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Howdy.

In short - no, it doesn't matter. There are several videos from Matt Cutts on this topic. They're a bit old, but still apply.  https://www.google.com/search?q=server+location+matt+cutts&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiGveX-uurRAhUCr1QKHbtYClkQ_AUICSgC&biw=1745&bih=864

I always go by rankings Cause when you do link building, you target specific keyphrase/topic. So, i check if overall amount of links increased from domains (or with anchor texts I want), then I simply check rankings. Ahrefs' rank is a quick metric to look at as well.

No problem

Howdy folks.

I'm trying to find any good alternative for adding CMS blog to custom website. Most people, us included, are using WP, but, as we know, it's really painful to work with, easily hackable etc etc.

So, I wonder if anyone knows of a blog platform, which can be installed on our own websites for blogging, but without drawbacks of WordPress. Any nudge in correct direction will be appreciated. Thanks!

Thanks for the response.

Medium will not work for us, since we need to have a blog ON our website, on the same domain, in a folder. That's why WP usually works. Medium would take all the SEO goodness from our domain

Ghost and Jekyllrb - haven't used of these guys, but aren't they third party hosted as well?

Hi there.

First, "...the understanding that there would not be any loss in page rank" - where did you get that info? 0.o It's well-known fact that there always be a downdraft with a period of recovery.

To answer your question - yes, you'll recover (assuming all 301s were done correctly). But it will take time. The problem is that your shop initially had the power and authority of your main domain (when it was brand.com/shop/blabla). Now, it's a brand new domain, with no history. And yes, even though you have redirects, it's still much closer to starting new domain, rather than redirecting domain completely.

Think of it as instead of building second story on top of existing house, you have to build brand new building with foundation and all, using some materials from your existing house. Who suffers? - both. You are taking away from existing place, and it will take longer and more resources to build up new place. Is it beneficial? - Sure, after both buildings are built - you'll have 2 great places to live in.

Hope this makes sense

Hi there.

First, if you are ranking #1 already, and want to move those pages, you must have great reasons. There is a chance, quite a high one, you won't be ranking #1, or even potentially even on the first page for some time.

Considering that you must move these pages, I'd just create exact copy of those pages, literally. Just copy paste onto the new domain, 301 those links, and let new domain sit for a while with these pages, make sure that they are ranking etc. After that you can move all content - text, images, metas etc into new platform (if let's say you are switching from wordpress to magento or something like that).

Hope this helps.

Hi there.

Unfortunately, there is no way to do what you are asking.. Sorry. You already did what you should have - change all links to website in GMB, social sites etc, copied the content over. Other than that - there is nothing you can do really.

The only thing which could be possibly remotely helpful is GSC address moving tool, of course, you'd still have to have access to old domain GSC - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en

Hope this helps.

Couple ways you can go about it.

1. Is any of the traffic going to the old spammy domain any good? Does it convert? If not, then don't worry about redirecting,  there wouldn't be any point, only spam signals

2. If there is some good traffic, then do IP limitations, hostnames limitations etc. That can be done in htaccess or on the server itself. There are other more elaborate ways to filter out spam traffic as well, but that depends on how you or your IT guy is familiar with it. One of the simplest solutions is to route all traffic through CloudFlare, it has quite nice spam filtering, and it's free.

Hope this helps.

"... maybe a lot of traffic will convert. "

WILL convert? so it's not converting now? If so, it's kind of optimistic that will change, no?

Since you don't own old domain, you can't really reliably do anything about it anyway.

At this point, I would say not to forward at all, start from scratch.

Yeah, your suggestion makes sense.

Keep the old one while the new one is ranking up.

Now, here is perfect scenario for you - keep working on the new site, and get full ownership of the old one. Then through IP blocks, cloudflare, removing all spammy backlinks etc, get rid of all or most of the spammy traffic and signals. And then redirect.

Hard to say who and why is putting you on those websites.

The only way to truly get rid of those backlinks is to reach out to those websites' owners. You'd have to obviously find someone who speaks the language.

Now, what you can do though is this:

1. Disavow all those crappy links - that'll get Google to lower the "spam score" of your website;
2. Block all traffic by IPs, geolocation and/or hostnames/referrers (that'll prevent from actual unrelated traffic)

That should clean it up pretty good.
Of course, that requires full control and ownership of that domain and website code. If you can't get that - again, my suggestion is just to part ways.

You are always welcome.

If you got more questions, you can always hit me up on my Twitter @DigitalSpaceman