Urgent Site Migration Help: 301 redirect from legacy to new if legacy pages are NOT indexed but have links and domain/page authority of 50+?
-
Sorry for the long title, but that's the whole question. Notes:
-
New site is on same domain but URLs will change because URL structure was horrible
-
Old site has awful SEO. Like real bad. Canonical tags point to dev. subdomain (which is still accessible and has robots.txt, so the end result is old site IS NOT INDEXED by Google)
-
Old site has links and domain/page authority north of 50. I suspect some shady links but there have to be good links as well
My guess is that since that are likely incoming links that are legitimate, I should still attempt to use 301s to the versions of the pages on the new site (note: the content on the new site will be different, but in general it'll be about the same thing as the old page, just much improved and more relevant).
So yeah, I guess that's it. Even thought the old site's pages are not indexed, if the new site is set up properly, the 301s won't pass along the 'non-indexed' status, correct?
Thanks in advance for any quick answers!
-
-
That's my thought as well (about link-purchasing/black hat), [insert expletive].
Like I said, horrible situation. I'm waiting on somebody to get me the login details, but even so, I suspect whomever was managing it prior to my team taking over a new site design would have actually deleted any notices to cover their tracks.
Short of a whole new domain, definitely no 301s, correct? It's going to take Herculean convincing to get somebody to approve a different domain, we are supposed to launch in a few days.
-
Well those sites are definitely indicative of link-purchasing and black-hat SEO tactics. Couldn't say for certain but all signs point to yes. Might have a penguin algo penalty going on there.. Depends how many there are/how varied the anchor text is/how unlucky you happen to be.
Can you get to the previous site's Webmaster Tools to check for notices? Honestly if it's a Penguin issue you'd be better off ditching the old domain and starting fresh in this scenario and of course in my opinion.
(I do have some experience dealing with Penguin penalties, for the record..) -
hey no problem and you can always post the domain if you want this awesome community to take a peek and offer their thoughts. might help you discover something you missed.
Could very well be Panda. If it's an algo-panda-penalty that won't carry over once the content is fixed and duplicates gone.
-
Thanks Jesse.
I didn't manage the site (and I'm not actually sure who did manage it, I just know it was managed terribly) but I should be able to get a look at the Webmaster tools. Thanks for the info about the tags, I probably should've realized that.
I just asked around and it sounds like the site was de-indexed just before Christmas 2012. Sounds like Panda (and like I said I suspect a shady link profile, but I'll dig further).
Thanks again.
-
It will only pass the "non-indexed status" if the reason for index removal was due to a penalty. Specifically Penguin. You need to thoroughly go over the backlink profile of the domain and uncover the real reason that the site was not indexed.
Misuse of canonical tags is no reason for Google to de-list a site. They've said themselves that they tend to ignore improperly used canonicals.
Check your backlinks, check Google Webmaster Tools for any messages of unnatural link penalties, look everywhere you can to uncover why this site was de-listed. If those links knocked it out of SERPs then 301'ing them will do that to the next site as well. Bottom line is you need to know what happened before you make that call, but poorly structured site optimization is definitely not the reason.
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
-
Preserve domain on 301 redirect?
We have a domain solely used for print advertising that does a 301 redirect to a landing page (a department home page) on our "real" domain that is indexed on Google. Example: www.bmwrepairs.com redirects to www.repairshop.com/bmwrepairs. Is there a way to do a 301 redirect so that when they get redirected, the URL in the browser address bar remains www.bmwrepairs.com?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jazee1 -
Site Merge Strategy: Choosing Target Pages for 301 Redirects
I am going to be merging two sites. One is a niche site, and it is being merged with the main site. I am going to be doing 301 redirects to the main site. My question is, what is the best way of redirecting section/category pages in order to maximize SEO benefits. I will be redirecting product to product pages. The questions only concerns sections/categories. Option 1: Direct each section/category to the most closely matched category on the main site. For example, vintage-t-shirts would go to vintage-t-shirt on main site. Option 2: Point as many section/category pages to larger category on main site with selected filters. We have filtered navigation on our site. So if you wanted to see vintage t-shirts, you could go to the vintage t-shirt category, OR you could go to t-shirts and select "vintage" under style filter. In the example above, the vintage-t-shirt section from the niche site would point to t-shirts page with vintage filter selected (something like t-shirts/#/?_=1&filter.style=vintage). With option 2, I would be pointing more links to a main category page on the main site. I would likely have that page rank higher, because more links are pointing to it. I may have a better overall user experience, because if the customer decides to browse another style of t-shirt, they can simply unselect the filter and make other selections. Questions: Which of these options is better as far as: (1) SEO, (2) User experience If I go with option 2, the drawback is that the page titles will all be the same (i.e vintage-t-shirts pointing to the page with filter selected would have "t-shirts" as page title instead of a more targeted page with page title "vintage t-shirts." I believe a workaround would be to pull filter values from the URL and append them to the page title. That way page title for URL t-shirts/#/?=1&filter.style=vintage_ would be something like "vintage, t-shirts." Is this the appropriate way to deal with it? Any thoughts, suggestions, shared experiences would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
Help with new site revamp SEO LOST!!!
I decided to go fully WP on my band agency website to help with SEO. I have lost loads of rankings even though we redirected old pages to the new urls. it means i am loosing lots of business atm so I am desperate to find out what I thought was a better SEO design than before. We target geographical and genres in search and they have turned to poop too! Would anyone advise me what I have done wrong and if I need to create some more sales pages to help? site is http://www.themorrisagency.co.uk Thank you, thank you in advance guys... Daniel Morris http://www.themorrisagency.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Agentmorris0 -
Certain Pages Not Being Indexed - Please Help
We are having trouble getting a bulk of our pages indexed in google. Any help would be greatly appreciated! The Following Page types are being indexed through escaped fragment: http://www.cbuy.tv/#! http://www.cbuy.tv/celebrity#!65-Ashley-Tisdale/fashion/4097-Casadei-BLADE-PUMP/Product/175199 <cite>www.cbuy.tv/celebrity/155-Sophia-Bush#!</cite> However, all our pages that look like this, are not being indexed: http://www.cbuy.tv/#!Type=Photo&id=b1d18759-5e52-4a1c-9491-6fb3cb9d4b95&Katie-Holmes-Hot-Pink-Pants-Isabel-Marant-DAVID-DOUBLE-BREASTED-Wool-COAT-Maison-Pumps-Black-Bag
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CBuy0 -
301 Redirect pages with .aspx extension
I want 301 redirect all a website's subpages with a .aspx extension to a page without the .aspx etension. Example: I want to 301 redirect www.website.com/services.aspx to www.website.com/services Right now if you do not include .aspx on the end of every URL it gives a 404 error. I have used the web.config file to 301 redirect non-www to www and /default.aspx to /. I am not extremely familiar with IIS 7.0 or web.config, so any help would be great. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VentaMarketing0 -
Redirect Help - Domain Change and Website Redesign
Hi there, I've redesigned a website for a client, but we are also changing domains and I'm trying to figure out the best way to set up the redirects from their old domain to the new one. 95% of their search engine traffic originally came through brand related keywords that landed on their homepage, and most of the remaining 15% landed on 3 other pages. The new site has pages to replace these 3 main SEO pages, and I'm about to set 301 redirects from their old domain, but I can't figure out the quickest/best way to do it. Is it possible to set up a specific redirect for the 4 main pages (Home + plus the 3 others) then a "catch all" type of thing for the rest of the pages, that redirect either to the homepage, or some sort of "Check out our new Site" landing page. How do you do this, or is there a better way to set it up? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | timscullin0 -
Does having multiple links to the same page influence the Link juice this page is able to pass
Say you have a page and it has 4 outgoing links to the same internal page. In the original Pagerank algo if these links were links to an page outside your own domain, this would mean that the linkjuice this page is able to pass would be devided by 4. The thing is i'm not sure if this is also the case when the outgoing link, is linking to a page on your own domain. I would say that outgoing links (whatever the destination) will use some of your link juice, so it would be better to have 1 outgoing link instead of 4 to the same destination, the the destination will profit more form that link. What are you're thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TjeerdvZ0 -
How long until 301 passes juice to new site?
We put up a new site for an attorney and changed his url along with total redevelopment. We used a 301 for the old to the new and it does resolve to the new. It has been one month and the old site in OSE still shows DA of 37 with PA for homepage of 15. The new site has come up.....to a DA of 6 with homepage at 1 still. For any who might wish it, the referring site is theHollandLawFirm.com and the new site is Houston-Bankruptcy-Attorney.info. Would love to know of any experience with the timing on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertFisher0