Moving Content To Another Website With No Redirect?

[sbrault74]

I've got a website that has lots of valuable content and tools but it's been hit too hard by both Panda and Penguin. I came to the conclusion that I'd be better off with a new website as this one is going to hell no matter how much time and money I put in it. Had I started a new website the first time it got hit by Penguin, I'd be profitable today.

I'd like to move some of that content to this other domain but I don't want to do 301 redirects as I don't want to pass bad link juice. I know I'll lose all links and visitors to the original website but I don't care.

My only concern is duplicate content. I was thinking of setting the pages to noindex on the original website and wait until they don't appear in Google's index. Then I'd move them over to the new domain to be indexed again.

Do you see any problem with this? Should I rewrite everything instead? I hate spinning content...!

[Nobody1560986989723]

Hi Stephane,

All the below assumes you feel there is some value in keeping the original website live at all.

My first reaction would be to do a full review of all your old content and carefully consider which ones may have been hit by Panda - is there keyword stuffing, content duplicated from other sites, thin content...etc? Then either fix or completely rewrite those.

After that you should avoid publishing duplicated content so my view would be
1. Remove the rewritten/fixed articles completely from the old site
2. Don't implement the 301 so you don't get any redirected bad Penguin vibe
3. Put a block on those URLs using robots.txt
4. Remove the URLs from Google's index in Webmaster Tools

Then you are free to publish your new, Panda-friendly content to your new website.

Not sure what other mozzers would say, but that's my view. This is not about 'spinning content' but removing poor content and republishing great content. Hope it makes sense.

[sbrault74]

Some of this "content" are in fact online tools and the tutorials that accompanies it.

[Dr-Pete]

I tend to agree with Martin - it seems like there's probably a way to preserve some of the power of the old site and 301-redirect selectively (or potentially use cross-domain rel=canonical tags), but it would take a much deeper understanding of the site than Q&A allows.

If you rebuild the site from scratch, you'd almost always want to de-index the old site. I'd flat out remove it via Google Webmaster Tools - it's the fastest method. Leaving both sites crawlable is only going to compound your problems and haunt the new site.

I'd warn, though, that if this is Panda-related, just moving the content won't solve your problems. You do have to sort out why they happened in the first place, or the same algorithmic issues will just come back. In other words, if the problems are content-related, then it doesn't really matter where the content lives. If the problems are link related, then moving will remove the problems. Of course, moving will also remove and advantages you currently have based on good links.

Unfortunately, this isn't a problem that can be addressed without a pretty deep audit. My gut feeling is that there may be a way to preserve some of the authority of the old site, but you really need to pin down the problems. Panda + Penguin is a wide swath of potential problems and just isn't enough information to do this right.

[sbrault74]

In fact, I am not moving any content from the old website to the new one. It's just 3 online tools that I wanted to keep for the new website. They both have different content though but the functionalities are the same. I've "noindex" the tools on the old website.

By the way, the manual penalty has been revoked on the old website a few weeks ago.

[Dr-Pete]

So, I'm confused - are you looking to keep both sites active? If you're just moving the tools to a new domain, you could NOINDEX the old pages. If the link-based penalty isn't too severe, you might try a cross-domain rel=canonical on the old site. Unfortunately, without understanding the penalty profile, it's a bit tricky to advise. It's really a cost/benefit trade-off - how much risk of carrying the penalty are you willing to accept vs. the alternative of cutting off all authority and starting over on the new site.

If you've had Panda-related problems, though, I wouldn't keep the tools crawlable on both sites. That seems more likely to prolong your problems than it is to solve them.

[Nobody1560986989723]

It sounds to me as though most of the content from old site is staying but that 3 enigmatic 'tools' are being moved to a new domain.

In which case I would want to be sure that the functionality being moved wasn't the cause of the previously lifted penalty, especially from a Panda perspective (given that the tools on the new domain presumably won't have any links pointing to it, Penguin shouldn't be an issue) - as a penalty would be re-applied if the tools are not Panda-friendly.

So:

• if you want to have the tools on both sites, I'm with Pete - noindex the tools on the old site.
• if you are permanently moving the tools, review them for Panda-friendliness and then noindex the old site's URLs, probably worth blocking the old URL in robots.txt as well.
• If your previous penalty was nothing to do with the tools at all, and the link profile of those pages is good (or if there aren't any links) then 301 the old URLs to the new.

That's if between Pete and myself we've understood correctly what you're trying to achieve.

Good Luck!

[Dr-Pete]

If we're understanding the situation correctly, I'd say this sums it up pretty well.