How long before I can use a redirected domain without taking back link juice?
-
We recently moved our website to a new domain that better matched our brand. I want to use the old domain at some point for another aspect of our business.
How long after we do the domain redirect will it be safe to use the old domain again--without affecting the seo of the new domain?
Thanks!
Harriet
-
Thank you, Jane. You rephrased my question much better.
You're correct that the old site wasn't being penalized (rebranding was the reason we moved it.)
I have plenty of time to improve the new site before I need to use the old domain.
Thanks again,
Harriet -
This was my impression as well @zharriet. If you haven't yet gotten an answer, letting us further understand the problem will help us to give you a good answer.
-
I didn't get the impression from this question that the old site / domain was penalised. Correct me if I'm wrong, zharriet, but I got the impression that what you're saying is that you changing domains, redirected www.oldsite.com to www.newsite.com, but that at some point in the future, you want to use **www.oldsite.com **at some point in the future for another part of the business. As such, you want to know when you can "turn off" the redirect without harming the new rankings of www.newsite.com, using www.oldsite.comfor new content.
The answer to this is really hard to give: some sites don't seem to benefit much from having old domains pointed at them. Others benefit for a period before that benefit seems to disappear (meaning that you will have needed to build a good number of news links to the new domain).
It is impossible to say what the effect of removing a 301 redirect at some point in the future will be, but the safest way you can ensure that this doesn't harm the new site is by building a robust platform of good on and off site SEO for that new site so that it can withstand having any benefit of the old site's 301 taken away.
-
There really is no expiration date on the link equity that goes through a redirect. If you're worried about penalized links then they will always be present and if you redirect one site to the other then you'll be redirecting all of those links as well.
BeanstalkSEO's solution probably would work. If you want to be able to redirect the site without having a splash page you can also do it by redirecting through an intermediary page that is blocked by robots.txt.
-
Is there a reason that you aren't doing a redirect right away?
-
I assume the old domain has a penalty and thus the concern with the redirection (not judging, just noting the premise of the answer). While in these events I am hesitate to connect the dots at all, going back to my affiliate marketing days (when I had a much more cowboyish approach to SEO) I would have done the following:
1 - Put up a one page splash page on the old site.
2 - Disallow the site in the robots.txt file
3 - Put the noindex,nofollow on the splash page
4 - Use a meta refresh on the splash page directed to the new site
5 - if it was a link issue add a disavow file on both domains for the links to the old domainThe splash page should read something like, "This site has been moved to a new domain. If you are not redirected in x seconds (x being however long you've selected for the refresh) please click here." (where "click here is a nofollowed link to your new domain.
This all said, anytime you link two domains there is always the chance the Google will connect the dots now or in the future so there is an element of risk. You have clearly shown that you don't want weight passing so that's a perk but it all depends on risk tolerance.
I'll be interested to hear any additional thoughts or techniques. I haven't done anything like this in many many years.
Good luck !!!
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
-
Disavow links old links
We have built a lot of sites and there a few sites we no longer manage or want any association with. When I have looked at webmasters I can see 20 to 200+ odd links back to our site. The page however at source has no reference to our website. I have searched the code but there isn't anything. Is it safe to disavow these or just leave them?
Technical SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
301 Redirect for multiple links
I just relaunched my website and changed a permalink structure for several pages where only a subdirectory name changed. What 301 Redirect code do I use to redirect the following? I have dozens of these where I need to change just the directory name from "urban-living" to "urban", and want it to catch the following all in one redirect command. Here is an example of the structure that needs to change. Old
Technical SEO | | shawnbeaird
domain.com/urban-living (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe/the-vale (single page w/ content) New
domain.com/urban
domain.com/urban/tempe
domain.com/urban/tempe/the-vale0 -
GWT shows 38 external links from 8 domains to this PDF - But it shows no links and no authority in OSE
Hi All, I found one other discussion about the subject of PDFs and passing of PageRank here: http://moz.com/community/q/will-a-pdf-pass-pagerank But this thread didn't answer my question so am posting it here. This PDF: http://www.ccisolutions.com/jsp/pdf/YAM-EMX_SERIES.PDF is reported by GWT to have 38 links coming from 8 unique domains. I checked the domains and some of them are high-quality relevant sites. Here's the list: Domains and Number of Links
Technical SEO | | danatanseo
prodiscjockeyequipment.com 9
decaturilmetalbuildings.com 9
timberlinesteelbuildings.com 6
jaymixer.com 4
panelsteelbuilding.com 4
steelbuildingsguide.net 3
freedocumentsearch.com 2
freedocument.net 1 However, when I plug the URL for this PDF into OSE, it reports no links and a Page Authority if only "1". This is not a new page. This is a really old page. In addition to that, when I check the PageRank of this URL, the PageRank is "nil" - not even "0" - I'm currently working on adding links back to our main site from within our PDFs, but I'm not sure how worthwhile this is if the PDFs aren't being allocated any authority from the pages already linking to them. Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? Thanks all!0 -
Redirect Without Passing Old Page Properties
Is there a way to redirect one page to another, e.g. test.com/ to test.com/home, without passing link juice or any other associated properties of the latter to the former?
Technical SEO | | NTGproducts0 -
Does image domain name matter when using a CDN?
Has anyone does studies on using a different CDN domain name for images on a site? Here is an example: or ![](<a)http://cdn.mydomain.com/image.jpg> mydomain.com ranks highly and many images show up in Google/Bing image searches. Is there any actual data that says that using your real domain name for the CDN has benefits versus the default domain name provided by the CDN provider? On the surface, it feels like it would, but I haven't experimented with it.
Technical SEO | | findwell0 -
Broken links shall i put them in my htaccess file to generate juice
Hi, when i had to rebuild my website after my hosting company made an error, i lost over 10,000 pages and lost many thousands of links coming to my site. What i want to know is, instead of trying to recreate those pages again which would take me a long time, should i put them into my htacess file and have them point back into my site. so for example, if i have a link coming to my site to an article which could be, holidays in benidorm are not selling well, would it be a good idea to have that link pointed at the main benidorm section which is benidorm news. And if i had an article which was people are finding it hard to lose weight, instead of writing a new article could i have the link pointing to my health section? If this is the correct way of doing it to grab back some link juice, would it slow my site down and how many links could i put in my htacess file. So what i am trying to say is, if i put in say 1000 redirects into my htaccess file, would it slow my site down and is this a wise thing to do or should i just let the links go.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
How not to lose link juice when linking to thousands of PDF guides?
Hi All, I run an e-commerce website with thousands of products.
Technical SEO | | BeytzNet
In each product page I have a link to a PDF guide of that product. Currently we link to it with a "nofollow" <a href="">tag.</a> <a href="">Should we change it to window.open in order not to lose link juice? Thanks</a>0