Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
SEO impact of redirecting high ranking mirror site to the main website
-
During SEO audit for a client I noticed that they had over a dozen duplicate websites that are carbon copies of the main website. This was done via CMS platform and DNS. One of the mirror sites has about 400 indexed pages and has Moz DA of 42 and 137k External Equity-Passing Links. Full metrics comparison is attached.
I originally planned on doing rel="canonical" on the mirror site but the CMS vendor never even heard of it and is refusing to implement it in the header. My only other option is doing one to one 301 redirects.
Since the mirror site ranks well, even competes with main domain for some positions on the 1st page of SERP, what will be the impact after the redirects? Is doing 301's still the best option?
Thanks!
-
Thanks. I will just go with 301 and see how it turns out.
-
If you want to know how much traffic this domain is getting you could easily put a filter in Analytics which allows you to see the domain name when checking the pageviews.
Create a new view in Analytics and apply a filter with following settings:
Filter Type: Custom
Select: Advanced
Field A -> Extract A: Select: Hostname value: (.)
Field B -> Extract B: Select: Request URI value: (.)
Output To -> Constructor Select: Request URI value: /$A1$B1
Mark Field A: required & Mark "Override Output FieldYou could also combine all the different copies in one set in the Search Console - which would make it easier to check if there is an impact when activating the 301's.
Regardless of the traffic, the 301 remains the best option - some people say it does dilute pagerank - Google says it doesn't
As both Search Console & Analytics are not retroactive you could already make them active, wait a few weeks in order to collect sufficient data and then activate the redirects.
Dirk
-
Thanks for responding.
I am hesitant to go with 301s because not all link juice will be passed or I am wrong about that? I can't even gauge the impact this could have on traffic since the main domain and the mirrored site had the same GA tracking on them. All traffic channel data is a mess. Since mirrored website's DA is in the 40's and it is ranking on page one in SERP for a number of major keywords I assume it is getting decent traffic.
P.S.
I have already verified the mirrored domains in GSC and just waiting to pull the trigger on the 301s before informing G about the move.
-
You don't seem to have much options if canonicals are not possible.
To be honest - in cases like this I wouldn't use canonicals but always go for 301 redirects. They are pretty easy to implement (2 lines of code in htacess) and they are directives Google has to follow (and will pass pagerank). Canonicals are mere requests to Google that it can but is not obliged to respect.
Would also indicate in the Search Console of the duplicates that you're moving them to the main domain (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en) - you need to validate the duplicate domains before implementing the redirects.
Dirk
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
-
Redirect Chain
I moved my site to https a few months back using cloudflare and all went well site is now running on https fine I have recently also signed up to MozPro and it says I have a redirect chain on http://rogerlapin.co.uk I am not sure where to start looking to fix this? Site is running on Wordpress Also not sure how big of an issue it is as site is working ok? Bit confused as i used this http://www.redirect-checker.org/index.php and it reports no issues?
Moz Pro | | Rogerperk0 -
Url-delimiter vs. SEO
Hi all, Our customer is building a new homepage. Therefore, they use pages, which are generated out of a special module. Like a blog-page out of the blog-module (not only for blogs, also for lightboxes). For that, the programmer is using an url-delimiter for his url-parsing. The url-delimiter is for example a /b/ or /s/. The url would look like this: www.test.ch/de/blog/b/an-article www.test.ch/de/s/management-coaching Does the url-delimiter (/b/ or /s/ in the url) have a negative influence on SEO? Should we remove the /b/ or /s/ for a better seo-performance Thank you in advance for your feedback. Greetings. Samuel
Moz Pro | | brunoe10 -
What impact has external links reported as http503
Hello I have 72 external broken links who are reported with a http 503 status. When I ask the owner of that site, he confirmed he has removed it from GA by using this status. My question is. Does this have an impact for the quality of my site? The site is available, there is no delay when you open the link. Thank you for your support. br
Moz Pro | | kjerstibakke
Kjersti Bakke0 -
Rank Tracker For IRAN?
Hello dear. I have a client in IRAN and I want to track Persian keywords.But the MOZ tracker keywords doesn't support that country. Please help and advise me how can I use track keywords in IRAN?
Moz Pro | | allyunit1 -
Why do my Rankings Report show different results than the Rank Tracker tool?
I noticed that my ranking report puts be at 33 in google for one term, but when I use the Rank Tracker under Research tools it places me at 15.
Moz Pro | | trainsimple0 -
SEO Yoast data export
Just thought I would give something back. (Is this the right place!) I use Wordpress with the excellent SEO Yoast plugin. I needed a way of extracting the focus keywords that I have entered onto my pages along with the url for use on the SEOmoz On-page Optimisation tool. So I created GetYoastData which outputs to the browser the required data (and a bit more) that can be saved into an csv (Excel) file. Hope you find it useful - Yes it's not polished and yes it might output a blank line now and again but it's fairly useful. http://deanandrews.uk/get-yoast-seo-data/
Moz Pro | | DeanAndrews0 -
Redirect analysis tool
I'm looking for a tool like this: http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/ that can check hundreds/thousands of URLs and give me a report as to which ones have been redirected. Does anyone know of something that can do this?
Moz Pro | | glass010