Redirecting a Panda Hit Website

[AnkitMaheshwari]

I have a website that is hit by Panda 2.2 and then 2.3. Organic traffic dropped by 50% in 2.2 and another 20% in 2.3

This site had two separate themes (say blue widget and green widget) up till now so we have decided to move one of the themes (blue widget) to a new domain altogether so we can focus more individually on each of them. Blue widget theme that we are moving to new domain is important from business perspective (revenue generation) while green widget is not that important so for now keeping it on panda hit site.

My question are as follows as we have rankings and incoming links to blue widget section:

1. Should we 301 redirect blue widget pages to new domain pages (page level)?
2. Will this mean that panda will also pass on?
3. What can be an alternate strategy?

Note: Not all pages are hit by panda but some selective pages are hit throughout the website.

Would be great if you can share any experiences/thoughts.

[tedster]

I can only report second hand information - but it seems that if you move pandalyzed pages to a new domain without changing them, then things are OK until Panda gets run on the new site.

The alternate strategy I'd prefer is improving the quality of the pages. I appreciate that it might seem you need to be a mind-reader in some cases. But long-term, the only real chance for long lasting improvement is to do that.

[AnkitMaheshwari]

Totally agreed with you tedster.

We are infact will be adding more content on most (80-90%) of the pages while moving to the new domain.

But do you think we should do a 301 redirect?
Any thoughts whether 301 would effect negatively? If yes, then we might have to start from square one on the new site.

[maximillianos]

301 redirect of good pages to a new domains is okay from what I've read. It is the equivalent of removing bad pages.

[AnkitMaheshwari]

Thanks maximillianos.

I was also thinking to let the panda hit pages show a 404 server status and redirecting the others.