Migration to a new domain

[joelsemy]

Hi everyone,

So i have one project where I'm planning to move current content on new domain, two reasons:

1. It seems current domain has some google penalty (backlink related, not manual)

2. Client wants rebranding and already has domain with new brand name.

So as content is high quality and there is no content related penalty from google, what would be the best way to migrate existing content without passing any penalty AND without Google treating it as duplicate content. If i do 301 i suspect any penalty there is might follow, if i just copy existing content it won't be original content, what is the best solution here?

Thanks

[joelsemy]

P.S. I thought deindexing current domain and then publishing content to new domain, but if parts of content was shared on different social media or just copied by someone, wouldn't it become the original after deindexing current domain?

[Roman-Delcarmen]

Let's understand your case

1. It seems the current domain has some google penalty - Are you sure about it? Are you sure that is not a case of a backlink devaluation or site devaluation? or even an algorithm update? this point is very important because the steps to follow are completely different. So the first thing that you need to do is make an in deep research of your backlink profile and I'm not talking about a simple audit quick and bullshit audit. I'm talking to research your backlinks and the backlinks pointing to your backlinks  ( Using every tool that you have available in my case I use Moz, Aherfs Majestic and Search Console)
2. The client wants to rebrand and already has a domain with a new brand name. You need to make it clear to the client all the risks involved, the first one and most important is time involved to recover the traffic. You will see a lot of articles out there about it of how to do it in the right way. But most of them are complete bulls...t. At the end of the day is just a simple database (a huge database of course). So you need to keep in mind when you migrate a website from the Google perspective is a new thread on its database so at the beginning you will notice a low level of indexations (that is a completely normal process no matter what you saw or read on any post or article) and of course a low-level traffic

The best way to deal with the new domain is this one at least base on my experience,

1. Make it gradually that means to divide the content into small pieces and start to move it.
2. Build some new backlinks (even before the migration) to this new domain and also backlinks to your backlinks
3. Also, add new content or update the old one
4. Invest I on social signal to the new domain / new content

Hope these comments help you with your project

Regards

[joelsemy]

Hi, yes it's definitely penalty, website doesn't even rank first on domain name. About traffic it's already down to 1/3 of what it was so i don't think it would be a problem.

Sorry but i still don't get your answer fully: move how exactly? with redirects, just deindex on old domain and then move & index on new one or what? This is my main question here..

[joelsemy]

Lil help here..