Redirecting external blog to main website blog - two questions I'm struggling with

[McTaggart]

Hiya Mozzers - I have a blog separate from main website which is duplicating the blog on the main website. This separate blog is duplicating the main website blog, so it needs to be closed down and redirected. There are some 200 pages of separate blog (identified via Screaming Frog).

So I am suggesting the blog pages should be 301 redirected from the separate blog to the equivalent blog pages on the main website.

Q1) Should the root domain of the separate blog be 301 redirected to the main www.mainwebsite.com/blog page, or to the root domain of the main website?

Q2) Should the blog pages, which lack equivalent content on the main website, be 301 redirected to the main www.mainwebsite.com/blog page, or to the root domain of the main website?

Thanks for your help on this one, Luke

[alrockn]

You should try to mirror the 301's to the duplicates on the main site.  So in answer to your first question, the duplicate blog index page should go to main/blog, and everything else should go to the new location on the main site.  Anything without landing pages on the new site, should redirect to main/blog.

[David-Kley]

You have 2 options:

1. You can turn off the duplicated site, and do a URL removal request in Webmaster tools. The domain you do not want anymore, or the one that is causing the duplication must return a 404 error in order for Google to accept the request. This will cause the entire old site to go away, and the links to be removed from Google's index. If the site does not have a lot of traffic, or does not get a lot of visits, this would be the best route.

2. Do 301 redirects on the duplicated site. You should try and match them up, such as:
olddomain.com/your-blog-post
301 redirects to
NEWdomain.com/your-blog-post

If they do not match up exactly, use best judgement and redirect them either to the home page, or a similar subject matter. For example if you had an seo related topic that wasnt exact match, you could forward it to another article that referenced seo. If you have to send a few to the home page, that wont hurt anything, just dont make the total number excessive, as that could potentially look spammy. Best of luck, If you need any help let me know!

[alrockn]

Option 1 is a very good idea if you think these links will hurt you, Google wise.  Since you says these are all duplicate content, this is probably what you want to do, but first be sure you don't want the link or authority juice from the old blog.  If the blog gets more traffic, has more authority, etc...the decision gets tougher to make.

[McTaggart]

Thanks David - I was wondering whether blog root domain should go to the main website's blog page (www.mainwebsite.com/blog) or homepage (www.mainwebsite.com/) - not sure that it matters one way or the other as never had to deal with this kind of issue before.

[JaneCopland]

Hi Luke,

As alrockn says, I would redirect the root domain of the duplicate blog to mainsite.com/blog.

With the pages that have no duplicate on the main site, either find the likeliest match or redirect to mainsite.com/blog. When I say likeliest match, I mean that if any pages on the old blog seem a good fit with something on the main site, redirect them there. You may find none that fit any of the existing pages. If so, don't worry - I'd redirect those to the main site's blog.

Cheers,

Jane