best way to transfer Pagerank and Google Positions

[seopeak]

Hi,

I am changing domain name of one eshop. Which is the best way to transfer the page rank and also de index the pages of the shop? Also If I use a redirect from the old url to the new one will show in the serps the old url and after will redirect? I should use no index for all urls and dofollow tags + the 301 redirect?

Regards

[karina.b]

Hi seopeak,
The best way to transfer your current site's power to the new site is to use a 301 redirect. You only need to use the 301 redirect, you don't need to no-index the old pages. In fact, I wouldn't recommend no-indexing the old site just yet. Search engines will need to crawl the old site in order to see the 301 redirect to the new site. The search engines will then start indexing the new site, and de-indexing the old site. Keep in mind that it takes time for search engines to crawl your pages, so you may still see some pages of your old site in the index, but don't worry, these will eventually fall out. Also, if anyone does happen to click on a page from the old site, they will be redirected to the new site anyway, so you won't be losing any visitors.

If you have pages on your old site that you don't also have on your new site, you can either redirect those to another relevant page on the new site, or you can 404 those ones out.

Good luck! :-)

[lesterj]

Karina has a great response. The only thing I'd add is that I've seen evidence that setting up canonical tags on the old and new pages which point to the new page can help the process to go more smoothly and faster. After you see the new pages showing up in the search results, then setup the 301 redirects. Then again, that would mean having both sites up and operational at the same time for a few days. If your dealing with an ecommerce store, having two stores running at the same time may have practical issues which would cause you to choose to just do 301 redirects and skip the canonical tag step.

[seopeak]

Hi seopeak,
The best way to transfer your current site's power to the new site is to use a 301 redirect. You only need to use the 301 redirect, you don't need to no-index the old pages. In fact, I wouldn't recommend no-indexing the old site just yet. Search engines will need to crawl the old site in order to see the 301 redirect to the new site. The search engines will then start indexing the new site, and de-indexing the old site. Keep in mind that it takes time for search engines to crawl your pages, so you may still see some pages of your old site in the index, but don't worry, these will eventually fall out. Also, if anyone does happen to click on a page from the old site, they will be redirected to the new site anyway, so you won't be losing any visitors.

If you have pages on your old site that you don't also have on your new site, you can either redirect those to another relevant page on the new site, or you can 404 those ones out.

Good luck! :-)

Hi,

yes I know that, but the previous site have bad reputation and thats why I want to de-index it for my client. I also site is generating 90% of its traffic thru Google and thats why I wanted to replace the old urls with the new ones instantly . What if I turn it to a blog and add backlinks from there to the new url? I will rank immediately with the new site or I will have to start over again to work on it? I am asking because the client just want to replace the old urls with the new ones or at least to get the same positions and he have strict budget about this. I mean If I will do additional SEO I will dont get paid extra.

[karina.b]

Is the bad reputation from poor branding, or is there a Google penalty at play? If there is a poor brand mindset, then making a rebranding effort is a good idea (which it seems you are doing) and you can still easily implement 301 redirects on your site to achieve the results you mention.

If there is a Google penalty or filter at play - then the penalty will be passed through the 301 redirect to the new site, and will likely not make any difference.

Assuming you are talking about poor brand reputation:
Since Google traffic is 90% of your client's traffic source, I wouldn't recommend confusing Google by switching up the URL with no means of pointing them in the right direction. I also don't think turning the site into a blog would help either. It would be a lot more work and therefore more costly - and in fact, it would probably cause the site to lose rankings because it would be such a dramatic change on the site...a shock to the system, if you will.

In my opinion, using the 301 redirects is still the best course of action here. Although I have no experience with this method, you may also want to try what lesterj suggested above, using the canonicals first.

[seopeak]

thanks guys, What if I suppress the bad reviews?

[karina.b]

Working on your bad reviews is one step in the right direction towards improving the brand. I wouldn't recommend getting bad reviews removed - unless what the review says is completely false. Honestly, the best way to address bad reviews is to personally comment on or message the user who wrote the bad review. Publicly addressing the review in a comment shows other users that while the company isn't perfect (which is a realistic expectation) the company is willing to work out any issues with their customers, and go the extra mile to make the customer happy - this is what potential clients like to see.

So, remove the bad reviews? No, not necessarily. Address the issue publicly in a polite and helpful way? Yes.

[lesterj]

Karina, your on fire today! I totally agree with your suggested approach for dealing with bad reviews.

SEOpeak, keep in mind that moving the entire site, may affect rankings. 301 redirects pass most, but not all of a page's authority. Personally, I have to have a pretty darn good reason to want to move a site that has decent rankings in the search engines due to the risk involved. If you can fix the brand without moving the site, that would be better in my opinion. But, then again, I don't know how bad the brand has been damaged.

One other thing to consider is why the company got the bad reviews in the first place. If they got them because a competitor was posting illegitimate reviews trying to harm your client's company, then I'd contact the listing sites and try to have the reviews removed and even consider suing the competitor. On the other hand, if the company got bad reviews because of bad service, they have a bigger problem than just the reviews. Reviews are just the symptom. They will really need to address the systemic issues that led to the bad reviews or they'll just have to keep trying to clean up a bad brand...one that is deserved.

[karina.b]

I agree with lesterj, here. Since it seems to be a reputation issue, it would definitely be less risky to address the reputation problem first, and if that doesn't work, THEN a rebranding effort.

[Kate Willson]

Yes, there will be branding issue and yes you can use 301 redirect.