Redirecting external blog to main website blog - two questions I'm struggling with
-
Hiya Mozzers - I have a blog separate from main website which is duplicating the blog on the main website. This separate blog is duplicating the main website blog, so it needs to be closed down and redirected. There are some 200 pages of separate blog (identified via Screaming Frog).
So I am suggesting the blog pages should be 301 redirected from the separate blog to the equivalent blog pages on the main website.
Q1) Should the root domain of the separate blog be 301 redirected to the main www.mainwebsite.com/blog page, or to the root domain of the main website?
Q2) Should the blog pages, which lack equivalent content on the main website, be 301 redirected to the main www.mainwebsite.com/blog page, or to the root domain of the main website?
Thanks for your help on this one, Luke
-
Hi Luke,
As alrockn says, I would redirect the root domain of the duplicate blog to mainsite.com/blog.
With the pages that have no duplicate on the main site, either find the likeliest match or redirect to mainsite.com/blog. When I say likeliest match, I mean that if any pages on the old blog seem a good fit with something on the main site, redirect them there. You may find none that fit any of the existing pages. If so, don't worry - I'd redirect those to the main site's blog.
Cheers,
Jane
-
Thanks David - I was wondering whether blog root domain should go to the main website's blog page (www.mainwebsite.com/blog) or homepage (www.mainwebsite.com/) - not sure that it matters one way or the other as never had to deal with this kind of issue before.
-
Option 1 is a very good idea if you think these links will hurt you, Google wise. Since you says these are all duplicate content, this is probably what you want to do, but first be sure you don't want the link or authority juice from the old blog. If the blog gets more traffic, has more authority, etc...the decision gets tougher to make.
-
You have 2 options:
1. You can turn off the duplicated site, and do a URL removal request in Webmaster tools. The domain you do not want anymore, or the one that is causing the duplication must return a 404 error in order for Google to accept the request. This will cause the entire old site to go away, and the links to be removed from Google's index. If the site does not have a lot of traffic, or does not get a lot of visits, this would be the best route.
2. Do 301 redirects on the duplicated site. You should try and match them up, such as:
olddomain.com/your-blog-post
301 redirects to
NEWdomain.com/your-blog-postIf they do not match up exactly, use best judgement and redirect them either to the home page, or a similar subject matter. For example if you had an seo related topic that wasnt exact match, you could forward it to another article that referenced seo. If you have to send a few to the home page, that wont hurt anything, just dont make the total number excessive, as that could potentially look spammy. Best of luck, If you need any help let me know!
-
You should try to mirror the 301's to the duplicates on the main site. So in answer to your first question, the duplicate blog index page should go to main/blog, and everything else should go to the new location on the main site. Anything without landing pages on the new site, should redirect to main/blog.
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 sort of content for 'non-niche' website?
Hey guys, had a question with regards to content production. We run an store called Yellow Octopus in Australia and we've literally got thousands of products (4500 skus last count). We've got everything from novelty mugs to kitchen accessories to gag gifts, t-shirts and tech gadgets. I've read a lot of material on creating awesome content to attract backlinks and we are ready to craft our content strategy. We've got a team in place - graphic designer, illustrator and writers to execute that strategy. It's just a matter of formulating the strategy! Largely speaking I have an idea of the quality of content required because I look at a lot of it. The real issue is what type of content is right for us? Most of the articles I have read focus on niche industries i.e. SEO, Piano sales or health foods. Right off the bat I can come up with hundreds of content pieces that work around those niches. However, with such a diverse range of products I'm unsure of what our niche really is, in fact not having a niche is almost our niche. Of course we could do gift guides like '30 Unbelievable Gifts for Foodies' (and we do, do those). However they aren't really the type of posts that are likely to attract back-links. Is the best strategy to split the content into categories? What sort of content pieces would you suggest for a company such as ours? Many thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheGreatestGoat0 -
New Site (redesign) Launched Without 301 Redirects to New Pages - Too Late to Add Redirects?
We recently launched a redesign/redevelopment of a site but failed to put 301 redirects in place for the old URL's. It's been about 2 months. Is it too late to even bother worrying about it at this point? The site has seen a notable decrease in site traffic/visits, perhaps due to this issue. I assume that once the search engines get an error on a URL, it will remove it from displaying in search results after a period of time. I'm just not sure if they will try to re-crawl those old URLs at some point and if so, it may be worth it to have those 301 redirects in place. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandBuilder0 -
What are the best practices with website redesign & redirects?
I have a website that is not very pretty but has great rankings. I want to redesign the website and loose as little rankings as possible and still clean up the navigation. What are the best practices? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JHSpecialty0 -
4 questions about a paragraph of SEO friendly text in my e-com websites header.
Hi guys, I'm trying to understand the SEO behind our websites header. www.mountainjade.co.nz As you can see we have a paragraph of relevant introductory text that is also SEO friendly in our header. What I would like some help with is understanding how google views and assigns 'juice' to information like this in the header or footer of a website. Usually certain pages have content specific to a given topic, and google ranks these pages accordingly. But with a websites header / footer its content appears on every page as the header is always at the top and footer at the bottom. 1. In what way does my website benefit from the paragraph of text in the header? e.g at the domain level? Just the home page? etc etc 2. How does google assign 'juice' to the paragraph of text? (similiar to Q1). 3. How would my website be effected if I moved the text to the footer? (Aesthetic change) 4. When I 'inspect element' on the paragraph, it is labelled 'div id=site description.' Can someone please explain the relevance of a sites description to SEO for me. This paragraph of text was in the websites header before I came onboard, and I've been too concerned to change / move it as I don't know enough about it. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks team, Jake
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jacobsheehan0 -
Website, webshop and blog. Subfolders or subdomains?
Hello fellow mozzers, I've seen a lot of discussion and confusion about whether you should use subfolders or subdomains when you have a website, a blog and a webshop.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WesleySmits
Of course with subfolders the PageRank will be more effective since it's all in one domain. On the other hand subdomains will be a better user experience since you can focus on just the webshop or just the blog. Was wondering how you guys/girls think what would be the best way to handle this.0 -
How to find all of a website's SERPs?
Was wondering how easiest to find all of a website's existing SERPs?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Looking for guidance on transferring and incorporating content from a purchased website into an existing website
One of my client’s recently purchased a competitor’s website, and we would like to transfer the content from the competitor’s website (http://www.wilson-hardness.com) to our client’s existing website (http://www.buehler.com); at the same time we want to minimize loss in keyword rankings the competitor’s website has established. The two websites work in similar fields: one measures and offers products in scientific measurement and analysis of various materials. The other website offers products that are in similar field: hardness testing equipment. Looking for suggestions on how to proceed or recommended reading on the topic. I’ve tried to do research, but haven’t found anything, so I’m not sure what to topic-names to search. Any guidance would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TopFloor0 -
Multiple 301 redirects considered a redirection chain?
I need to redirect a ton of duplicate content, so I want to try redirect 301 /store/index.php /store redirect 301 /store/product-old /store/product-new redirect 301 /store/product-old1 /store/product-new1 redirect 301 /store/product-old2 /store/product-new2 redirect 301 /store/product-old3 /store/product-new3 redirect 301 /store/product-old4/file.html /store/product-old4/new4/file.html and then a whole bunch of old dead links to homepage. So we've had /index.php redirected to / on other parts of the site for awhile, and for the most part /store is a friendly URL, but then we have tons of dup content and work arounds that preceded my job here. I'm wondering if those redirects above would be considered a redirection chain? Since the all the redirects below the /index.php -> /store count on that one redirect. Thanks for any insight you may be able to give!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hondaspeder1