Site Purchase and 301

[TargetClick]

Hello, I just started working with a new client. Since then the client has purchased another company. We have re-branded the new companies home page and 301 redirected the rest of the site's links to the corresponding pages on the holding companies site. Since then the rankings have tanked. I looked at both companies back link profiles and realized that they are quite spammy from the last SEO contractor they hired. That said, the site was ranking fine until last Friday. I was wondering if anyone had seen temporary rankings decrease after 301ing a domain to a different site? Thanks!

[irvingw]

I don't think leaving a homepage up and 301ing the internal pages to another site is a recommended SEO practice.

I have not experienced this first hand but you are theoretically passing bad karma by 301ing an old domain to a new domain so it does seem possible. That being said, seems like a very easy way to do negative SEO, too easy. Simply buy a ton of penalized link farm domains and 301 them to the competition.

[TargetClick]

Hi Irving,

Thanks for your response.  I hadn't thought of this as a way for a competitor to do negative SEO to another site.  It does bring a good concern to light though.  From what I have seen, the link farms typically did not have good content, nor were they relevant.  While that would be good to harm a site, these two sites are in the same industry which makes the very relevant.  I have seen other companies 301 an old site to a new domain before and have no issues.

What would you recommend?  301 the entire site, including the homepage?  Or removing the 301's completely?

Thanks for your input.

[irvingw]

I would 301 the entire site or let them both live as independently as possible. It depends on your branding strategy, maintaining two sites code, duplicate content on sites, traffic coming to each site, a bunch of factors.

301ing all the internal pages could make the site look like it was hijacked to Google, what is the reason for having only the homepage live?

[TargetClick]

The reason for leaving the homepage is purely branding.  It will eventually be redirected to the holding company's site.

Thanks for the help.  Great point of view on how it could be viewed as negative SEO in the 'bots' of Google.

-Greg