Is it ok to 301 redirect this previously algorithmicly penalised site?

[isntworkdull]

Hi All,

Is it OK to 301 redirect site A to site B?

Site A: http://goo.gl/P9Zp2y

Site B: http://goo.gl/ySDCzb

The story - in 2013 site a seemed to be penalised with some kind of anchor text algorithm penalty - SEO couldnt fix, so created site B and turned site A into a holding page with a no follow link to new site.

SEO company worked on disavow file etc, implemented in late 2013

301 redirect site A to B in late 2013 - SEO advised to stop 301 about 8 weeks later... This was my fault i didnt realise the implications of a redirect...

Stopped the redirect, but too late,  as site B dropped in rankings in early 2014 - new disavow files uploaded to both sites, but damage seems done now.

No longer have a SEO company, and i would ideally like to 301 redirect site A to B, as it looks messy having a holding page - but wanted to check if SEO would still strongly advise against that?

please advise

James

[Dezzign]

Hello James, The effects of a 301 from a penalised site are dependant on the site the 301 is pointing too. You say that your old site was penalised from over optimised anchor text. If you 301 this penalised domain to a more authoritative domain, then this domain will be able to handle all of the anchor text links you've effectively redirected to it via the 301.

Penalties do not pass through 301 redirects. People get confused about this because the new site often gets penalised too, but that's not because the 301 was from a penalised site. It's because the new site couldn't handle all of the keyword-rich anchor text backlinks either.

If penalties could pass through 301 redirects, then you could simply redirect a couple of penalised domains to an authority site like Amazon or eBay and cause them to be penalised. This is not the case.

Authoritative sites can easily absorb the influx of anchor text links from a 301 because their link profile is so strong and diverse. 1000's of exact match links won't do anything to them, it would probably help them.

There are many situations where 301's from penalised sites can help another site to rank better. If your penalised site was fairly small and you had a 100+ links with the same anchor text, then this domain would make for a great 301 to a bigger site. The bigger site would have to have very low anchor text ratios of about .5%. If all of the new domain's other links were generic and branded links, then the new 301 with 100+ anchor text links would do wonders for the new site. This is provided both sites are in the same niche, and the links were relevant, etc.

Another obvious caveat; if you're pointing 301's to a money site, then this is very risky business indeed. The site may flourish permanently with the new injection of links from the 301; it may also crash and burn a couple of weeks or months later.

In your situation, it sounds as though your new site wouldn't be able to handle the influx of new links via the 301 from your old site. Your new site is just too weak to cope with these potentially toxic links. I'd advise you to remove the 301. I'd also advise you to disassociate the old site completely from the new site too, and this means no 302 redirects or backlinks from the old site either.

[isntworkdull]

hi Richard,

thank you for the reponse, what you explained is kind of what happened - initally after the 301 was started site B went up in rankings for a month or two... then it started to drop, the 301 redirect was removed - but site B still dropped and never recovered.

However you mention "i'd also advise you to disassociate the old site completely", do you mind me asking how?

I ask, because there is no redirect in place any more, has not been for a year or so, however if i look in the google webmaster tools "links to my site" of site B - it lists websites that link to site A... So it appears to me there is now some kind of association because of the previous 301 redirect - is it possible to clear this association, or ami stuck with it?

[Dezzign]

Hi James, Yes I just meant to make sure there are no 302 redirects or no backlinks from the homepage of site A pointing back to site B.

Also, be aware that Google also knows that you own both domains unless you registered them as private, and you also have both sites in your Webmaster Tools account. Technically, this shouldn't matter, as each site should be treated as its own entity, regardless of who owns it.

The fact that those old 301 links are showing in webmaster tools doesn't mean much, perhaps their link indexing cache hasn't refreshed. If you've removed the 301, then those links are no longer pointing to your site no matter what any tool says.

There is a good service called Link Detox Boost. You load up all of those old backlinks into the tool, and the tool forces Google to crawl those links again. The theory is that once they crawl the pages those links are on and realise that the backlinks don't point back to your site anymore, it helps to remove the Penguin flag (penalty) from your site much faster.

It's ironic how this is achieved though. In order to prompt Google to crawl the pages those old links are on, they spam the pages your links are on with fresh new links. When Google visits the old link pages via the newly created soft spam links, it recrawls the page and adjusts the link index for your domain. Fighting Spam using Spam.

This is why those links may still be showing in your Webmaster Tools for site B. Perhaps if you ran a link Detox Boost campaign, all of these links would be removed from your Webmaster Tools account. And perhaps the Penguin anchor dragging your site down would become a bit lighter. (By the way I have no affiliation with Link Detox Boost - although I have used some of their tools, and I rate them as excellent)