Need seo advice! At a fork in the road!
-
Hi,
I m having a difficult time deciding what steps to take next, about my marketing strategy. I have 2 e-commerce sites for more than 7 years, one of them got a google link penalty back in september 2012 and lost 80% of organic traffic. I have worked on the bad links, got some of them removed and others disavowed. After 5 months of hard work and getting high quality links from authority sites related in my industry, I received a message from google saying that the manual spam penalty was revoked. This was in feb 26th. Since then I have got couple more high quality links and content to the site, but the organic traffic is still how it was prior to penalty revoked (at 20%). I still have no revenue from this site and i don't see what else I can do or how long I should work on it to see some improvement on traffic. My other site on the other hand is doing just fine but has some conversion issues. I m thinking of dropping all seo related activities for my first site and focus on the second one to see if we can have some increase on the organic traffic of that site. If I was to do a 301 redirect from my first site to the second one, what kind of effect will this have on the second site, would that be a negative or positive impact in terms of traffic? also thinking of moving the site from x-cart platform to magento. I appreciate any advice i can get here.
Thank you
Nick
-
Hi Nick,
I think I'd echo what Alan said. Just because your manual penalty has been revoked doesn't mean you're not still suffering from an algorithmic one. As such I'd probably be inclined not to 301 the whole site.
Assuming your second site is topically similar you might consider reaching out directly to those high quality sites that are linking to you and asking them if they'd be willing to link to your other site instead.
Similarly you might consider moving the link worthy content to your second site and (assuming all the links to your content are 'good') just 301 those pages.
I hope this helps,
Hannah
-
For the most part, I agree with Chris, but I would like to make a point on the 301.
Google may have said that the manual penalty has been lifted, but it does not mean that you are not still being penalized via the algorithm. doing a 301 may damage your second site.
I would 301 redirect only the good links, by looking at the referrer header.
As for 301s passing as much link juice as a link, I also seen the matt cuts video, but I don't read it the same way.
if you make a link to pageA, then redirect to pageB, you will lose link juice twice.
Matt was not very clear in the video, he did say that a 301 loses as much as a link does. A link and a 301 both a make a request to the server. I think the better way at looking at it is that every request loses link juice. Having a link to pageA then redirected to pageB is 2 requests, and 2 loses of link juice
-
hi thanks for your reply, so, since the penalty was revoked on the first site, it is ok to do 301?
301 will not transfer anything negative to the other site right ? last question, will the high quality links to the first site that i got in the pas few week pass any juice to the second site ?
thank you
-
Nick,
First off its a tough call to throw in the towel on a site, but the bottom line is if its not making you any money it probably needs the axe. Especially if you've got another site that has conversion issues. Those are things that you have way more control over. My vote is cut the first site and focus on the second. As for the 301 I would do it if the two sites were similar enough to seen plausible. According to Matt Cutts a 301 passes as much juice as a link. That's my two cents.
Chris
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
-
Basic SEO question
Hi! One of my clients, a Chiropractic clinic, has a lot of unique content in norwegian. Problem is; we still have problems building backlinks here in norway. Is one possibility to translate this content to another language and try to get backlinks this way? Would a backlink from another country have the same value as a "local" one? If translating the content is an option how would I go about spreading this content? Is outsourcing an option? Cheers!
Link Building | | AleksanderOlsen0 -
How to work with directories for SEO?
Hi, How many directory links do you tend to build in 1 month? And what do you look for in a directories before you submit? I could build 2 links a day from directories but the thought of 60 links being built a month from directories shouts bad news to me. I've had a look and come across a few directories with high DA/PA but at the end of the day they are just link directories, no content, lots of thin pages with lots of links pointing out. A couple of examples of good directories would help. Cheers
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Why do we need proxy to so Backlinks?
Does Google knows the IP addresses that the backlinks are created from? if i create 200 backlinks for my site without proxies will google ban my site because it will look like i a the one who create all the backlinks? May i ask how many proxies do you guys need to create around 200 backlinks per day? If i already use the proxies today Can i use the same set of proxies to create backlinks tomorrow? THanks
Link Building | | locoto00071 -
What are the best SEO agencies for link building?
I am not looking for a full service SEO agency. I just want link building. Not paid links, not link networks, not blog comments, not bookmarks...real, legit, decent links. Does anyone have any experience working with an SEO agency that helped them develop their link profile positively and at a reasonable price? I'm willing to pay for the service, I just want to work with someone who won't buy links or send a bunch of spam our way. If anyone has worked with such an agency, please let me know so I can contact them for more info. Thanks!
Link Building | | DanDeceuster0 -
Question to SEO experts about backlink tracking
Hi, could you recommend the best tool that you use to keep track of all the backlinks you have. I'd imaging there is a good software or website which lists all your backlinks with all relevant info for each link (PR of the linking site, authority level etc) thanks in advance for sharing.
Link Building | | limens0 -
SEO Virgin - how shall I start ?
Hello everybody, I'm pretty new to this whole SEO world but Im willing to do my best to learn the most crucial things in order to optimize our site for it. I've purchased the pro option and hope to get some insights into areas that need to optimized in order to get a great ranking by google. I've already started with share linking and social media activities, in order to build up links to our sites. Since our community will be a specified media sharing portal, Im not quite sure how I should start the linking process besides posting some relevant articles on digg, delicious, facebook, etc, incl. relevant links and content... I read in some of your forums that you would not recommend to pay for links. So how shall I start with the onpage optimization and link building process ? Appreciate your help! Thanks a ton! M.
Link Building | | Kaan0 -
Good SEO Companies
Can you recommend any reputable SEO companies for someone with a smaller budget? Mainly just looking for link building.
Link Building | | bigboy7250