Acquiring a blog
-
Hello All,
I've recently acquired somebody else's blog and have redirected every post to the relevant page of my website (madegood.org). The content is the same as on the original site, and I have used 301 redirects. The original blog didn't have a particularly high page rank
I'm slightly worried that there are now thousands of links coming from one domain, which itself doesn't have much authority. Is there a way that I can tell google that I've acquired the blog, as opposed to just having lots of links from one domain.
Thanks
Will
-
Hey thanks!
-
Couple of good resources I can recommend:
1. How to find low value Links: http://www.stateofsearch.com/step-by-step-guide-finding-low-quality-links/
2. Link Detox: http://www.linkdetox.com/
If using an automated system like Link Detox, be sure to review each link manually.
-
Charles, saying that "Google will penalize you" for doing something is a fairly strong statement. Can you point to your source on this subject? It's helpful to give additional information in cases like this.
-
Although, what am I looking for with regards to dodgy backlinks? What are the tell tale signs?
I'd be happy to go through my backlinks in WMT and check each one, but not entirely sure what I'm looking for. I know all the theory behind good backlinks, but it all seems a bit wooly when it come to bad links, is there an easy way to spot sure fire offenders. Then when I find one, what can I do about it?
Cheers
Will
-
Will do!
-
I'd start by checking your backlinks, both to your domain and the one you redirected. After that, expand your investigation from there.
-
Thanks Cyrus, that's a very comprehensive answer!
I basically uploaded the copy on to new pages on my site, and manually put a 301 every page of the old site to the page on my site that has the same copy.... If that makes sense!?
I'm only concerned because I've suddenly (over the last couple of days) seen a hit in my google search referrals by about 70%. This migration happened months ago but I'm trying look under every stone.
I'll do as you suggested and see how I get on. Thanks again.
Will
-
It sounds like basically you did a domain migration? I'm a bit confused because you said you redirected to relevant pages on your website, but you also said the content is the same. So I'm wondering if you redirected to existing pages on your own site, or simply redirect the old URLs over to new URLs with the content from the old site. (Yeah, it doesn't make sense, but I'm on my first cup of coffee)
Generally, a large amount of redirects won't hurt you if it's for a legitimate reason - especially if you're migrating content from one domain to another. Where you get in trouble is when you 301 redirect URLs with low-quality backlinks. Those links then become YOUR links.
It might also look suspicious if you redirected multiple domains in a short period of time to your new domain, but this doesn't sound like the case.
Regardless, the best way to handle this is to claim ownership of both sites in Google Webmaster Tools before the redirect, then file a change of address for the old domain. You can actually still do this after the fact - you simply need to stop the 301 for the homepage long enough to claim ownership.
You likely want to file sitemaps for both the old URLs and new URLs so search engines can "process" the 301s. You can find more helpful tips here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos
I wouldn't expect this to effect your traffic in a negative way or cause a penalty, but keep an eye on your traffic and rankings just in case. If anything does go wrong, you can revert the changes you made.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
Cyrus
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
-
Recovering an Almost Dead Blog?
Hello, I wanted to ask this from long time but finally i gathered my energy to ask this long question at moz. Well, like almost all newbies with little knowledge of SEO & google I started my first blog in 2009, as things were very different that time & with posting more and more, I was getting good results & started to build decent traffic but with poor content ( I really din't care about it ) as I was getting organic traffic. But things changed with Google Panda Completely after 11th April 2011, Since the time Traffic keep on falling, I never made backlinks so Penguin Updates never hit us but because of Poor & thin Content Site went down lower & lower. I took some steps like increasing word count of posts, removing some posts but nothing worked so far but nothing worked. Blog has almost 1200 articles & most important it was my first blog so I was bit attached with it. Now my Question is, Should I just dispose the blog & move on or There is something which I can try to recover it. The blog is 6 years old as of of now & received 2 million organic traffic as of now. ( attached organic Traffic screenshot ) My question is, Can something be done Seriously for this blog or I should just let it go. I will appreciate some genuine advice on that. Thanks ZhS1xIS.png
Technical SEO | | killthebillion0 -
Blog on subdomain of e-commerce site
Hi guys. I've got an e-commerce site which we have very little control over. As such, we've created a subdomain and are hosting a WordPress install there, instead. This means that all the great content we're putting out (via bespoke pages on the subdomain) are less effective than if they were on the main domain. I've looked at proxy forwarding, but unfortunately it isn't possible through our servers, leaving the only option I can see being permenant redirects... What would be the best solution given the limitations of the root site? I'm thinking of wildcard rewrite rules (eg. link site.com/blog/articleTitle to blog.site.com/articleTitle) but I'm wondering if there's much of an SEO benefit in doing this? Thanks in advance for everyone's help 🙂
Technical SEO | | JAR8970 -
Anyone using Adobe Business Catalyst and Fixing SEO URL Blog Updates?
Does anyone else have experience with the current update Adobe Business Catalyst has announced for their blog features? Florin at BC offered the code below: http://www.graeagle.com/images/fb_blog_og_img.jpg" /> However nether myself nor another commentator can figure out how to make it work: I added the meta data to my template but it seems the tags are not correct. For example, the tag {tag_blogpostmetatitle} does not automatically include the SEO title that I've called out in my individual blog post. So, it appears the browser is ignoring the tag and just including it as is. When I view the source for my live blog article, this is what I get for the lines that I've added the code in the tag: Also, I cannot get schema metadata to work on the BC blog. For example, I have used it on this page: http://www.homedestination.com/_blog/Real_Estate_Blog/post/things_to_know_before_building_a_new_home/; which yields the following in Google's Rich Snippet Tool: Extracted structured data rdfa-node property: title: {tag_blogpostmetatitle} description:__{tag_blogpostmetadescription}
Technical SEO | | jessential0 -
I'm getting duplicate content created with a random string of character added to the end of my blog post permalinks?
In an effort to clean up my blog content I noticed that I have a lot of posts getting tagged for duplicate content. It looks like ... http://carwoo.com/blog/october-sales-robust-stateside-european-outlook-poor-for-ford http://carwoo.com/blog/october-sales-robust-stateside-european-outlook-poor-for-ford/954bf0df0a0d02b700a06816f2276fa5/ Any thoughts on how and why this would be happening?
Technical SEO | | editabletext0 -
Is it Helpful to Add a Dynamic Blog Feed to Your Homepage?
Do you think it helps SEO significantly to add a feed on your homepage that shows a snippet of your latest blog posts? If yes, have you seen any results from doing this?
Technical SEO | | ProjectLabs0 -
Old Blog
I have an old blog that I started long ago and it has tons of content. I'm thinking about migrating it my current blog but am worried about panda and bringing over mediocre content. The content is fine, not bad not good. Should I bring it over or should I just delete the blog?
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
How to setup tumblr blog.site.com to give juice to site.com
Is it possible to get a subdomain blog.site.com that is on tumblr to count toward site.com. I hoped I could point it in webmaster tools like we do www but alas no. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | oznappies0 -
Seomoz is showing duplicate page content for my wordpress blog
Hi Everyone, My seomoz crawl diagnostics is indicating that I have duplicate content issues in the wordpress blog section of my site located at: http://www.cleversplash.com/blog/ What is the best strategy to deal with this? Is there a plugin that can resolve this? I really appreciate your help guys. Martin
Technical SEO | | RogersSEO0