Old site spammy links, rebranding, what is the best option?

[Brian-H]

I look over seo for a site a few months ago and have been working hard to do some nice guest posting and cleaning up duplicate pages (a nightmare as its a custom programmed cms!)

It's just dawned on me that 30% of the inbound links are from low quality directory type sites and all focussed on their main keyword.

The site owner recently asked me about a site rebrand (new domain name) and how this would affect seo.

I see the options as:

1. Attempt to clear up the backlink profile at The original site (lots of work)

2. Do nothing

3. Clean up the backlink profile, Set up new site and redirect The now clean first site to the new site (lots of work)

4. Set up the new site lose some authority (you cant redirect the homepage as that is where all the spammy links point to) and redirect only safe links from The old site (luckily I changed some page structure so some are clean of old spammy links) internal pages unaffected. (less work but a potential hit on site authority as not all homepage links were spam)

Anything else I haven't thought of or any thoughts on the above?

Note: the new site is aged as it was something that was put on the burner so it has domain age and luckily only 35 directory links using the company name.

Brian

[TomRayner]

Think you've weighed up the options quite well, Brian.

Those low spammy directory links - how likely is it that you would get them removed? You may find that some of them have simply been abandoned after the big Google updates and so it will be like whacking your head against the wall trying to get them removed.

How much link "strength" (PA/DA etc) does your current domain have? What are the traffic numbers? From this, you may be able to work out whether it would be worth redirecting if you could get all those bad links removed - which, as you said, may take a long time.

I'd be tempted to start afresh on the new domain and do not redirect the original site to it, therefore foregoing any link removal.  If you have a lot of brand terms coming in to your site via organic search (you can check this with Analytics), you could place a notice on the homepage of your old website saying you've rebranded, with the URL written underneath (but obviously not linked to your new site) - this would somewhat consolidate any interrupted user journey.

That's my recommendation, but would be keen to hear others' as well, as it's a very good question.  Hope this helps, Brian!

[Brian-H]

That's another option. I think I am going to recommend option 4. A lot of the guest posts written could be contacted and have the links updated (my writer got a good rapport going with many of the site owners).

Option 4 (and your option) avoids the whole admitting to google previous sins which I do feel uncomfortable with.

Thanks for being a bounce board and giving me another suggestion.

[TomRayner]

Teehee, being a bounce board sounds fun. I think you're right to err on the side of caution with regards to confessing and repenting to Google as well, but that's just me being a sceptic.