Which domain we should continue with?
-
Hello All,
We are working with a client who had manual penalty from Google. We worked on that and now penalty has been removed.
Client had already started working on the new domain and now the big dilemma is- Which domain should we continue with? Old or New?
We are suggesting them to continue with the old one as that domain had good PR, good backlinks, better visibility on their social profiles etc.
What do you suggest? any inputs are highly appreciated.
Thanks
-
Hey guys!
I agree with James and Bruce. We have a client that ran into a similar issue about a year ago where he was issued a manual penalty on his site, from work performed prior to us of course ; ). While we were working to correct the issue, we developed a new site (on a new URL) that began ranking fairly well with little effort. Once the penalty was removed from the older site, we simply kept the two sites separate and focused our efforts primarily on the older site. This proved to be an effective strategy in our situation since the new site didn't have much authority or credibility. It was ranking well so the client decided to leave it on its own and not redirect or connect it to the older site in any way.
So in my experience, I would have to agree that using the older domain would be best. Of course assuming that the site (content, URL structure, UX, link profile and social signals) is at a higher level than the newer site.
Regarding the redirect from the new site to the old, this is totally a judgement call you will have to make based on the amount and quality of off-site (links & social mentions) between the two sites. IMO the on-page and UX stuff can and should always be tweaked and improved upon. So I don't think that should really be a deciding factor.
Hope this helps in one way or another!
-
Wow that's tough if the new site has different new content,
Yes i would,
But i would ensure the old site is up to the high standard also, I would ensure any significant improvements on the new site IE better quality content, better responsive design, better internal structure and navigation are mirrored across on the old site, I would review and merge the better aspects and content onto the older site as it has the better platform with the link/social profile etc,
I wouldn't want to you redirect which could be a better new site if the old site is not up to scratch, I would hope to get a second opinion from another Moz user on this,
James
-
Hi James,
Thanks for your quick response.
Would you suggest a redirect from new to old domain? new domain is also ranking now and have good content too.
-
I vote Old:
If you start with a new domain, then you will have to build all the rankings basicaly from scratch, give or take a few possible redirects etc. Providing the penalty has gone then you should be fine on this. Google doesn't from what we know keep a token penalty on the site because of a past problem, once the main penalty has been lifted its lifted
A new site can take quite a while to settle in and therefore you could expect many months of patience waiting for the site to get to the level of the old one.
Bruce.
-
I would think the Old depending on its current state,
If you can make any necessary changes to the old site without any technical limitations and maintain the back links and social profile then better than starting a fresh,
I wouldn't of thought the penalty would effect you long term if it has been fully rectified and was not for an overly serious offence,
James
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
-
Domain Masking SEO Impact
I hope I am explaining this correctly. If I need to provide any clarity please feel free to ask. We currently use a domain mask on an external platform that points back to our site. We are a non-profit and the external site allows users to create peer-to peer fundraisers that benefit our ministry. Currently we get many meta issues related to this site as well as broken links when fundraisers expire etc. We do not have a need to rank for the information from this site. Is there a way to index these pages so that they are not a part of the search engine site crawls as it relates to our site?
Technical SEO | | SamaritansPurse0 -
Spammers created bad links to old hacked domain, now redirected to our new domain. Advice?
My client had an old site hacked (let's call it "myolddomain.com") and the hackers created many links in other hacked sites with links such as http://myolddomain.com/styless.asp?jordan-12-taxi-kids-cheap-T8927.html The old myolddomain.com site was redirected to a different new site since then, but we still see over a thousand spam links showing up in the new site's Search Console 404 crawl errors report. Also, using the links: operator in google search, we see many results of spam links. Should we be worried about these bad links pointing to our old site and redirecting to 404s on the new site? What is the best recommendation to clean them up? Ignore? 410s? Other? I'm seeing conflicting advice out there. The old site is hosted by the client's previous web developer who doesn't want to clean anything up on their end without an ongoing hosting contract. So beyond turning redirects on or off, the client doesn't want to pay for any additional hosting. So we don't have much control over anything related to "myolddomain.com". 😞 Thanks in advance for any assistance!
Technical SEO | | usDragons0 -
Domain hacked and redirected to another domain
2 weeks ago my home page plus some others had a 301 redirect to another cloned domain for about 1 week (due to a hack).The original pages were then de-indexed and the new bad domain was indexed and in effect stole my rankings.Then the 301 was removed/cleaned from my domain and the bad domain was fully de-indexed via a request I made in WMT (this was 1 week ago).Then my pages came back into the index but without any ranking power (as if it's just in the supplemental index).It's been like this for a week now and the algorithms have not been able to correct it. So how do I get this damage undone or corrected? Can someone at Google reverse/cancel the 301 ranking transfer since the algorithms don't seem to be able to?I have the option to do a "Change of Address" in WMT from bad domain to my domain. But I don't think this would work properly because it says I also need to place a 301 on the bad domain back to mine. Would a change of address still work without the 301?Please advise/help what to do in order to get my rankings back to where they were.
Technical SEO | | Dantek0 -
How About Moving My Site to Another Domain?
My website has been hit by a Google Penguin penalty. At this point, it seems very few websites have recovered from this penalty even after it was lifted. That said, I'm still wondering if I should start a new website or my current one to another domain. When I started my website, I registered the domain name http://www.thewebhostinghero.com A few years later, I bought webhostinghero.com as it became available. Actually, webhostinghero.com redirects traffic to thewebhostinghero.com at the registrar level. There are barely any links pointing to webhostinghero.com. TheWebHostingHero.com is quite a big website with over 1400 pages and some very useful tools (http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/free-tools) that took me so long to develop, I just can't believe I'd have to throw it all out the window. So that said, do you think it would be possible to move all or some of the content from thewebhostinghero.com to webhostinghero.com? Would that make sense? Would webhostinghero.com come out as a copy of thewebhostinghero.com since the domain is similar, etc.? Of course, moving the content from thewebhostinghero.com to webhostinghero.com would have to be done without any 301/302 redirects to avoid passing bad link juice. At the same time, I don't want to end up with duplicate content on both domains.
Technical SEO | | sbrault740 -
More than one web domain
Hi What is best when considering using more than one domain on a website, what the best policy ? it's a question I get asked a lot, usually because prior to any seo efforts the main domain name purchased is not keyword rich or an abbreviated company name etc. what impact do new domains have on SEO compared to older existing domains- is it worth changing a generic company named domain for a keyword rich domain? if having multiple domains pointing to the site is beneficial how best is it to configure? How do i inform Google? How do both domains get index when there is only one physical site? How should i monitor it, Analytic s, SEO moz? Will the domain compete against each other and effect SEO rank? Are they best used for marketing purposes on external sites, adverts driving traffic to the main site. I'm aware there are lots of questions above, any answers/ opinions , links to further info would be greatly appreciated. cheers
Technical SEO | | Bristolweb0 -
Domain redirection and seo implications
We have an existing site that is a subdomain but we recently acquired an exact match domain. Will building links to the exact match domain and having the domain point at our existing subdomain work or should we convert the entire site and redirect our existing subdomain to the new domain? What I'm trying to figure out is how to maximize the benefit here and how the existing mass of links pointing to our existing subdomain (shop.domain.com) can be used. New domain: keywordshop.com Existing URL: shop.domain.com
Technical SEO | | CHarkins0 -
Should I wory about spam domains linking to me?
A while ago my site had a pharmacy hack done to it and created a ton of spam links. I've since fixed the issues on my site but I'm still showing links from their sites. See screen shot: http://awesomescreenshot.com/0497cc147 I think they are links from the spam site to me and not my site "yakanger" linking to them correct? Do I need to worry about these? Can I get rid of them?
Technical SEO | | mr_w2 -
Switch domain from one account to another at domain registrar
We need to move our domain from one account to another at our domain registrar (which is Moniker). Both the "from" account and "to" account will be at Moniker. The "from" account currently has privacy settings enabled and we'd also put these in place for the "to" account. Has anyone done this and see any impact on SEO? Is there any big or common mistakes that I should be aware of? Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | evoNick0