Moving content to a clean URL

[Silasrose]

Greetings

My site was seriously punished in the recent penguin update.  I foolishly got some bad out sourced spammy links built and I am now paying for it

I am now thinking it best to start fresh on a new url, but I am wondering if I can use the content from the flagged site on the new url.

Would this be flagged as duplicate content, even if i took the old site down?

your help is greatly appreciated

Silas

[NateStewart]

Hi Silas,

While moving content would probably solve your problem, a cheaper option would be to use the "disavow links" tools from Google. This is to be used if you know what links are causing the problem. I have not had to deal with this problem yet myself but from my reading i believe this may solve your problem as well as prevent you from any potential problem from creating a new url, the hassle of re-branding that url and just having to figure out a good new one!

Just simply Google "disavow tool" and it should be the first result. It will take you to your webmaster tools page but i'm not sure how to find it without doing a search.

[Silasrose]

Hi Nathan

thanks for your reply.

Unfortunately I already used the disavow tool a few months back when I realized what happened to my site.  I was starting to rank up again then the new penguin update came along a buried me.

So you dont think I would be punished for duplicate content if I used my content on a new url after taking down the old site?

many thanks!

[NateStewart]

Well after reading some other Q&A posts I made the discovery that the disavow tool doesn't permanently remove the link.

Others have suggested going through the effort or physically removing the link.

I found this article on backlink

[Silasrose]

Thanks nathan

yes I kinda doubt the disavow tool is of much use, hence why I am now looking at moving to a new url

lessons learned