(Australia) Changing .net.au to .com.au - web dev is refusing to do a 301 redirect and wants to run two sites?
-
After years using a .net.au site, my client has purchased the .com.au version of the same domain. I've now set up a new, responsive website using a wordpress template with new content, but used a similar page structure.
I've asked their web developer to now do a 301 permanent redirect on each old page from .net.au site to it's new .com.au page, but he has refused, saying it would be bad for long term SEO. Instead, he says they should run both sites (which I thought would cause duplicate content issues).
Both domains are hosted with the same company.
I thought as long as the 301 redirects were done on a page by page basis, there were no issues? I'm no SEO expert, (which he claims to be), so I just wanted to get another opinion on what best practice would be in this instance.
-
I am sure you won't get into any issues by keeping them both separate - but it doesn’t make any sense in doing that. You should definitely 301 redirect the old one .. page by page to the new site.
It doesn’t make sense to keep them both and you will lose since Google might start to rank one page from the com.au and for another query one from net.au. They should for sure consolidate everything into one single side.
Keeping them separately there migt also be some branding issues - as users might get confused. "oh, last time I was on the other Screento - let's look for those guys again"
So, you won't get into issues from Google with Duplicate content or anything else but you might shoot yourself in the foot by not 301 redirecting the old pages to the new ones since you will compete with each other and it just doesn’t make sense to keep them both.
So to make the long story short: Consolidate with 301 and you will be in good shape. Don't do it and you will be safe but you will lose on branding and rankings.
Hope it helps.
-
Wow - thanks for your quick response.
The new domain is www.screenco.com.au and the old one is www.screenco.net.au
Just for reference - these are the "SEO expert's" actual words: "leave it there and run both sites, putting a 301 redirect will harm the site in the long run. 301 redirects from other domains are now believed to be bad links – from the same domain they are considered ok, as they are redirecting pages that are now not working or temporary created by php or similar".
So do I take it he either a) is confused between a temporary and permanent redirection, or b)just doesn't want to spend half an hour doing the actual redirections?
-
Hi,
You said the new domain has new content ? Then it should be ok to have them separate - and no need for a 301 redirect. There are no issues with duplicate content if there is no duplicate content (as you said - the new domain has new content). Structure is not an issue if it's the same.
Can you post the two domain names so we can have a look ?
Cheers.
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 migration - Indexed Pages rising on old site
Hello, We did a 301 redirect from site a to site b back in March. I would check on a daily basis on the index count using query "site:sitename" The past couple of days, the old domain (that was 301 redirected) indexed pages has been rising which is really concerning. We did a 301 redirect back in march 2016, and the indexed count went from 400k pages down to 78k. However, the past 3 days it went from 78k to 89,500. And I'm worried that the number is going to continue to rise. My question - What would you do to investigate / how to investigate this issue? Would it be screaming frog and look at redirects? Or is this a unique scenario that I'd have to do other steps/procedures?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
Is it possible to avoid redirect of penalties for 301 forwards?
We have been doing a good amount of competitive research lately and have noticed sites that have been changing their TTLD quite often to escape manual penalties / DCMA filings. An example evolution: brandterm.com -> brandterm.bz -> brandterm.me These competitors are able to quickly rank for money keywords in the top 3 soon after another domain switch. What we have noticed is that while its obvious they received Google penalties they continue to 301 redirect the old domains to the new ones. We have experienced first hand that penalties travel along domains with 301 redirects. Does anyone have an explanation how these companies are able to achieve quickly high volume of organic search while 301-redirecting from burnt domains? The only option I see is to disavow all previous domains in GWT to be able to employ 301 redirects without risking carrying over the penalty. Are there other theories ppl can think of? T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | petersocapro0 -
Two sites with same content in different countries. How does it effect SEO?
Lets say for example that we have to sites, example.com and example.co.uk. The sites has the same content in the same language. Can the sites rank well in its own country? Of course all content could be rewritten, but that is very time consuming. Any suggestions? Has anyone did this before or now a site which has?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fredrikahlen0 -
301 Redirect htaccess
Hi Guys, I have a website that has plenty of links with parameters. For example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | UrbanMark
http://www.domainname.co.uk/index.php?app=ecom&ns=catshow&ref=Brandname-Golf-Shorts&sid=201v04gxs2hlozv161tfo43qk98583el I want to place a wildcard redirect on the .htaccess but don't know what exactly code for this. Ideally I want the URLs above to be: http://www.domainname.co.uk/Category/Brandname-Golf-Shorts Any help pls. Thanks,
Brucz0 -
301 redirect with /? in URL
For a Wordpress site that has the ending / in the URL with a ? after it... how can you do a 301 redirect to strip off anything after the / For example how to take this URL domain.com/article-name/?utm_source=feedburner and 301 to this URL domain.com/article-name/ Thank you for the help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
How to set up 301 redirect for URL with question mark
I have encountered some issue with 301 redirect and htaccess file. I need to redirect the following url: http://www.domain.com/?specifications=colours/page/3 to: http://www.domain.com/colours The 301 redirect command I wrote in htaccess file is as follow: Redirect 301 /?specifications=colours/page/3 http://www.domain.com/colours And it doesn't work at the moment. What is the correct way to set up 301 redirect here? Your help will be sincerely appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robotseo0 -
Need advice on 301 domain redirection
Hello friends, We have two sites namely spiderman-example.com & avengers-example.com which sells the same product listed out under similar categories, since we are about to stop or put down the site “avengers-example.com” because we just want to concentrate in bringing up a single brand called spiderman-example.com. “Spiderman-example” has comparatively more visitors and conversion rates than ''avengers-example'' ie. 90 % more traffic and conversion. Avengers-example has a small fraction of loyal customers who still search for the brand-name & there are a hand-full of potential keywords those ranking on its own. So is it advisable to redirect Avengers-example to spiderman-example using 301-redirect? Will this help to gain any link-juice from Avengers-example? If so how can we effectively redirect between two domain’s with minimal loss in page authority & linkjuice to enhance ''spiderman-example''? Off beat:These names "Avengers" and "Spiderman" were just used as an example but the actual site names has no relation to the ones mentioned above.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | semvibe0 -
301 Redirects After Company Acquisition
We recently acquired a company, and now we are going to redirect all of the pages on their site to their respective pages on our site. Do we need to keep the original pages on their site active? For how long? Ideally, we would like to redirect everything and remove the old site entirely so we don't have to pay to keep hosting it. Is this possible? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pbhatt1