Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Save 36% now!
      Moz Pro

      Save 36% now!

      Sign up
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      Save 36% now!
      Moz Pro

      Save 36% now!

      Sign up
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • My Q&A
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Redirect ruined domain to new domain without passing link juice

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Redirect ruined domain to new domain without passing link juice

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    7
    2952
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • jasonwdexter
      jasonwdexter last edited by

      A new client has a domain which has been hammered by bad links, updates etc and it's basically on its arse because of previous SEO guys.

      They have various domains for their business (brand.com, brand.co.uk) and want to use a fresh domain and take it from there. Their current domain is brand.com (the ruined one). They're not bothered about the rankings for brand.com but they want to redirect brand.com to brand.co.uk so that previous clients can find them easily.

      Would a 302 redirect work for this? I don't want to set up a 301 redirect as I don't want any of the crappy links pointing across.

      Thanks!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • jasonwdexter
        jasonwdexter @Carson-Ward last edited by

        I feel that there should be some form of redirect that can be conducted without passing on link juice value.

        From my perspective, it's not gaming the system or trying to game Google. My client doesn't want any link juice passing on, but wants to keep the old domain for people accessing the domain directly.

        It's a shame really. Google holds a massive grudge, even though these guys trusted a big name in the SEO industry.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • jasonwdexter
          jasonwdexter @Kurt_Steinbrueck last edited by

          Sorry it's taken a bucket load of time to get back to you!

          Ideally, they're looking at some form redirection to avoid any form of user interaction.

          A meta-refresh might be the best route to go down, I'm going to noindex/nofollow the website and put forward a meta-refresh solution to them.

          I don't think a second or two in lag would be a problem, as users hitting the .com version of the website will slowly phase out anyway.

          Thanks buddy!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • UnderRugSwept
            UnderRugSwept @Carson-Ward last edited by

            I don't think I ever realized that forwarding also can return a 301. That's really good to know. Thanks.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Carson-Ward
              Carson-Ward @UnderRugSwept last edited by

              I'd just warn that most domain forwarding ends up returning a 301 response code anyway, and some return a 302. You could always test it out to see what happens. I checked (non-masked) domain forwarding on two hosts and found 301s in the header in both cases. I believe this is fairly common.

              One controversial solution might be a JavaScript redirect that search engines can't understand instead. It's obviously cloaking if the content is different, but maybe not if the content is similar. See https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721217?hl=en&ref_topic=2371375

              Unfortunately, there's not a redirect method that would prevent both versions of the site from being indexed. Even with a penalty, the old site could out-rank the new one for branded and long-tail traffic.

              Perhaps the best/safest option is to simply noindex/nofollow the pages, then show a warning with a link to the new version of the page. Yes, it requires a new click from users, but it's simple enough that there's little to worry about.

              UnderRugSwept jasonwdexter 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Kurt_Steinbrueck
                Kurt_Steinbrueck last edited by

                I'm not sure that any redirect is guaranteed that Google won't pass on the links to the .uk domain.  The two options I could think of which would probably be the least likely for Google to pass on the links would be,

                1. You could setup a meta-refresh redirect on the .com.  Make sure it's a few seconds and not instant.

                2. Redirect everything from the .com site to a single landing page on the .com site.  Put a message on that landing page that tells visitors the site has moved and provide a link to the new site.

                Neither of these solutions are great from a user experience standpoint, but their the least likely for Google to pass on all the bad links from the .com site.

                jasonwdexter 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • UnderRugSwept
                  UnderRugSwept last edited by

                  Why don't you try domain forwarding? That may be your only option as there is growing evidence that Google passes links from 302 redirects as well. You can find the domain forwarding option in the control panel where the domain name is hosted. Instead of doing a redirect, the change will take place with the DNS.

                  Here's some info: http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/422/forwarding-or-masking-your-domain-name

                  Make sure you choose forwarding without masking.

                  Carson-Ward 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Browse Questions

                  Explore more categories

                  • Moz Tools

                    Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                  • SEO Tactics

                    Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                  • Community

                    Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                  • Digital Marketing

                    Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                  • Research & Trends

                    Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                  • Support

                    Connect on product support and feature requests.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • viatrading1

                    Getting SEO Juice back after Redirect

                    Hi, On my website, many product pages were redirected over time to its product category, due to the product being unavailable. I understand with a 301 redirect, the final URL would have lost about 15% of the link juice. However - if after some time (e.g. 2 months, or 1 year) I remove the redirection - is the original page going to have any SEO juice, or did it already lose all of it? Thanks,

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading1
                    0
                  • lcourse

                    What is best practice for "Sorting" URLs to prevent indexing and for best link juice ?

                    We are now introducing 5 links in all our category pages for different sorting options of category listings.
                    The site has about 100.000 pages and with this change the number of URLs may go up to over 350.000 pages.
                    Until now google is indexing well our site but I would like to prevent the "sorting URLS" leading to less complete crawling of our core pages, especially since we are planning further huge expansion of pages soon. Apart from blocking the paramter in the search console (which did not really work well for me in the past to prevent indexing) what do you suggest to minimize indexing of these URLs also taking into consideration link juice optimization? On a technical level the sorting is implemented in a way that the whole page is reloaded, for which may be better options as well.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
                    0
                  • jacob.young.cricut

                    Will I lose Link Juice when implementing a Reverse Proxy?

                    My company is looking at consolidating 5 websites that it has running on magento, wordpress, drupal and a few other platforms on to the same domain. Currently they're all on subdomains but we'd like to consolidate the subdomains to folders for UX and SEO potential. Currently they look like this: shop.example.com blog.example.com uk.example.com us.example.com After the reverse proxy they'll look like this: example.com/uk/ example.com/us/ example.com/us/shop example.com/us/blog I'm curious to know how much link juice will be lost in this switch. I've read a lot about site migration (especially the Moz example). A lot of these guides/case studies just mention using a bunch of 301's but it seems they'd probably be using reveres proxies as well. My questions are: Is a reverse proxy equal to or worse/better than a 301? Should I combine reverse proxy with a 301 or rel canonical tag? When implementing a reverse proxy will I lose link juice = ranking? Thanks so much! Jacob

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jacob.young.cricut
                    0
                  • kevinliao

                    What happens to a domain in SERPs when it's set to redirect to another?

                    We have just acquired a competing website and are wondering whether to leave it running as is for now, or set the domain to redirect to our own site. If we set up this redirect, what would happen to the old site in Google SERPs? Would the site drop off from results? If so, would we capture this new search traffic or is it a free for all and all sites compete for the search traffic as normal? Thanks in advance. Paul

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevinliao
                    0
                  • Locals

                    Primary Domain or Redirect?

                    We are starting a new travel guide for a resort town. I have bought an expired domain with decent related links and PR (which seems to have survived the transfer (4 months ago). Beofre we launch the new site I am trying to decide if we should use this expired domain as the primary URL for the new site or just do a permanent redirect and buy a new domain that better matches the theme of the site. I am obviously concerned with starting from scatch with a new domain. I am confident we can build some good rellevant links in a short time but this space is very competetive. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Locals
                    0
                  • JosephFrost

                    Canonical link vs root domain

                    I have a wordpress website installed on http://domain.com/home/ instead of http://domain.com  - Does it matter whether I leave it that way with a canonical link from the domain.com to the domain.com/home/ or should I move the wordpress files and database to the root domain?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JosephFrost
                    0
                  • djingel1

                    Any way to find which domains are 301 redirected to competitors' websites?

                    By looking at the work from an SEO collegue it became clear that his weak linkbuilding graph probably is not the cause for his good rankings for a pretty competitive keyword. (also no social mentions where found) I was wondering what it could be, site structure and other on page optimization factors seems to be ok and I don't think there will be exceptionally good or bad user behavior... Finally I looked at the competitors and found that they have more links, better content en better design, so I got a little stuck. The only reason I can think of is that he is doing 301 redirects (or is rel=canonical tags). Is there a way to trace these redirects back to the source in order to include this important variable in your competitor research? thnx

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djingel1
                    0
                  • lhc67

                    Keyword-Rich Domains - Redirect?

                    Hi, Mozzers- I have a client that has a bunch of pretty nice keyword-rich domain names. Their traffic and rankings are good. They provide legal services in the Chicago area. I have lots of good content that I could use to start a blog using a domain like keyword,keyword-blog.com. Good idea? Currently I have a resources area on their website but feel like this area could be getting a little bloated and some news-related stuff isn't really appropriate. 2 Questions: Should I use one of the decent domains for a blog and build up the rankings, traffic, and link to the main site?  Or is this lots of work for little payout? Both sites would be hosted in the cloud. Some of the domain names are related to their name, others are keyword or geo-targeted. Would it be wise to setup 301 redirects going to their website? Pros/cons? If you need additional info, please PM me for details. Thank you, friends! LHC

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lhc67
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy