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New site: Transferring link juice?

by CreekChub
11 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Here's my predicament...

Long story short, I've built a website in the manufacturing industry. For my little niche, it has worked out fabulously. Not a lot of competition, and I dominate pretty much every keyword. I don't do SEO for a living, but figured enough out to get the site at or near the top of big G for pretty much every keyword that I care about.

I want to leave that site alone, but build a new one. Same niche, same industry, but the content will be tweaked. I an trying to find out if there is a way to re-direct the link juice I have working for me to the new site, but without using an actual redirect. If someone finds their way to the existing site, I don't want them redirected to the new site.

I merely want to take the SEO gains that I have realized away from the old site and apply them to the new site. Again, for a few reasons that I won't go into, simply redirecting traffic from the old site to the new is not an option. It has to do with the nuts and bolts of the business, which is where I actually make my living. Sounds weird, I know, but it isn't negotiable.

Is this possible, or am I stuck with starting over from scratch? Make sense?

Thanks.
#juice #link #site #transferring
  • Profile picture of the author Nelapsi
    As you kind of stated, you didn't do much to get there with the first site. You will probably spend more time trying to figure it out then it takes to just put the site up.

    If you are using Adsense you need to make sure these 2 sites are not targetting the same basic keywords and such or they will "assume" these sites are MFA (Made for Adsense).
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    • Profile picture of the author CreekChub
      Originally Posted by Nelapsi View Post

      As you kind of stated, you didn't do much to get there with the first site. You will probably spend more time trying to figure it out then it takes to just put the site up.

      If you are using Adsense you need to make sure these 2 sites are not targetting the same basic keywords and such or they will "assume" these sites are MFA (Made for Adsense).
      Well, given the fact that I didn't (and mostly still don't) know what I was doing, it took quite a bit of work. I only meant that I wouldn't have had as much success had it been a highly competitive niche or set of keywords

      No adsense. Like I mentioned, this is a site for a real brick and mortar business in the manufacturing industry.
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  • Profile picture of the author yanminis
    Why not just use the same steps you used to rank your old site for the new one?

    The only way I can think of is to cloak your links but it is black hat and can get you in trouble with google.

    Or just redirect to a page on your new site from your old site. The page will look exactly like your old site but on the new site's address and visitors will not know that they have changed sites unless they look at the url.
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    • Profile picture of the author CreekChub
      Originally Posted by yanminis View Post

      Why not just use the same steps you used to rank your old site for the new one?

      The only way I can think of is to cloak your links but it is black hat and can get you in trouble with google.

      Or just redirect to a page on your new site from your old site. The page will look exactly like your old site but on the new site's address and visitors will not know that they have changed sites unless they look at the url.
      If it comes down to it, I'll do exactly what you mentioned: repeat what I did to get where I am. Just sort of hoping that won't be necessary.

      The redirect idea isn't bad, but won't work. It needs to be a completely new, standalone site. If it helps, I don't have to worry about Adsense or any other type of advertising / monetizing. I'm looking for real people that google my keywords, and then pick up the phone and call me.
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  • Profile picture of the author Nelapsi
    Only thing I can think of it just providing a link from one to the other, that will help a little. Also can provide a link within articles that are related, kind of like additional material or reading type thing
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    • Profile picture of the author Michael Carlin
      Use canonical. It makes me feel icky linking to seomoz... but it's that or rewrite it:

      Canonical URL Tag - The Most Important Advancement in SEO Practices Since Sitemaps | SEOmoz
      Signature
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      • Profile picture of the author CreekChub
        Originally Posted by Michael Carlin View Post

        Use canonical. It makes me feel icky linking to seomoz... but it's that or rewrite it:

        Canonical URL Tag - The Most Important Advancement in SEO Practices Since Sitemaps | SEOmoz
        Short, simple, and to the point. If I understand it correctly, this should solve my problem beautifully and simply. Let's see:

        I add the tag to the existing site, and Mr. Google will essentially assume that it is a duplicate of the new site. Actual people won't be affected though. The search engines, for the purposes of rankings, will treat the new site as if it were in fact the old. Yes?

        Can it really be that simple? Does newsite then take over whatever rankings oldsite held? Does oldsite immediately drop from the rankings, and newsite magically replaces it? It seems too good to be true, but I guess I need to dig into rel=canonical and see what its all about. If you're correct and it really is this easy, I owe you a case of whatever your preference is. This is the magic bullet I'm looking for.

        Edit: Uh oh. I'm reading that the canonical tag doesn't carry across different domains. This link is from 2009 though. Is it different now? I'm looking to transfer link juice from "www.abc.com" to "www.xyx.com".
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        • Profile picture of the author CreekChub
          Anybody got the definitive answer on canonicals? I can't seem to find anything that I can take to the bank. Can it be used for this purpose across domains?
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          • Profile picture of the author CreekChub
            I guess I should add: I'm not talking about 1 million spammy backlinks, article directories, etc. The most questionable links I've got are my sig in a couple of forums like this. The forums don't really pertain to my site, but I am legitimately participating. Everything else is Facebook, Manta, Youtube, Wikipedia (yep, snuck some in there because it made complete sense - over a year now and no hickups with them), etc. Not sure if that matters or not.
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  • Profile picture of the author lovboa
    Banned
    Depending on the competition of your keyword and the authority of your current site, a single link from your best pages to your new site will be good.

    I've done what you are trying to do before. I had a site ranking high for a lot of keywords, and had a PR of 2 on the homepage. I made a new site and put a link on my old site's homepage with the exact keyword as the anchor text and that was enough to boost it up to the first page.

    It won't just be #1 straight off the bat, but getting that link from a site that was already established and ranking highly was a good boost to get started.

    As for link juice being transferred, whatever links that you have control over (i.e. your own websites, 2.0 sites, articles, etc) you can go back and edit so that they link to your new site.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Canonical is not the answer. There is no way to really do what you are looking to do that I can think of. You can provide a link from the original site to the new site. That will help a little, but will not transfer the exact rankings in any way, shape, or form.

    Canonical tags are for dealing with duplicate content on your domain.
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