When should you turn off redirects to your new domain?

[UWPCE]

Our website moved to a new domain a year ago, and we have our original domain to redirect to our new domain. We're working on contacting people who still link to our old domain to ask them to update, but 7% of our traffic is still coming as a redirect from our old domain.

My question is, when should we just shut the old domain down entirely and stop redirecting people to our new domain? Or should we just keep it up indefinitely? What would be the positive or negative impact on our new domain's SEO if we shut the old domain down?

Thanks!

[BlinkWeb]

NEVER!

The only downside is the $9.95 you pay to keep the registration. The downside to turning it off are many. You lose the PR that is is passing, even if there is no traffic coming from that old domain it still passes PR! Keep it forever!

[Aftermath_SEO]

Your best bet would be to keep it up. That way any link juice coming from websites linking to your old domain will still carry through to your new domain by using the redirect. Also, if you are still receiving visitors to your old domain, it would be a good idea to continue to keep the redirect alive, just to continue receiving those visits and all potential traffic that would come from the old domain.

I would say, if you stop seeing very much, if any, traffic coming from the redirect, you could do without it. However, if it's a concern over spending the money to renew the old domain, depending on how much it costs, it may or may not be worth it to you.

[aarondicks]

As the other responses have said, although it will cost you a yearly fee to keep the website up, (minimal), it is in your interest to keep it up to keep that 7% referring traffic. Check out Open Site Explorer to help you identify the websites that have not added your new link, and contact the webmasters to ask them to change it.

Depending on your target audience, if you turn off the redirects, there is a high chance they will be able to find you if they are looking for you. I guess it would depend on the sites content, and whether the traffic was brand related or search driven.

Aaron

[BlinkWeb]

Or you could just skip 2 latte's at Starbucks, then you don't have to sweat the 9 bucks to maintain it.

[KeriMorgret]

Keep the domain up there and redirected indefinitely, it's not hurting anything and can only help. And don't let the registration lapse, you don't want a competitor to pick up that old domain and do something with it.

[UWPCE]

Our old domain was a sprawling behemoth of a website (we completely redid our website when we changed domains), which is a big part of the reason why we're itching to take it down - not so much the cost issue. But you make a good point, thanks!

[KeriMorgret]

So the old domain with the old content is still displayed, you're not just sending users to the appropriate page of the new domain with a 301?

[UWPCE]

Yes and no. There are certain pages on the old domain that still exist, but very few, and we're trying to convince the higher-ups that we should move those pages into our new site. The majority of the old website, though, 301 redirects to our new domain.

[aarondicks]

Very true!!

[KeriMorgret]

Are there any metrics you can use from the new site to help convince the higher-ups? Maybe your analytics can show that with the site redesign, people stay on the new site longer, that the bounce rate is lower, conversions are higher, or something you can use to show them that it would be better to have the pages on the new site format?

[UWPCE]

We're working on it!