301 redirects and old domain names
-
Thanks to the great advice i've received on this forum, I'm combining 50 different truck sites into a single, ultimate truck website. So my question is how long should I make a website 301 redirect to the appropriate page on my new website?
My thought is that if it works well to have a single website, it might be nice to eventually sell off some of the old domain names that I won't be using anymore.
Thanks!
Andy
-
Some good advice from Google on changing domains here: https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=83105&hl=en
I have never 301'd 50 different sites either, however I wouldn't just leave it up to the 301s to inform Google - use the 'Change of Address' function in Webmaster Tools. If you haven't already got Webmaster Tools set up on all of the old sites, I'd say that's an essential task to do first. Then you can tell Google manually that the new site is replacing the old one/s. You'll have to repeat the process 50 times but it's quick, easy and well worth the effort.
Google suggest that you leave the 301s in place on the old site/s for at least 180 days - but probably better to listen to Marcus and Alan; 12 months won't do any harm.
I'd also get the new site up and running concurrently for a few weeks first, if it's a new domain or if it hasn't had any content on it for a while. A client recently immediately killed their old site upon launching the new domain, found out the new domain had previously been burnt, and it tool 6-8 weeks to recover rankings for the new site after a 'reconsideration request'. It cost them organic traffic and extra PPC spend.
Maybe others would advise against this? Realise it's potentially duplicate content but a short cross-over period would enable the old sites to continue providing temporary value as the new site registers.
-
My thoughts exactly Marcus. A 12 month rule of thumb is what I go by, with the monitoring being key.
-
Hey Andy
There is no real concrete answer to that question so you need to play it by ear. Set up the redirects and watch them over time. Query the to ensure that the additional sites have all disappeared from the search engine result pages. You can also check the web logs on these domains to see if they are picking up traffic from search at all and if so, continue to leave them as long as it takes.
I would be prepared to leave them all for at least 12 months and then review them all and make your decisions.
Additionally, try not to worry about the 301's too much and concentrate on the new main site. Start building up some good links and if possible see if you can get valuable links pointing to the old sites all pointing to the new site. Get some great content on there as well and start promoting that and this will all help the new site supersede the older sites.
As an aside, I have never 301'd fifty sites into one so it would be interesting to hear if anyone else has any experience of combining so many sites into one.
Hope it helps & be prepared for a bit of wait.
Marcus
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
-
Can i do 301 redirect
So this is what im doing, 301 redirect to my site/allen-webdesign points to main domain Allen is the city i have a page called local-webdesign with all the cities. Will this improve my ranking or should i stop?
Technical SEO | | jsdfw0 -
Redirect Chain Domain
MozPro is highlighting some redirect chain issues with our domain that I do not recall ever setting up in our redirect list. In our Moz Pro Campaign I see the Site Crawl has flagged 36 Redirect Chain Issues. I understand how the redirect chain errors can happen but I do not recall ever manually redirecting our domain, yet I have http://stickylife.com, https://stickylife.com & https://www.stickylife.com all associated in one of our redirect chain errors. When looking at our redirect files I do not see any of these domain redirects and wonder how this has happened and how to fix it. It appears as though our HTTP and HTTPS is causing some redirection. I wonder if this is coming from our DNS settings?
Technical SEO | | StickyLife0 -
Is page rank lost through a 301 redirect?
Hi everyone. I'd really appreciate your help with this one 🙂 I've just watched Matt Cutt's video 'what percentage of PageRank is lost through a 301 redirect?' and I am confused. I had taken this to mean that a re-direct would always lose you page rank, but watching it again I am not so sure. He says that the amount of page rank lost through a 301 redirect is the same as any other link. Does this mean that no page rank at all is lost during site migrations? Or is it the case that first page rank would be lost from the original link and then more page rank would be lost from any subsequent redirects? watch?v=Filv4pP-1nw
Technical SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
Simple 301 redirect a subfolder to another subfolder
Hi, I have a number of sub-folders that I have to move, each of which contains a number of files. subfolder A has files a, b & c subfolder B has files d, e & f
Technical SEO | | aactive
subfolder C has files g, h & i A, B & C folders need to be X, Y & Z Will the following work? RewriteRule ^subfolder-A/* http://www.domain.com/subfolder-X/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^subfolder-B/* http://www.domain.com/subfolder-Y/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^subfolder-C/* http://www.domain.com/subfolder-Z/ [R=301,L] will this result in visitors to http://www.domain.com/subfolder-B/f.html being redirected to http://www.domain.com/subfolder-Y/f.html? All on the same domain. in reality we are talking hundreds of sub folders and thousands of files so we don't want to have to reference every file individually in the htaccess. Thanks0 -
302 to 301 redirect
Our site has quite a few 302 redirects that really ought to be 301's. Our IT department is really busy so the question is, given that the 302's have probably been in place for years, is it worth changing them to 301's now? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Houses0 -
301 Redirecting weird URLs with % in them
I've been working on redirecting links reported as 404 in Google webmaster tools. I've stumbled upon 41 URLs that Google is reporting as 404 that include a '%' in the URL, but I don't know how to redirect. Here is an example: URL: bond_information.htm%20Surety%20Bond%20Information,%20with%20FAQ Attempted redirect: redirect 301 /bond_information.htm%20Surety%20Bond%20Information,%20with%20FAQ http://www.mysite.com/ Unfortunately, after implementing the redirect, http://www.mysite.com/bond_information.htm%20Surety%20Bond%20Information,%20with%20FAQ still resolves a 404 error. Anyone successfully fix these errors using Apache .htaccess?
Technical SEO | | TheDude0 -
How to force a trailing slash after the domain name
My campaign analysis is predictably listing domain.com and domain.com/ as repeated content. I've searched and searched but cannot find a way to force a trailing slash on the end of the domain name unless there's a file or directory after it.. Is there a way to accomplish this using .htaccess
Technical SEO | | JollyBoy0 -
Redirecting a domain
I was setting up a new campaign and received the following error from Roger Robot. "We have detected that the domain www.sitename.com and the domain sitename.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here." I know about redirecting a PAGE using 301 Redirects and how to specify the www. canonical in Google webmaster tools, but is there a "DOMAIN" redirect that I'm missing. What would you suggest doing given the error message above. Thanks, Bill Sqnch.jpg
Technical SEO | | Marvo0