Should I keep a website which is outdated or close it down? It has a few links. If I keep it can I redirect people to our newer site?
-
We are in the process of buying some intellectual property, and it's websites are very dated and only have around 5 external links each. What's the best course of action? Do we close down the sites; then redirect the urls to our current website, or do we leave the sites up, but redirect people to our new site.
Reference: current website: www.psychometrics.com
Old sites that come with the intellectual property: http://www.eri.com/ plus http://www.hrpq.com/
Thanks,
Dan Costigan
-
Thank you very much Ruth.
-
Hi Dan,
If the sites don't have many links, you probably won't get much SEO value from redirecting them to your site. However, if they're getting traffic right now from the users of the intellectual property, you'll want to signal to those users (and to search engines) that they need to come to your site now, instead of the old sites. So I would recommend shutting the sites down, and 301 redirecting the old sites to the new site for at least 6 months to a year, at least until the URLs for the old sites are no longer in Google's index and all of the old sites' users know where to go from now on. I hope that helps!
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
-
Do you still loose 15% of value of inbound links when you redirect your site from http to https (so all inbound links to http are being redirected to https version)?
I know when you redesign your on website, you loose about 15% internally due to the 301 redirects (see moz article: https://moz.com/blog/accidental-seo-tests-how-301-redirects-are-likely-impacting-your-brand), but I'm wondering if that also applies to value of inbound links when you redirect your http://www.sitename.com to https://www.sitename.com. I appreciate your help!
Technical SEO | | JBMediaGroup0 -
Migrating micro site into existing website
My company is planning to migrate an existing (ecommerce) micro site - which sits on its own domain - into their main ecommerce site. This means that the content will be moved from www.microdomain.co.uk to www.maindomain.com/category. Some products already exist on the main domain. The micro site is fairly small with just over 400 pages - I am planning to map each URL to the new URL (exact corresponding page) and create 301 redirects for each. Where any additional content does not exist yet on the existing main domain, we will create it and 301 redirect to it. The micro site currently ranks fairly well for some keywords - being such a specialised micro site, (some of) the keywords also form part of the domain name, however, they won't on the main page although they may form part of the URL (category). As an example (using a made up URL), our micro site www.bread-sticks.co.uk ranks on page 1 for the keyword bread sticks - we don't just sell bread sticks on www.bread-sticks.co.uk but also rolls and bread though, bread sticks is one category of very closely related categories. Say our main domain is www.supermarket.co.uk (selling a wide range of food / drink products. The micro site will be moving to www.supermarket.co.uk/baked-products/ - which is a category. Within that category, there are sub categories, i.e. bread sticks, rolls and bread which will sit under www.supermarket.co.uk/bread-sticks/ etc. What would be the best way for ensuring that our main domain would take over the rankings from our micro site, given that it will be sitting on our main domain as a category (one of many)? Can we expect www.supermarket.co.uk/baked-products/ or www.supermarket.co.uk/bread-sticks/ to replace www.bread-sticks.co.uk in the rankings simply by 301 redirecting? Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | ViviCa10 -
Unnatural links to your site--impacts links
Hi, I just recive a "nice" Massage at my WMT- Unnatural links to your site—impacts links _Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole. Learn more._Did someone here came across any massage like this before?if so, any suggestion on what to so next?Whould love for some help! Thanks
Technical SEO | | Tit0 -
301 Redirect How Long until the juice passes through to new site
Hi Guys, Following on from a question i asked last week in regard to a 301 http://www.seomoz.org/q/301-redirect-have-no-ranking I was thinking that i had some kind of issue on the site, although i have gone over it with a fine tooth comb i cannot find any issue's and from the amount of reads the thread has had im sure if there was something obvious it would have been pointed out. So i am quite confident the 301 from site A to site B is fine and working as intended, so my question is how long should it take until the juice is passed From site A to Site B as its 9 weeks now and still down 85% on traffic and even text for my home page if copied into the search bar don't bring up my site Bing is fine and did not see any real traffic drops but Google is not giving me back the rankings i had prior Whenever i have done a 301 before the rankings pretty steady and i see no real loss in rankings but this time ... painful all changes in WMT made
Technical SEO | | kellymandingo
Canonical tag implemented
all Pages 301 and correct 200 response from the targeted page
Sitemap Updated
Many Links Changed from Old site to new (including DMOZ)
no Robots text Blocking directory's
Google crawling freely and regularly The strange thing is New content is indexed immediately and ranks easily, I added a page for my service in my local area and went straight to position 5 in Google however old existing content wont move, I tracked 150 keywords only 4 are top 75 Don't know what else to do so any advice would be much appreciated PS site is around 17k pages Paul0 -
How long should you keep 301 redirects?
Hi, Back in 2009 I decided to update an older site from .htm and .shtml to .php. In order to minimize the impact I would go in every month and do a 301 redirect on the .shtml page to the new .php page. So I have many that range from 2009 through 2010. I had left the old 301's because I felt they would only be used if needed but I would think I should clean up my .htaccess by removing the old 301 redirects if they are not needed. How long should you keep this type of 301 redirect? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Force70 -
Internal Links on eCommerce sites
I have been working on an eCommerce site; www.pretavoir.co.uk over the past year. Improvements in SERPs have been good with many top three positions. However, there are other important keywords of similar difficulty which refuse to behave in a similar way.... The site is PR4 and has a homepage PA 52. The homepage includes links to internal brand pages eg Prada, Gucci etc. Q Would it be worthwhile creating footer anchor text with eaxct text eg Prada sunglasses, Gucci Sunglasses?? Thanks
Technical SEO | | seanmccauley0 -
Can I redirect when Google is showing these as 2 different pages?
Hi Guys, Google webmaster is showing 1000 duplicate title tags because its picking up our pages like this. How can I correct this? Please explain in detail please. Thank You Tim /store/ICICLES_NO_7_CLEAR_WITH_PINK_NUBBY//store/ICICLES_NO_7_CLEAR_WITH_PINK_NUBBY
Technical SEO | | fasctimseo0 -
Delete old site but redirect domain to a new domain and site
I just have a quick query and I have a feeling about what the answer is so just wanted to see what you guys thought... Basically I am working on a client site. This client has a few other websites that are divisions of their company. However these divisions/websites are no longer used. They are wanting to delete the websites but redirect the domains to their name main website. They believe this will pass on SEO benefits as these old division sites are old and have a good PR and history. I'm unsure for DEFINITE, which way is correct?
Technical SEO | | Weerdboil0