2 replies to this topic

[BJ Wright]

I just read an article at SEOmoz about not putting viral content on mini site in the post Rebecca mentions:

We did just that with the Web 2.0 Awards (coming next week, we promise!)--initially, we launched the awards on a separate domain, web2.0awards.org. After a while, we 301'd it to seomoz.org/web2.0, which brought SEOmoz a healthy 100k+ backlinks.

So my question is how exactly do the search engines view the 301 redirects? If the mini site currently has 1,000 organic visitors a day, will you continue to drive that traffic to the redirected site (everything else staying the same "of course")? What about the 100k links that she is talking about, are they just helping the mini site get ranking, or are the 100K internal links from the site being redirected?

Edited by BJ Wright, 06 May 2007 - 02:29 AM.

[JohnMu]

The visitors will be redirected, the content is the same. The average visitor won't notice the difference.

The search engines will apply the existing inbound links (to the minisite) to the appropriate pages within the main domain. This can help pass value to the main domain and it's pages. However, you could also just link to the main domain from the minisite.

In the end, there will be a certain amount of additional value passed to the main site by 301 redirecting from the minisite versus just linking.

The question that's left is: if you had the content on the domain from the start, would you have gained as many links? If so, then you could have just done that and not have to worry about creating a mini-site and then redirecting it. Does it make a big difference? Maybe, maybe not

John

[BJ Wright]

Thanks John!

After posting this in the forum I also continued to do research and found out this information 301 Redirect

A function of a web server that redirects the visitor from the current page or site to another page or site, while returning a response code that says that the original page or site has been permanently moved to the new location. Search engines like this information and will readily transfer link popularity (and PageRank) to the new site quickly and with few issues. They are also not as likely to cause issues with duplication filters. SEOs like 301 redirects, and they are usually the preferred way to deal with multiple domains pointing at one website.