301 from a defunct site due to great link profile

[Chammy]

Hi there

Would really appreciate your help in dealing with the following scenario:

My client is an authority brand in their sector. They were bought end 2011, and a new website was launched under the new owner's brand. For whatever reason no 301 redirects were put in place from the old site to the new site.

I am now auditing the new site and the traffic is pitifully low, way lower than they used to enjoy on the old site. The old site is defunct and Google is no longer indexing it. However OSE shows that the link profile of the old site was very good with thousands of good quality links, whilst it is non-existent for the new site.

I am thinking that even though Google does not index the old site, we should try and get access and put 301s in place on the old pages to help transfer across all the link juice to boost the new site.

Do you agree or am I missing something here? Will page rank be transferred across even though the old site is dead? What else could we do? Would change of domain in WMT help? Although how would that work for a defunct site?

We should probably 301 anyway as it would be good to ensure that folk following all those links can find my client's new site, but it would be great if page rank flowed too!

All ideas appreciated! Many thanks
Wendy

[RobMay]

Hey There, been there, done that!

The old sites' pages and value have more than likely been lost due to many things (lack of new content, no fresh content, lack of content updates, abandonment, etc). Most of the value is most likely lost over the last 2 years.

I would still map out and put in place the 301's. You will need to have an exact match of any relevant pages from the old domain - and 301 redirect them to relevant pages on the new site/domain. The back-links might still be there, and there may be some value to trickle through in old page-rank but I wouldn't count too much on the value. From a user experience, it's always best to send your customers to the right pages, rather than a site with outdated information. That won't support and help build the brand

You should also ensure that WMT in Google and Bing are configured correctly for the new site. Run profiles on both sites in OSE to map out any links that may be list. If you have access to the old profiles for WMT, check into that as well. Correct anything out of date for the profile on the site.

You may also want to map out any links in the profile that are of really high value and authority. Isolate these in a Excel file and profile them to contact later. Perhaps establishing contact with them, you can get them to find interesting material and content on the new site they would consider linking too or sharing.

All in all, first map out and complete a full 301 redirect to ensure it's in place. Map out the link profiles of both the old and new sites, and try to align things over time as the 301's take effect. Watch for any broken links and 404's in your reports and ensure those get corrected too. Don't leave anything to chance. Cover all your bases.

Cheers !

Hope some of this helps and good luck

[Chammy]

Thanks very much for the advice Rob, it does really help - and its good to hear I am not alone!

A lot of the links to the old site were due to newsworthy stuff - my client runs an industry tracking monitor - from the BBC and other authoritative sites, and some are still there. So as you say, definitely worth still 301ing - and maybe some juice will flow!! At the moment the links are simply going nowhere and error-ing!

Thanks!

[RobMay]

No problem. I think cleaning up the error's and redirecting traffic to where it should be going, is the first step in improving the user experience. If you manage to squeeze some 'juice' out of those outdated links, that's great!