Forwarding old site to new site

[Scootek]

Hello,

I have an old site that gets a small amount of traffic. I no longer need that site. I am setting up brand new site and was thinking of forwarding the old domain to the new domain. The products/services is different and the business is different between the sites. Is this a bad idea? Please advise.

Ryann

[Galway]

Hi Ryan, Yes it is a good idea. Make sure that you use a 301 redirect though, I know that the theme maybe a bit different so that means you cannot 301 old product pages to new ones like for like so just 301 the whole site. At least you will introduce the new site to a few people who visited the old site, unless the old site has tens of thousands of backlinks that are all irrelevent to your new site there should be no problem.

[OldWelshGuy]

This isn't a yes/no answer. You say the sites are different, so why would you want to forward it? How will forwarding benefit the small amount of visitors you get to the old site? If I visited a rugby site, and was diverted to a cricket site, I would be out of there like a rat out of a pipe.

If there is no connection (other than you) between the sites, then there is no point. I would keep both sites, and maybe run some links from the older site to the newer one.

[OldWelshGuy]

Hi Ryan, Yes it is a good idea. Make sure that you use a 301 redirect though, I know that the theme maybe a bit different so that means you cannot 301 old product pages to new ones like for like so just 301 the whole site. At least you will introduce the new site to a few people who visited the old site, unless the old site has tens of thousands of backlinks that are all irrelevent to your new site there should be no problem.


I would agree with this if the new and old sites are related, but he has said that they are totally unrelated, different services, different products. 301 redirectmatch isn't an option, as doing a redirectmatch to unrelated pages will hurt mor than help the changeover.

[Scootek]

Sorry correction. They are not totally unrelated. The old site is for IT hardware the new site is for IT services.

[OldWelshGuy]

Sorry correction. They are not totally unrelated. The old site is for IT hardware the new site is for IT services.


Then in that case, what he said above :D

[Scootek]

So just to confirm you would 301 redirect for the whole site. It shouldn't have an adverse effect on my search engine ranking for the new site, right?

[OldWelshGuy]

NOOOO. you need to follow best practice for site transfer
1. find all your backlinks, and which page they point to.
2. redirect pages with backlinks to corresponding new pages (you don't want to lose the link juice from specific pages)
3. arrange switch of domains and instal 301
4. leave the old site in place.
5. wait for link love to come to the new site :)

Don't just slap a blanket 301 redirect, that won't do much at all as your deep links will be wasted.

[Galway]

Like I said if the products are different there is no benefit to redirecting to internal pages other than increasing some spidering deeper in the site.

Anything that has a small representation should go like for like.

The theme is I.T. so there should be no detriment to the site, I know where OWG is coming from but the signs are that this is a small site that is loosely themed so chill out and let it flow, make sure you 301 though and not 302.

Sometimes clustering 301s to internal pages can help in getting your site crawled, may be a good idea if you do this to add a little content to those locations which in your case may be a category of some sort.

[Ali-v-8]

Just a quick thought.
Why are you using a new URL.
If you have finished with the old website would it not be a good idea to just replace the old website with the new one. domain age has some effect on SEO.

[Scootek]

Different business and domain names. Couldn't use old domain name for new business wouldn't work very well. Anyway, I have decided the few traffic that I do get to the old site is not going to make a huge difference anyway.