Can forwarding users from one domain to a different domain damage rank and authority of first domain?

[Closetstogo]

Preliminary Explanation: We launched a new website a couple months back but haven't had much luck in Google taking notice. One of the main attractions to our site is an old flash app that was made nearly a decade ago. As the original developer has long ago moved on and we are unable to figure out how to integrate it with our new site, we've been stuck hosting the flash app on a different domain.

As such, users who come to our site and want to use the app must immediately navigate away from our site to this other domain. This has caused our primary domain's bounce rate and average site time to plummet while raising it for the other domain.

My question: is this damaging our search rank and page authority with Google for this primary domain/site and counter-acting any other positive SEO changes we can make? How much weight does Google give towards bounce rate/average site time spent by users in its overall calculations for search rank and page authority?

Our average site time for this primary domain is resting currently at 50-60 seconds, while for the secondary domain that hosts the old flash app it is 4-5 minutes.

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

Well, to answer your question in title of this question - no. Forwarding by itself doesn't effect rank or authority. However, in your situation, it might be the case due to bouncing or so called pogo-sticking. It's well known that pogo sticking is really bad and nobody wants it. Here is a WBF about it: https://moz.com/blog/solving-the-pogo-stick-problem-whiteboard-friday

Also, since you use flash - and that can be bad by itself due to incompatibility, long loading times and so on - I assume your website is not mobile either. Another bad sign for Google.

Now, my questions to you are:

0. How are your rankings for new domain? are they dropping? Is old domain rising?
1. If you use old domain that much, can you redesign it + move content from new one and eliminate that redirect?
2. can you replicate flash app with non-flash app (js, mysql or whatever)?
3. can you redo flash app with new one, which will be integrated with new website?

I understand all my suggestions would require financial investment, but I say it will be worth it.

[seoman10]

You are fully agree with Dmitrii also in the ideal scenario I would recommend getting the app re-developed, ramp up the marketing and try to increase profit to fund it.

Some ideas to increase profit are:-

• Increasing prices
• Reduce overheads
• Introduce extra chargeable service/s