Re-purposing content from an old site.

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Chris M Cloutier: One of my clients wants to keep content from an old site.  ;I have to admit, the content is good and I can see why she wants to keep it.  ;It's longform, quality stuff.  ;
  
  The problem is, the domain is going away, so I can't 301 everything. (not sure if that's what I'm supposed to do or not)  ;
  
  But I'd like to know from you guys, what can I do here?
  
  Can I wait until it's no longer indexed, then copy it to the new site?
• 
  Raymond Lowe: How long will you still have access to the old domain? If it is more than a month I'd consider putting the key articles on a new site then using rel=canonical on the old site pointing to the new one to indicate that the new location is the official one.
  
  This is in interesting question and I'd like to do some testing myself! 
• 
  Christina S: If the domain has not yet gone away you can certainly 301 redirect it to a new domain.
• 
  Tony McCreath: Gather data on who is linking to that domain. E.g. referrer data or data from a backlink tool.
  
  See if you can get the better ones of those links updated when you move domains.
  
  Try and do the move well before you lose it so you can 301 redirect to the new locations and help provide a signal that you have moved.
  
  Also, follow the latest Google Webmaster guidelines on doing a site move.
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  Chris M Cloutier: Thanks guys, I'm waiting to hear back from here about how long she has before the domain expires.  ;Hopefully, it will be more than 30 days.
• 
  Christina S: She really should renew it for one year if only to allow proper 301 redirection to have its effect. What's another $10-$15 ?
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  Chris M Cloutier: I'm sure she will, I guess I was thinking if we did a 301 the old URL would have to stay up indefinitely.  ;This is an area I don't know much about, as you can tell.  ;But I'm learning.  ;Thank you.
• 
  Christina S: Yes, the 301 will only be in effect while the domain is registered and 301 redirected. It takes quite some time for Google to discover the redirections and apply them to the currently indexed urls, depending how many urls are involved.
  
  It's advised to keep the redirection in place forever, or at least for  ;6 months to 1 year. Also to try to get the most important natural backlinks changed to point to the new domain.
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  Raymond Lowe: If you have the option to keep the old domain, then of course do it. Hard to imagine a case where the fee is not worth it.
  
  I know sometimes it is impossible due to ownership disputes, but that's another story!
• 
  Christina S: Most importantly do not sell the domain and do not reuse for a different site, at least not for a very long time. ;
• 
  Raymond Lowe: Yep, and there is also that risk of someone buying up your dropped domain and putting a spammy search landing page up at best, better not to think of the worst! :-D
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  Chris M Cloutier: +Raymond Lowe I don't think it's the cost of keeping it. Its probably more to do with managing it and keeping it updated and secure. But it sounds like its necessary so they have to weigh the options.
• 
  Christina S: There's no issue of security - you can 301 redirect from the registrar so no hosting is needed.
• 
  Tony McCreath: I normally just move the domain to point directly at the new hosting folder and manage the redirects from there.
  
  I've found registrar systems are limited in features and often don't make it clear exactly how your redirects will get implemented.
  
  Just make sure you test that whatever you do does cause real 301 redirects on a page by page basis. No silly 302s, frames or javascript redirects!
• 
  Christina S: Not necessary for a domain change. Also doing it from the registrar saves on the need of having hosting for it. Not all hosting accounts allow multiple domains to be hosted.
• 
  Jim Munro: I think what Tony means is that not all registrars are created equal, Christina.
  For example I don't know if GoDaddy offers a service like this but I would never trust them to provide a consistent and technically-acceptable service long-term. ;
• 
  Christina S: A service like what? To 301 redirect a domain elsewhere? Of course they do.
  
  I'd say all serious registrars do this.
  
  Registration resellers may not as they don't have the full arsenal and know-how.
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  Jim Munro: Agreed but how could you trust a registrar like GoDaddy not to arbitrarily switch to 302? They have done it in the past.
  https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/Jbrp-KthYFQ
• 
  Christina S: They don't do it now and it hasn't been the case for many years. It's up to the user to pick the right options. ;
  
  Godaddy registration is second to none. I've not seen a more complete DNS manager anywhere. My beef is they keep changing their GUI, but it seems to be a disease of our times in all web matters.
  
  Their hosting sucks but that's another matter and of no consequence in this instance.
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  Chris M Cloutier: It seems like you could noindex and wait until it was out of the serps and republish.  ;Of course that's only if you don't care about backlinks and PR, right.
  
  Or, better yet, implement the 301 and wait until you see all search engines are indexing the proper (new) page and then not worry about the old anymore.  ;I mean, once all the engines have indexed the new page, what's the point of keeping the old one?  ;(Forgive me if that's totally stupid) ;
• 
  Jim Munro: There will be links pointing at the old URLs and this value will be lost if the old URLs disappear. A 301 will preserve a significant percentage of this value for as long as you are redirecting them.
  
  It's not a matter of keeping the SERPs tidy, that's googlebot's problem. You should be hoarding every bit of value you can hold on to.
• 
  Christina S: Yes, if the backlinks are natural and significant, they are worth preserving through 301 redirection. Otherwise no.
• 
  Tony McCreath: In my experience the registrars like to obfuscate how they do things with terms like pointing and forwarding. In most cases I find a new client has ended up with a 302, a framed domain or 301s to the root.
  
  Hence my warning to make sure you check what has actually been set up.
  
  I've often found setting up the DNS records faster and gives me full control. That is if the hosting allows multiple domains pointing to the one spot.
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  Jim Munro: ...and GoDaddy has a long history of changing things without warning or notice and screwing up the sites of their clients.
• 
  Christina S: Godaddy hosting is problematic indeed, but their registry service is top notch and has always been. I've had many domains registered there for the  ;last 12-13 years and never an iota of problem with that.  ;
  
  You the user just have to understand how things work a bit, read instructions and test the results when in doubt.
  
  Yes there was a time where you had to specifically request a 301 response for a redirection, else you got a 302. Or of course the masked forwarding option which just uses frames. I believe that's now been made quite clear in their GUI. Anybody still using it is not using their head or is trying some old-fashioned web hanky panky which won't get them anywhere anyway.
  
  No site has ever been mangled due to Godaddy registration.  ;
  
  Hosting, hell, yes, dumb things people do with their own sites, sure, all the time.
• 
  Jim Munro: I'm sorry Christina, that's not accurate. In one example, less than 18 months ago every site they hosted or redirected was offline for more than a day because they screwed up their internal router tables.
  
  If anybody cares to check, a search for "Godaddy horror" will provide plenty of examples of self-induced stuffups. Pay peanuts, get monkeys, GoDaddy is under constant threat of failure because they lack technical expertise, apparently.
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  Jim Munro: BTW, do you realise that if you avail yourself of all the GoDaddy paid addons that other registrars give for free, you're paying one of the most expensive registrars on the internet. ;
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  Christina S: I don't because I don't need any of the addons.  ;Those are for people who don't know to build a site, don't know the first thing about managing it so sure they'll fall prey. And that issue from a few months ago was exceptional. But none of my domains suffered  ;even a hiccup of that so I must be living a better life ;)
• 
  Jim Munro: AFAIK, every site they had was inaccessible, Christina. If you had a site with them at that time, it was off the air for more than 24 hours apparently.
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  Christina S: I have no Godaddy hosting, only domain registrations. All mine worked.
• 
  Jim Munro: I stand corrected. :)
• 
  Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 00:43:18 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/repurposing_content_from_an_old_site +Chris M Cloutier
  
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