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Philosophy of 301 Redirects for Black Belts and Wizards alike...

by provisionalpatent
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Guys and gals:

A big fat question about the philosophy of 301 redirects:

Story: I sold this website (MFC):
massflowmetersandcontrollers.com

To this company (SI):
sierrainstruments.com

They want to make "all" the traffic from (MFC) to come to (SI).
The problem is (MCF) frequently out ranks (SI) in the natural Google results.

My question is:
What is the BEST thing to do to have (MFC) bolster the ranking of (SI)?

I can change ANYTHING on both sites so no holds barred..

My GUT tells me Googls is "smarter" than just editing the HT access file cuz it does not seem like it is in the spirit of high quality search results.

I COULD do a simple 301 redirect on each page from (MFC) to (SI) but that does not seem Google happy either.

Why not completely edit the (MFC) site to have well designed and Google hypertext links with hot articles POINTING to (SI)...

Seems un-good to abandon (MFC) to me but what do you SEO Wizards know about this?

Their BIG concern is they ALWAYS want (SI) to outrank (MFC) in the rankings but the (SI) site has lots of flash and the URL's are not pretty like those of (MFC)..

Should we convert (MFC) to a Wordpress Blog? If so got a theme that would work.. Do not want any eCommerce on (MFC) but want to POINT from (MFC) to the (SI) eCommerce specific pages based on product offering...

This could be a Final Exam for SEO School by golly!

If you answer, with a reasonable reply, I will THANK you!
#301 #alike #belts #black #philosophy #redirects #strategy #wizards #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author smorse1
    Best practices and what I have had the best luck with is using your htaccess file to map equivalent pages from the old site to the new one using 301 redirects.
    Don't use a meta refresh on the individual pages as this won't pass the juice from any backlinking you have to that page over to the new one.
    Eventually the old site will fall out of the rankings but all the link juice will be redirected to the new site. This is, in fact the correct way to do this, and I have seen the benefits of the 301 redirect when doing this.
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      The answer is none of the above.

      Re-reading your post, it sounds if they have bought the domain, not
      the website, and just want the love transferred.

      If they bought the website, but hate the domain, the best way is
      to transfer the whole site to the new domain, then do a 301
      redirect from old to new.

      The problem with just doing a 301 redirect, is that over time the
      tingle will fade. The new site has to stand on its own.

      If it were me, I would keep the old site intact, but put a link
      at the very top to the new site, telling people this site is no
      longer updated and is now at newdomain.com, complete with
      anchor text. That would give the link some juice. I would
      add this link to each and every page. Very easy if the site
      was made using php, asp, etc. All stuff on the old site will
      remain safe on search engines.

      Then completely start SEOing the new site, doing all backlinks
      to the new site.

      One of the main problems with a 301 redirect in your situation, and
      people forget this, is that now the dynamics of your old site are then
      changed and lost. You want to feed off of it, not obliterate it. If you choose
      to just 301 the site, I would only do a main page 301. I would make a
      custom 404 error page, with links to all subpages on the new domain.

      I hate going to a page I find in google, only to be dumped somewhere that
      I have no idea what it is. I'd rather see links and explanations. IMHO,
      that keeps all link juice intact.

      After 6 months, you could then probably 301 the whole site.

      Paul
      Signature

      If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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  • Profile picture of the author RevSEO
    It also sounds like you've got a bigger problem on the new site. Flash and crappy URLs are horrible for SEO reasons. I'd talk seriously to the company about redesigning the main website as well for he best benefit altogether.

    Have you talked to them about doing this?
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    • Profile picture of the author provisionalpatent
      I talked a little bit about it.. they LOVE flash and the guys in devo may be hard to convince.. I think they may need a little bit of educating... We can help em..

      Thanks for the reply. I really appreciate it...
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