Moving Content From One Site To Another

[LinkPlate]

Hey BUSO! Hope all is good!

I have 2 sites that are fairly in the same industry but not exactly the same. I noticed that one site is gaining a ton of momentum while the other is not, even though both domains have similar setup and everything. Only noticeable difference is that the under performing domain seems to have lower quality links, not super shitty links, just less quality than the other site.

Anyway, the difference in rankings is HUGE so I am thinking of moving the content over from the shitty domain to the better one. It just seems to be the better move because on average, the content on the better performing domain is ranking higher AND faster.

Assuming I put the shitty domain on park and basically stop using it completely. My question is:

- How long do you think I should wait before publishing the content that was previously posted on that site on the new site? (all the content is unique so I am assuming that once that site goes down, Google will keep that content cached for a while before removing it - I just don't know how long that will be)
I thought about checking Google cache and Google index every week to see if they still have the old sites content cached (or not) before moving the content over to the new site, but I might be overthinking this.

- How would you recommend going about doing the switch? Deindex the old site first for a few weeks/month, then shutting down and move the content after another month? Just shut the site off and move the content after a month?

Any suggestions/recommendations are greatly appreciated. I am mostly worried about Google thinking the content is duplicate since the old site is already in page #1 for some keywords, but its just too slow for my liking and I know I can do better with the other domain!

Thanks again!

 

[Ryuzaki]

I'm thinking that your plan may backfire. I think Google's "actual" index is larger than their public facing index, and that there's a giant risk of you republishing the content on the new site and it ending up having an invisible canonical attached to it pointing to the original domain.

I think the correct move here is to move everything over and set up 301 redirects on the old domain. Homepage to homepage, about to about, contact to contact, and each inner page that you re-upload. Then keep paying every year to keep the old domain active and continue to keep it hosted so you have access to the .htaccess file (Apache) with all the redirects. Google does say you can eventually drop the redirects but I wouldn't risk it because I think you risk losing links when people start seeing 404's.

Your new site would gain the power of the lesser links of the old site, while the old content would gain the benefit of being on the new site with the greater links. I don't think there's any risk of "poisoning" the new site with the old content that isn't performing as well.

 

[LinkPlate]

Got it. That makes so much sense. Thank you! Its actually easier than the method I proposed as well.

@Ryuzaki Sorry for yet another question on this same topic, but would you do this move all at once?

Basically, should I publish all the articles on the new site all at once and then 301 redirect everything? Or should I publish them slowly overtime and 301 redirect slowly?

I am assuming doing it all together would be easier and would signal to Google that this site has moved over to another one quicker than publishing the articles slowly overtime.

And also, would you backdate the articles to reflect the date they were published on the old site?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Yeah, I would do it all at once. The sooner Google processes it all, the sooner it all gets settled. It's not something I want dragging on and on. I see zero benefit in dragging it out.

I like to backdate to the original date the articles were published. I don't think there's any technical reason to do it or not to do it. But I do prefer it.

 

[LinkPlate]

Thank you! I am getting good at tracking/noting when things get done nowadays, so once I move everything over and 301 redirect. I will come back to this thread and post an update.

 

[LinkPlate]

Update

So... Moved over the older site and redirected to the new one based on what we discussed above. We checked all the 301's - all is good and all the pages were moved exactly as is! This was done around 6 - 8 weeks ago.

Recently, we started noticing a massive downward slope in organic traffic. I checked everything on the site and its all good! THE ONLY THING is that now our anchor text ratio's experienced a massive change.

Basically, instead of having the brand name as the most popular anchor text (or having the highest anchor text ratio) - the older site's name is now most popular and having the highest anchor text ratio and in general, the entire anchor text sheet has changed tremendously (which I guess is normal when you 301 over an ENTIRE SITE, page by page)

I believe this change has caused Google to drop our rankings. From the shape of the downward slope (cliff shaped) - its looking bad, but I am going to stay patient and wait to see what happens.

It seems that I underestimated the amount of links the older site had and messing with the anchor ratio's didn't even cross my mind when I moved it. (the older site was not new and had history).

Only thing I can think of is to focus on building more and more branded links to the site in hopes of pushing the anchor text ratio for the brand name higher.

Any other suggestions?

 

[illmasterj]

Create a page that talks about the acquisition you have made blablabla: newdomain.com/acquisition-of-old-brand/

Redirect the olddomain.com to that page.

This way your home page anchors are all for the correct brand/topic.

 

[Ryuzaki]

@LinkPlate, @illmasterj is right. I should have mentioned that and I apologize. When I was doing this in the past I always had a .com/acquisitions/ page that old "homepages" would be redirected to so they never pointed to my actual homepage.

But at the same time, unless your homepage was ranking for a ton of terms, messing with the anchor text ratios there shouldn't have mattered. And if you ported all the old content to new URLs on the main site, that shouldn't have disrupted any of your existing pages either. I don't put any stock in any concerns with a cumulative sitewide anchor text profile. Just page-by-page.

Other things to consider is that you may have just pushed over a metric ton of page rank, in which case a bounce isn't remotely unordinary. If you think this could be the case, the best move is to stay the course and let it bounce back. It's designed to get you to undo the work and out yourself as a manipulator. "Cliff" shaped drops sound like a bounce or a penalty, and I really, really doubt you got a penalty (like zero chance).

 

[LinkPlate]

For sure. Thank you both! Will do that acquisition page, which would help with the homepage anchors.

Homepage isn't ranking for much. The drop in rankings happened on other internal pages, which is why I wasn't sure what the problem was. Around 30 keywords dropped from top 3 positions which is concerning so we lost a lot of traffic. However, I am not going to do anything drastic right now and just let it be and see what happens. Its probably because of this massive change!!!

It took them ~7 weeks to recognize the change so I am going to wait and see how long it takes them to bounce us back. If we don't see improvements then I will dig deeper and look for other things that might have caused it.

I don't put any stock in any concerns with a cumulative sitewide anchor text profile. Just page-by-page.

I agree. It's not my #1 priority and I don't waste too much time on it, but they def look at the overall metrics when scoring the domain, separate than the page. It must have some affect (not sure how much) - probably minimal, but def something.

 

[illmasterj]

Other things to consider is that you may have just pushed over a metric ton of page rank, in which case a bounce isn't remotely unordinary.

This 100%. It's actually a site flipping opportunity. If a seller has been aggressively building links and the site has seen 'volatile growth', chances are when link velocity slows down a bit, rankings will stabilize and improve with more of a gradual upward trend.

Most buyers hate volatility/uncertainty (low valuation) while they love stable growth (high valuation). It requires 6 months of capital at risk but has been some of the easiest money I've made.

 

[Sutra]

It requires 6 months of capital at risk but has been some of the easiest money I've made.

Hey @illmasterj, would you mind clarifying what you mean by this? Do you mean the 6 months of capital is at risk because you purchase a site with high volatility (in the belief that the revenue will continue to increase)?

 

[illmasterj]

Hey @illmasterj, would you mind clarifying what you mean by this? Do you mean the 6 months of capital is at risk because you purchase a site with high volatility (in the belief that the revenue will continue to increase)?

Exactly. Any time you own an organic traffic/Amazon site you have capital at risk (because you own the asset) of Google killing your traffic or Amazon slashing your commish.