404 and soft 404 errors in Google web masters. Usually these are non-existing pages which are found somewhere on internet by Google. I can see some of these reported URLs don't have any back-links (checked on ahrefs tool). Do we need to redirect each and every link reported here or ignore or marked to be fixed? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Do the external links at footer menu take away PR or Linkjuice?
Hi all, We have some external links on our footer menu. I'm just trying to figure out whether these take away pagerank. What if they are follow or nofollow? How fair to have DMCA badge with link at footer? Will this hurts? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Relevant Link, but Low DA...good idea?
If a website has a low DA (not because of spam. Just because it's new or because there isn't a ton of content) but it is industry specific/relevant, then is that worth pursuing? I have read how relevancy is supposed to be a major portion determining a link's benefit, but I"m leery about about something with a low DA - like under 15 low. Thanks, Ruben
Algorithm Updates | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Adding the link masking directory to robots.txt?
Hey guys, Just want to know if you have any experience with this. Is it worthwhile blocking search engines from following the link masking directory.. (what i mean by this is the directory that holds the link redirectors to an affiliate site: example:
Algorithm Updates | | irdeto
mydomain.com/go/thislink goes to
amazon.com/affiliatelink I want to know if blocking the 'go' directory from getting crawled in robots.txt is a good idea or a bad idea? I am not using wordpress but rather a custom built php site where i need to manually decide on these things. i want to specifically know if this in any way violates guidelines for google. it doesn't change the custom experience because they know exactly where they will end up if they click on the link. any advice would be much appreciated.0 -
How effective are nofollow links today (2013) ?
Hi, We had a question about the effectiveness of nofollow today. Nofollowing some links on pages was to make sure pagerank flows to content which is most relevant and useful to visitors on the site. Looking at the 2009 article, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-says-yes-you-can-still-sculpt-pagerank-no-you-cant-do-it-with-nofollow, it seems that adding the meta tag nofollow would no longer help us in ensuring this goal. We had a couple of questions: 1. Do you think Google today only passes pagerank to dofollow links
Algorithm Updates | | SEMEnthusiast
2. Are sites today using iframes/javascript to make sure googlebot passes pagerank to only relevant pages
3. Any other best practice you would suggest Thanks0 -
Google +1 link on Domain or Page?
Since its release, I've seen Google +1 being used across an entire domain but only reference the root href in the code snippet. At the same time, you see other sites use +1 more naturally with the button being specific to the page you're on. What's your take on this? To clarfiy, do you add: or .. on each page.
Algorithm Updates | | noeltock0