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A very important question about 301 redirect !

by RoniShwartz
9 replies
Hi folks, I have a slightly complicated issue I hope you can help me with... :confused:

I have a three years old website, with thousands of indexed pages and PR-4

For branding purposes, I want to "mask" sections of my website with different domain-names, and add a 301 redirects to send viewers to the relevant pages...

Here's what I mean: Let's say I have a website about ethnic foods from around the world, called worldethnicfoods.com and the URL of the section about China is worldethnicfoods.com/China (with sub-sections, like worldethnicfoods.com/China/Cantonese and so on...)

Now, I want to re-name my "China section" and give it the domain-name : chinabestfood.com (which will re-direct viewers to worldethnicfoods.com/China )

My questions are :
  1. Am I going to complicate matters by doing so ?
  2. Is the new, keyword-rich, domain name going to extract some 'SEO juice' for me, or what matters is only the actual URL, not the 'mask' ?
  3. in terms of SEO : Is it wiser to designate a section of the website as a seperate website (and, hence, the enjoy the reputation which the site already has with Google), or should I just create a fresh website for this specific section/s ?
Your expert advice is really, really, needed (and appreciated, of course... )

Cheers, Roni
#301 #301 redirect #domain #important #question #redirect #seo #url
  • Profile picture of the author sylarrr
    with 301 direct all the "juice" is transfered, so don't worry
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  • Profile picture of the author NickBhakta
    Hey Roni,

    Your web hosting company should provide a redirect tool. You can access it from your cPanel.

    1) In the "Domains" section, click on Redirects.

    2) Once you get to the Redirects page, the Redirect type should be 301 Redirect by default. If it's not change it to 301 Redirect.

    3) Choose the source domain name from the drop down list.

    4) Choose the directory that is associated with the source domain name from step 3.

    5) Next, you will enter the domain name where you want the domainname.com/subdirectory redirected to.

    Additional options:
    6) Redirect with or without www is selected by default for next feature. This option should be fine unless you want to change it to another option.

    7) Check box for Wild Card Direct - This is unchecked by default. Leave it unchecked for your purpose.
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  • Profile picture of the author Domainate
    It can work, but since the Google Panda updates, be wary of doing this with a lot of domains as Google may notice and not like it too much.
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    • Profile picture of the author tpw
      Originally Posted by Nametrader.com View Post

      It can work, but since the Google Panda updates, be wary of doing this with a lot of domains as Google may notice and not like it too much.

      Really?

      Can you point me to documentation from Google that says that 301 redirects are no longer kosher?

      The last time I checked, Matt Cutts of Google was still recommending 301 redirects to permanently move link juice from one page/site to another, and 302 redirect for temporarily moving link juice.

      I'd like to see proof that they no longer accept this as a valid use of their search algorithm.
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      • Profile picture of the author Domainate
        Originally Posted by tpw View Post

        Really?

        Can you point me to documentation from Google that says that 301 redirects are no longer kosher?

        The last time I checked, Matt Cutts of Google was still recommending 301 redirects to permanently move link juice from one page/site to another, and 302 redirect for temporarily moving link juice.

        I'd like to see proof that they no longer accept this as a valid use of their search algorithm.
        He's recommended 301 redirects vs. 302 redirects and I'm not saying that is bad to do on a small scale - I'm saying it catches their attention and can possibly result in penalties if done on a massive scale. He's said such in one of his videos: .

        I've also faced issues with 301 redirecting a lot of domains to a single page on my site before such that the site lost its pagerank (had gone from 3 to 0). They were masked redirects too, which is what the OP is talking about.
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  • Profile picture of the author Rus Sells
    Hub pages avoided all panda trouble by switching all the users accounts to sub domains so I don't think any troubles with sub domains or redirects.
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  • Profile picture of the author RoniShwartz
    Thank you all for the support, but I'm not 100% sure you understood what my issue is...

    I'm NOT planning to change my website's domain-name, neither do I wish to redirect viewers to a new location...

    What I do wish to do is to add more pages to my existing website, using the normal URLs, as follows : my-existing-website.com/new-section and to "mask" them with different (keyword rich) domain names, mainly for branding and marketing purposes.

    (eg: I will market the domain name my-new-site.com in forums, articles and so on, and once somebody will click it, he will be directed to my-existing-website.com/new-section )

    The questions I have are :

    1. Do you have a reason to believe im looking for troubles with Google by doing so (if yes, why) ?

    2. Is the fact that I'm "masking" my existing pages with keyword-rich domain name going to add any SEO juice to those "masked" pages ?


    Cheers, Roni
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  • Profile picture of the author showmack
    Hi, Please find the following answers:

    1)Am I going to complicate matters by doing so ?
    >> Masking and 301 redirect both are different things. If you only use 301 redirect then it will not complicate the matter. If you are planning to mask it permanently then google might consider it as a new domain and will consider the content as duplicate content.

    2) Is the new, keyword-rich, domain name going to extract some 'SEO juice' for me, or what matters is only the actual URL, not the 'mask' ?
    >> Domain name affect the overall seo rank, if you have keyword in domain name itself then it helps in SERP's and appears on top. It will be beneficial in both ways either you redirect it or mask it.

    3) in terms of SEO : Is it wiser to designate a section of the website as a seperate website (and, hence, the enjoy the reputation which the site already has with Google), or should I just create a fresh website for this specific section/s ?
    >> It is not wiser to designate a section of the website as a separate website like I have mentioned in 1st point.
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  • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
    Just create new sites and use 301's to point the old section pages to the new domain (where you would have the old content back up) so you'll still get the link juice that was going to the pages but for your new domain.

    Creating new domains that just redirect to sub pages of an old site doesn't make sense.
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    nothing to see here.

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