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
-
Is there an SEO advantage to blog content being a child of /blog/ rather than the homepage?
I'm working on a website where all the blog content is listed as separate pages from the homepage, eg: www.domain.com/first-blog-post
Technical SEO | | MillyShaw
www.domain.com/second-blog-post However, it would make my life easier if all blog content was listed under /blog/ so that I could analyse it better in Google Analytics. Eg I'd like it to be: www.domain.com/blog/first-blog-post
www.domain.com/blog/second-blog-post The developer is not keen because it would create extra work for him, and he's also said it's a bad idea from an SEO point of view. But is this the case? Presumably with 301s in place it wouldn't make a difference? Thanks for your help!0 -
Blogging on multiple domains
We have three different domains for geotargeting (za,uk and .com). Each site at at the moment has the same content with only country specific details changed like currency etc. What is the best way to get maximum SEO benefit when posting new content.When we post new content should we repost to all three domains (the same content) or will Google only index the url on the domain which is crawled first. Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | aquaspressovending0 -
Should publish as page or blog posts on Wordpress ?
We have a technical blog website and our primary income is from blog. Recently we developed a open source free tool and but we are not sure if we need to publish it as wordpress page or as normal blog post. We don't look for an income from these tools. Later we will publish this tool in github. Also we have plan to develop many tools (small open source software) like this. So please advise we should place as Page mywebsite/tool1 mywebsite/tool2 or Normal blog posts mywebsite/toolcategory/tool1 mywebsite/toolcategory/tool2 Thanks!!!
Technical SEO | | Scaria0 -
Too Many On-Page Links on a Blog
I have a question about the number of on-page links on a page and the implications on how we're viewed by search engines. After SEOmoz crawls our website, we consistently get notifications that some of our pages have "Too Many On-Page Links." These are always limited to pages on our blog, and largely a function of our tag cloud (~ 30 links) plus categories (10 links) plus popular posts (5 links). These all display on every blog post in the sidebar. How significant a problem is this? And, if you think it is a significant problem, what would you suggest to remedy the problem? Here's a link to our blog in case it helps: http://wiredimpact.com/blog/ The above page currently is listed as having 138 links. Any advice is much appreciated. Thanks so much. David
Technical SEO | | WiredImpact0 -
Duplicate Title Tags On Blogs
Hello Mozzers, I have a client who has a blog and articles section on their website, due to the amount of content they have in these section they have multiples pages so it would be like.. www.bluewidgets.com/blog/p1 www.bluewidgets.com/blog/p2 www.bluewidgets.com/blog/p3 www.bluewidgets.com/blog/p4 All obvioulsy with seperate content in each blog/article posts but the meta descriptions on title tags for this p1,p2,p3,p4 and so on are all the same, is this a major issue? and if so how do I fix it?
Technical SEO | | Prestige-SEO0 -
Should I add my blog posts to my sitemap.txt file?
This seems like it should be an obvious no, just because of the amount of work that would entail, and then remembering to do it every time I make a post, but since I couldn't find anything on Google about it and have never heard anyone mention it, I figured I'd ask.
Technical SEO | | UnderRugSwept0 -
424 Crawl Notices Found - Most of these notices are 301 redirects for our blog. Are notices something that would keep me from ranking well for my keywords?
212 are rel canonical and 176 are 301 permanent re-direct. An example of the re-direct is a change I made to the /trackback 302 status on my blog like; http://www.bluesunproperties.com/2012-spring-biker-rally-thunder-beach/trackback/ Are these Crawl Notices something that I should spend resources on, or should I focus more on my errors and warnings?
Technical SEO | | classa0 -
What should be noindexed on a Wordpress blog?
I know this can be a "it depends" answer so I'll try to explain. Qualifications on your answers would be great. I use the Wordpress architecture for myself and clients on sites and blogs. Almost every business site we create has a blog and I'm always working to improve results on them. My strategy has been the following: Categories: General, main content types, general keywords. Index, follow Tags: Very specific, post specific, may only be used once for one post. My categories have descriptions that are displayed on the category pages with excerpts. Tags rarely have a description but are displayed with excerpts on the page. My idea has been to index the categories to crawl the content and they have unique content by showing the category description. Tags shouldn't be archived because they may be all over the place and may have only 1 post with no tag description. I'm trying to reduce duplicate content but I don't want to limit results for my clients and myself. Should I set tags to noindex, follow or should I have them indexed? The only thing I'm thinking with having the tags indexed is that I may be able to get additional traffic through the more specific tags (i.e. tag = meta tags, category = SEO).
Technical SEO | | JaredDetroit0