301 Redirecting multiple domains to brand new domain

[JohnPeters]

Hi guys,

I have read quite a bit of stuff on 301 redirects after Penguin. Hoping someone could help me out.

im looking at a way to do a legit 301 redirect without passing the penalty.

I have acquired two businesses, business1 and business2, that both had websites that were hit by penguin.

Ive anaylsed there backlinks and theres a lot of spammy forum links and comments and I was also informed they were both using buildmyrank.

A side note, buiness2 only started using BMR after it noticed business1 have large amounts of high PR links.

business1.com was ranking at position 1 till the penguin hit. Business2.com was ranking around page 2

I work in the same arena as these two businesses and didnt generate any business via the internet. When these 2 businesses failed (due to loss of rankings and traffic) i decided to take them over.

What I am thinking of doing is 301'ing both business domains to my brand new, zero links, domain which will be the name of my new company.

I will combine the content from both sites, around 1000 pages, in to the new one.

So my question is, does 301'ing multiple domains, that target the same keywords, and operate in the same niche, look less "spammy" then 301'ing 1 domain?

I'm trying to look at it in the eyes of google. It is a legit merging of businesses.

Thanks for your help, really appreciate your time

[SEODinosaur]

When you pass these sites via 301 you are passing those same link profiles. I would highly recommend not using these sites. Google manually penalized sites and they are smarter then us... The only way to 301 sites that used BMR (This Is Terrible/SMH) is by taking down as many bad links as possible and then requesting forgiveness from Google. Google does not care if you bought this site or not, they only care about the domain and its reputation. Taking two domain with terrible reputations (penalized for spam) and linking them to a new URL is most likely going to end up in the same place, unranked.

IMO try to fix the linking profiles of these sites and ask for forgiveness, if this does not work do not 301 redirect. Focus on building real links (educational, entertaining, or funny) that people (users) will want to share, bookmark or naturally link to.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Sure you can merge them but doing it to a brand new site will probably 1) sandbox it and 2) carry over the penguin penalty.

Penguin is a page based penalty - so if all of the bad links were built to the homepage, you can still redirect the sub pages to relevant equivalents on your new site. This would give you a boost without transferring over the penalization.

If the bad links were built everyone, I'd just take the content and link to your site instead of 301 redirecting it.

[JohnPeters]

Hi Donnie,

I understand entirely. I have been working on removing bad links since I acquired the businesses in May. I have removed all BMR links for both domains.

I have also contacted many sites direct and via WHOIS info and asked them to remove the links.

I have requested reinclusion twice now for one of the domains and both times I get the same message back from google. I have litterally done evrything in my power to sort the links profiles out.

Business1.com went from position 1 to 100 on some keywords, some keywords rank first page. But generally all got hit. This is the one Ive been working on the hardest, but it doesnt seem to be coming back at all.

Business2.com went down and has come back a little, from minimal help.

Im sure I read somewhere that sometimes a site may not recover. I think this could be the case.

By the way, business1.com had spammy links, but also had great links as it was a legit company. The owners friend was a so called "seo expert" who went away and xrummered with exact match anchors etc the site. So business1.com link profile is not pure rubbish (if that makes the dffference)

[SEODinosaur]

What did Google respond? you can also go onto Google forums and explain your story there. I see where your coming from and it is very unfortunate... Cleaning up someone else's garbage is not fun (especially not knowing if you can succeed in getting all the stains out.).

IMO if you cleaned up the bad links and the anchor profile is mostly linking in with URL/Branded anchored text you might as well try to do the 301. Reason being is because you have already invested all that time, if those links are not pointing at the old site anymore they might not point at the new one. With that being said this is a coin toss.

Outcome A) You do nothing, site is not ranking.

Outcome B) You do a 301 (since the link profile is clean) and see what happens.

or you can do what Oleg says...

Have all those good (relevant) links point at the new site without a 301. Just make sure you change all of your content to avoid duplication.

[JohnPeters]

Yeah I thought about the Google forums, but dont like making the domains public.

What is annoying is that I still see links appear to the sites, Ive no idea who is doing this or why, or if its just some automated software. I saw 500 links appear last week via Majestic.

What I have been doing also is adding fresh unique content to the sites. I was unsure if this would help.

Something else that I noticed, bith sites have huge footers with links to pages. Making all pages linked from all pages. Im thinking if thats added to the penalty, then a 301 redirect would get rid of that as the new site has a brand new, modern theme and navigation.

[JohnPeters]

sorry forgot to answer. The message from google was that they still detect unnatural links to manipulate PR etc

[JohnPeters]

So would a 301 redirect to a competitor sand box them?

My thinking is how can I send enough signals to Google to show that its legit? Would changing the old businesses Twitter profiles to the new URL and also their Facebook pages?

I am also contacting the sites that have great links and asking them to change the link to the new site.

I would hope all these things tells Google that its legit and not some spammy site or operation.

[SEODinosaur]

Yeah with this info I would not bother to do a 301 redirect. Knowing that for some reason the bad links are continuing to come in is not a stable solution...

With that being said, what you can and should do is point all the good existing links at your new site.

[JohnPeters]

I'd be very interested in a service that will get rid of these bad links. Its just too time consuming for me

[SEODinosaur]

Here you go:

Paid-service: http://www.removeem.com/full-service.php

or

Self-service http://www.removeem.com/self-serve.php

[JohnPeters]

Thanks for this. Do you recommend these guys? I am aware of a bunch of services. My comment should have been im interested in a recommended and proven service.

[SEODinosaur]

They have been mentioned many times on SEOmoz, I never used them but I am assuming they are good.