Purchasing a site for a 301 Re-direct
-
Hi Mozzers,
I have a question regarding a tactic I'm considering for a client. My client has a web hosting company and is ranking well for his keywords and in position 3 for his main term.
There is a site available on flippa that is a keyword rich domain and has a decent link portfolio and domain authority and the price is attractive.
I'm considering buying it to 301 it to his domain but I've never done this tactic before.
Is this grey/black hat? Has anyone done this before and to what extent did it work?
Thanks
Bush
-
Wayne gave a good answer.
From a great deal of research I have found that a 301 redirect loses some of the link juice to avoid people abusing the power of building many domains and then forwarding them all to one main domain.
In my opinion this is well worth it still especially when you don't have to go through the work to have established the link portfolio.
One thing to look out for though is making sure that the link portfolio really is as good as you think it is.
Look into the backlinks and see if they are from reputable sources which will stay there or if thy are just a mass of profile backlinks and comment spam which could just make it seem like they have a lot of good links or even get those links removed later on.
At the very least the 301 redirect will help get the robots to your site to increase crawl frequency which i find to be great when you want your pages to be indexed and updated quickly on google.
-
Wayne - you've been really helpful thanks.
Much appreciated - I'll check the link graph out in more detail now
Bush
-
I can't say for sure what caused the delay and I'll be honest and admit I wasn't paying a lot of attention to it so my time frame could be off by a fair amount.
Negatives - it really still boils down to a form of manipulation and that always has the potential to go wrong right? It's the link profile that's going to help you anyway, so if the price is reasonable I'd go the "purchase/request new links" approach.
-
Hi Wayne,
Thanks for your response. May I ask what the 60 day delay was down to?
They are of similar themes yes. I really like the idea of contacting the providers of the current links as well.
At this point I'm going off the stats on flippa so need to dig deeper on traffic and domain age etc.
Any negatives? If we do it we'll do it once and once only but will Google hit us with anything?
Bush
-
We did this a year or so back for a client merger - the soon-to-be-defunct domain was redirected to the new site and definitely did help things, but only after a delay of about 60 days. Having said that, the tactic would have passed human scrutiny because of the situation - not sure if that would factor in here.
Are the sites of a similar theme? If they are you could buy the new site and then email as many of the linking domains as possible and ask them if they would be willing to change their link to point to your client's existing domain. It's more work but could end up being a great solution if they agree to tweak the anchor text for you as well. Plus, you then have another relationship - and you can never have too many of those when link building.
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
-
301 Redirects
Hi, I have switched my site from a http .co.uk site to a https .com site. I have set a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file pointing all traffic going to the original .co.uk site to go to the new https: RewriteEngine on
Technical SEO | | imoprojects
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^up-bus.co.uk$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.up-bus.co.uk$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ "https://www.up-bus.com/$1" [R=301,L] however when i search in google for keywords the original .co.uk site is still registering in search, is there something else I am required to do to tell google to use the new https site instead? Do i need to do redirects for every page, or is what I have done above sufficient? Hope you can help, I am struggling with getting our site to register on google search, any advice greatly welcome Thanks in advance, Ian0 -
Importance of 301 Redirects
Hello, I have been brought in at the last minute to consult for an e-commerce client who is about to relaunch their website. The site currently receives 8000 visits a month, 3100 of which are from organic search. They have a few thousand product pages. The web development firm they are using is changing all of the old product page urls and using 'search engine friendly' urls for the new site, which is expected to launch in a few weeks. However, they did not/are not planning on including 301 redirects from the old URLs. Other than simply stating 'this will be bad for your SEO', what would be a correct way of explaining to the client how much of a problem it will be if their new site launches without 301s. For example, is this a big enough issue to delay the launch of the site / get in a contract dispute with the web developer?
Technical SEO | | stageagent0 -
Redirect a 301 Redirect
Does any link juice get passed from a permanent redirect to a new 301 redirect? If so, are there any studies which indicate an estimated percentage?
Technical SEO | | RedCaffeine0 -
How to handle mobile site with less pages than the main site?
We are developing a mobile version of our website that will utilize responsive design/dynamic serving. About 70% of the main website will be included in the mobile version. What (if anything) should be the redirect for pages not included in the mobile version of the site? Also - for one specific section users will be redirected from that page to the homepage, what is the redirect that should be used for this? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Am I using 301 correctly?
Hello, I have a 'Free download' type site for free graphics for designers. To prevent hot linking we authenticate the downloads and use a 301 redirect. So for example: The download URL looks like this if someone is clicking on the download button: http://www.website.com**/resources/243-name-of-the-file/download/dc37** and then we 301 that URL back to: http://www.website.com**/category-name/243-name-of-the-file** Is a 301 the correct way to do that?
Technical SEO | | shawn810 -
Remove Site from Google
How can I get my website out of google? I want all pages completely gone. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
301 redirects and Dynamic URLs
I just ran my first diagnostic and one of my primary immediate problems are duplicate titles and duplicate content. My guess it that because the root URL http://sitename.com (which has not yet been redirected to www...) has generated an entire tree of content which is identical to the tree rooted at http://www.sitename.com. QUESTION: Do I need to do a redirect simply for the root url (sitename.com -> www.sitename.com) or do I now need to develop specific 301 redirects for each of the sub-nodes/pages? ie sitename.com/?q=about-us -> www.sitename.com/?q=about-us sitename.com/?q=our-team -> www.sitename.com/?q=our-team etc.
Technical SEO | | Barrycliff680 -
Moving Duplicate Sites
Apologies in advance for the complexity. My client, company A, has purchased company B in the same industry, with A and B having separate domains. Current hosting arrangement combines registrar and hosting functions in 1 account so as to allow both domains to point to a common folder, with the result that identical content is displayed for both A & B. The current site is kind of an amalgam of A and B. Company A has decided to rebrand and completely absorb company B. The problem is that link value overwhelmingly favours B over A. The current (only) hosting package is Windows, and I am creating a new site and moving them to Linux with another hosting company. I can use 301's for A , but not for B as it is a separate domain and currently shares a hosting package with A. How can I best preserve the link juice that domain B has? The only conclusion I can come up with is to set up separate Linux hosting for B which will allow for the use of 301's. Does anyone have a better idea?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0