New website on new url?

[BobAnderson]

We have a new website on a new url (been up for around 2 years now) and our old website is slowly fading in the background, we are now at the point where the money is still ok but we are having issues running both side by side, we have a calculator on each page and are thinking about removing this and adding a box with please order from our new site here (with url of similar page).

Now the issue is we don't want to link for SEO purposes and google hammer us (thinking of no - following these) and we also have a penalty we got in 2012 on the site but we did get out of this, would this cause any issue to the new site?

[LoganRay]

Hi,

After reading your post, I'm wondering why the old domain hasn't already been 301 redirected to the new site? That would really be the ideal situation for not having your two sites compete against each other. You'd want to do this at the page level, so equivalent pages on the old site get redirected to the most relevant page on the new site.

For example: www.oldsite.com/calculator redirects to www.newsite.com/calculator

[BobAnderson]

we did not do it because the old site has a penalty and we do not want to pass anything over to the new domain?

We are thinking of just directing the customer with the url on the calculator rather than 301ing the whole domain as it still gets traffic.

[GlobeRunner]

If the old domain has a penalty, you should be able to get that penalty lifted/removed/revoked. Then, later on you should be able to go ahead and redirect once the penalty is removed.

One of the concerns, though, is that if you redirect ANY page from the old domain to the new domain you may pass on the penalty to the new site. We recommend getting rid of the penalty on the old domain first--and then consider dealing with the issue of redirecting the old to the new domain.

[LoganRay]

Eric said basically what my next recommendation would've been. Building a new site on a new domain is not the way to handle a penalty from Google.

Having 2 websites confusing for people; i.e. people who find both of your sites through a series of refined Google searches. Additionally, it's not likely to solve your problem. Unless you moved your physical location AND you re-branded your company, Google almost certainly knows that your new site is an offshoot of your old site. Therefore, your new site is fighting an uphill battle, competing against its older self, and with Google's preconceived notions of what you're trying to accomplish.

[tommyskalberg]

Good point from Eric, if you have identified that there is a penalty then you can have it removed, and then 301 the old domain (or go on with the old one).

Let us know more about the penalty and we can help you to remove it. I suppose it´s based on links (most common).

• Look for messages (and Manual actions) in Google Search Console
• Use Open Site Explorer (https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/) to identify low quality links and remove them.

If there are some links you cant remove, you can tell Google to ignore them by using their Disavow-tool.
You find the tool here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main

Good luck!

[Carson-Ward]

I agree with the responses here: having two sites is generally not the way forward. I just want to add one other option. Most people who received link-based penalties were building links to 2 or 3 pages. If that's the case you could 301 redirect most of the site on a page level and let the pages with bad links 404.

If you have cleared the penalty it might not even be an issue to 301 redirect the whole domain. Just make sure that you update your disavow on the new domain.