301 Redirecting - What's my best option

[F5K7]

Hey guys,

I guess this topic would fit better into the "Search" sub, but I lack permission to post there.

I recently stumbled across an expired domain in a niche I am having a quite big affiliate page in. The expired domain is exactly related, however it's more focused on a certain topic.

Think this:

My website is about off-road cars and everything related and the expired domain was about activism against a law that passed and made off-roading in certain areas illegal. Something like that.

The law passed and now the website is dead. It has awesome big news outlet backlinks. Actually its backlink profile might be stronger than the one of my money page.

I went ahead and recreated the website, was only about 5 pages anyway, and I plan to let it sit for at least 2 month (anyone has experience with different timeframes?).

Once the time is over I see a few options:

A: 301 the whole domain to the homepage of my money site.

B: Dedicate a new page on my money site to that topic and 301 the entire domain to that new page. This page would obviously be huge, even exceeding the content that was once found on the expired domain.

C: Go one step further and create several pages dedicated to the topic.
Something like:
mydomain.com/expiredtopic/about
mydomain.com/expiredtopic/resources
etc.
And then redirect the homepage of the expired domain at /expiredtopic the about page at /expiredtopic/about and so on.

(D: By far the least attractive option for me, but I could also just use it as a PBN and place only one link to a certain page on my site, which I feel would be a waste.)


Any recommendations? Once it's done I'll update you guys with the results.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Recreating it and letting it sit is a safe bet if you want to reduce risk as much as possible.

But I will say that I've done this over 100 times, no exaggeration, and I never recreated the original and let it sit. I always immediately built something new or 301'd it where I wanted it to go and it was fine. Some of the times the 301's pointed to the original content wrapped in entirely new HTML on a different domain, sometimes it pointed to existing content. It worked out every single time, and I reckon that's because it was topically similar.

Occasionally I'd run into a domain that had been used for cloaking the existing type-in and backlink traffic and I'd have to wait a few days to a week to get Google to clear my reconsideration request, explaining I was the new owner. And they still retained their juice even after that.

A: 301 the whole domain to the homepage of my money site.

This is a bad idea. When the idea of PBN's first started leaving the private chats and hit the forums and then blogs, people started buying domains in bulk and adding a "301 everything to the homepage" type of plugin. The idea was to either 301 all inner pages to the domain's homepage, or to 301 all inner pages and the domain's homepage to the target homepage. Both were done out of laziness and trying to scale.

It was the easiest target to smack, which Google did and then Matt Cutts came out and admitted as much, saying to not do this.

Since it's so few pages, I think you B option is pretty safe. I'd choose it because I wouldn't bother with C. And I agree, D is a waste if the site isn't earning money and ranking. If I bought a nice earning site that had tons of SERP exposure, I'd leave it in the SERPs and change out the ads and affiliate links.

You could do a hybrid of B and C, which is what I usually do. I either recreate the inner pages and 301 to their new URLs, or I 301 them to the closest content possible. Then I map the About to my About, Home to Home, Contact to Contact (even when these boilerplate pages don't have links), etc. The idea is to make it look as legitimate as possible. So in your case I'd create a new "main topic" post like you described and aim as much of the 301's to it as possible that's not boilerplate pages. Then on that new main topic page, I'd drop an internal link to my main money page I wanted to rank.

 

[Andrey]

I also feel that option B is the best. Maybe the page you 301 it to can be Exposing this ridiculous law, maybe you could get it to be semi-viral in your niche with offroaders being angry with unjust regulation.

 

[F5K7]

Very interesting input, thanks to both of you.

You could do a hybrid of B and C, which is what I usually do. I either recreate the inner pages and 301 to their new URLs, or I 301 them to the closest content possible. Then I map the About to my About, Home to Home, Contact to Contact (even when these boilerplate pages don't have links), etc. The idea is to make it look as legitimate as possible. So in your case I'd create a new "main topic" post like you described and aim as much of the 301's to it as possible that's not boilerplate pages. Then on that new main topic page, I'd drop an internal link to my main money page I wanted to rank.

I should probably mentioned that 90% of the backlinks go the homepage of the expired one, since that was the designated landing page with most of the information. My take was to make it as userfriendly as possible, meaning that if someone clicks on one of those old links on a third-party page, I want him to end up on a page that actually has the information he was looking for, which wouldn't be the case with a home to home.
I could do "home" to new post and "about" to another new post, since the about page of this expired domain can't really be replaced with the about page of my website I feel, which pretty much describes what I had in mind for option C. Basically someone looking for "about" info about the people behind the activism page won't be satisfied with info about my car page. Does that make sense?

 

[DarkRed]

Occasionally I'd run into a domain that had been used for cloaking the existing type-in and backlink traffic and I'd have to wait a few days to a week to get Google to clear my reconsideration request, explaining I was the new owner. And they still retained their juice even after that.

So, do you add the new domain to a new search console account before the 301 to see if there's any penalty or something like that right?

Thanks!

 

[Ryuzaki]

So, do you add the new domain to a new search console account before the 301 to see if there's any penalty or something like that right?

I add it to the same account that houses the site I intend to 301 it to, because you eventually need to file a Change of Address on the new site to the one you're pointing it at.

But yes, if you toss it in Search Console, it'll pop up any manual actions placed on it. It won't tell you about any algorithmic penalties though.

 

[turbin3]

Personally, I'd recommend C. It's the safest option, and shouldn't really involve a whole lot more work. Might as well do it the safest way possible, and avoid any potential issues.

 

[F5K7]

I add it to the same account that houses the site I intend to 301 it to, because you eventually need to file a Change of Address on the new site to the one you're pointing it at.

Is that really neccessary? Isn't Google going to figure it out themselfs? I usually avoid using Google Search Console, the site I'd point it at isn't in Google Search Console either.

To add to that question, I am trying to revive a domain that was once redirected by some 301s and some 302s. Would you recommend to add that to Google Search Console as well? Ever tried somethig like that?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Is that really neccessary? Isn't Google going to figure it out themselfs? I usually avoid using Google Search Console, the site I'd point it at isn't in Google Search Console either.

Yeah, that's totally fine. My point was that trying to have multiple Search Console accounts to hide from Google isn't going to work, especially once you start 301-ing domains (and therefore accounts) to each other. Separate accounts, proxies, VPNs... they've got a lot of other ways to catch you.

I say, if you're going to use Google products, do the opposite of hiding from them. Make it very blatant that you don't think what you're doing is wrong. Connect everything in the same account. That goes a long way versus trying to be sneaky, which dooms you if something ends up going wrong.