Taking juice from the old site to a new site

[sbook]

We have an old website. Which long time did not get an update, nor content. Many websites copied our content. And we might have some penalities now.
We are starting a completely new related website, with unique content and so on. And i am trying to get some ideas how to use an old website. And i don't want any of an old website product to get on the new website.

1 Option. New website on old domain. Old website content stays the same, but it will not have any links to it in the website. Old content would stay only for the purpose for landing from Google. All following pages for browsing would be new content. So my plan is that google would naturally de-index old pages. And they will be gone. In this case we would use existing old traffic to drive a new content website. (If there are no penalities on domain, it would be good). How long will take for google to de-index all low quality pages?

2 Option. New website goes on new domain. We would use plugs to add new website content to an old website. Visitors are mostly landing in one type of pages in the old website. So we would not put new website plugs to thee landing pages. (most important pages are not these landing pages - they were only the google favorite, but not the main website content ). So we would add plugins to the main website content, search results etc, and would redirect visitors who are most loyal and has biggest time one site stats.

3 Option. New website goes on new domain. All old website pages are redirected to the new website. If product page is the same, and exists on new website - it would be redirected to the new website page. If product does not exist on new website - old one will redirect to some folder /product/title - it would show old website content added to a new web, but would be non-indexable by google (automatically gets deindexed from an old website, but after some time).

Any comments on my options? Any perfect suggestion?

[aristotle]

The answer could depend on how much traffic the old website gets. If it doesn't get much traffic, and if it also could be under a penalty, you might consider the option of starting the new site independently without any linking or re-directs from the old site.

[antigravity]

It depends.

You first need to figure it out if your domain has been penalized/filtered (audit traffic, link profile, any manual actions? etc), and assess what it will take to resolve the issue(s): time, labor, $, etc. Then you need to determine if that investment makes business sense. What's the opportunity cost, ie is that time and energy and financial investment better spent on building the trust and authority of a new domain? What's your return on investment if you fix the penalized domain?

If it doesn't make financial sense to clean up your old domain, you have your answer.

Because you're not going to publish new content you're trying to monetize with organic search traffic on a penalized domain (or you shouldn't...I certainly wouldn't...), nor do you want to leverage it as a conduit to try and 301 some semblance of the inherent link equity, trust or authority (all perceived at this point...) over to your new domain, which (if the domain is in fact penalized) would likely do more harm than good to your new domain (eg the only inbound links it has are from a shady, penalized domain...not a great start...and definitely not something I'd do or recommend doing).

So if it were me, I'd start by assessing the state of the old domain and determine if it's worth salvaging, if there's any "SEO value" there and how much value there really is, if your time and money is better spent building the trust and authority of a new domain that hasn't been penalized (potentially), etc. Then come up with a game plan.

Cheers!

[sbook]

I would like to get more technical comments.
Old website still gets quite good traffic, that's why i am considering to use it.
It does not have penguin penality, nor manual actions. The only one might be panda for the content.

[antigravity]

Okay. Then I'd go with option #1 and publish new content on the the old domain (assuming it's only Panda filter), so you can leverage the age, trust, authority, passive traffic, etc you've already built up there. It's easy enough to get out of Panda jail. Just audit and purge the site of low value content (anything thin, or dupe, or low engagement, or with low to no visits from organic, etc) and iterate until you rebound.

Though what I'm confused about is, if the old site is still performing well, why de-index pages that are driving "good traffic?" If they're still getting good traffic, they likely aren't suffering from a Panda filter (unless at some point they were getting double the traffic or more and they've dropped).

Even if they are, I wouldn't dump all your content, I'd only sunset the pages on the site that aren't getting any traffic or set a "low value threshold" and sunset the pages that are only driving a handful of visits or no visits each month (though depending on how many piece of content that is, it can really add up in aggregate).

And before you purge any content, make sure there aren't any inbound links pointing at those pages. 301 anything with quality IBLs to relevant, new pieces of content on the site (1:1 no mass 301s to the home page) so you don't lose that equity.

[aristotle]

I tend to agree with antigravity. But will add that in my opinion you shouldn't make sudden big changes, such as a lot of new content all at once, especially on an old site that hasn't been touched in a long time. Instead, it might be best to make gradual changes over a longer time period, say by adding just a few new pages each week rather than a large number of new pages all at once.

Edit: Also, I would suggest that, if possible, you should try to integrate the new pages into the existing site structure and navigation, and in general preserve as much of the old site as you can

[sbook]

Thank you antigravity and aristotle for the comments.

10% of twebsite pages are still driving traffic, but they are thin. Good content does not have organic traffic, because many websites copied it. We can keep landing pages (but they are thin pages). Thats why i am asking about natural de-indexing. We can sunset 90% of pages, and remove inter links to the active organic landing pages. So if no one press on them in serps, will google de-index them in some time? (because now i see some of the pages are indexed in Nov 11). So is that natural de-indexing working if no inter links, and no one press on serps?

We have a new script made, so we want to change the site from the scratch. With new comfortable responsive version. So looking to aristotle comment we cannot integrate new to the old website. But the change would be opposite - integrate old thin (driving organic traffic) pages.

So to sum up the best option:
*Clean 90% of old pages.
*Keep 10% of thin pages which drives traffic.
*Integrate these 10% of old pages to new responsive website
*Do not add new content all at once, but progressively

[tangor]

First, google never "de-indexes" anything. Like all good search engines it never forgets a url it has met (or the content thereof), so that just isn't going to happen.

This cake and eat it too approach will bite your a$$et (content) sooner or later.

Make the change real, sincere and, if you have no intention of reviving the current (old) site, just leave it in place AS IS and point all time and effort into the new one. Forget the "juice" as that "juice" is tainted and the content is already (thin) on the point of fail.

Sometimes you just walk away and let a site die a natural death ... meanwhile taking in whatever it generates before the coffin lid closes.

There are some things you can't "save" and link juice to an aging, thin site is one of them.

[aristotle]

tangor -- It depends on whether the backlinks are sending traffic. Forget link juice -- it's traffic that counts. If the old site is getting significant traffic from its backlinks, that's worth using in some way.

Like you, I originally recommended creating a new independent site (in my first post), but sbook already vetoed that idea.

[tangor]

@aristotle, we are saying the same thing... but these days some webmasters think links are juice, I just short cut. Sorry for any confusion, kiddies!

As described above, I'd leave it in place, create new and go from there and not worry about ANY attempt to transfer. Why tack on a thin site to "your next big thing"?

[aristotle]

sbook wrote:
We can keep landing pages (but they are thin pages). Thats why i am asking about natural de-indexing.

For thin pages, in most cases you should either beef up their content or no-index them. If you want to save the link juice, but still no-index them, you can use the following tag:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow">

This tag will force google to de-index the page, but still give credit for the incoming links.

[sbook]

There are not much backlinks for that website. The main advantage was low competition in this market, so this thin content is still getting traffic. And site still has good ranking comparing with competitors. And i assume it will get it for a long time.
To de-index it when it have visitors it would not be a wise idea. Thats why i want to use it somehow.

If i create on new domain, what do you think about the Option2? Part of the new site (product pages) integration to the old one, and links go to the new one. Can it somehow hurt a new one? Or only the advantages here?

[aristotle]

Well I interpreted your earlier posts to indicate that you wanted most of the pages on the old site de-indexed, so I tried to help you with that, although I never thought it was a good idea.

At this point I can only suggest that you not jump into doing anything at all until after you've made a careful study and worked out a basic long-term plan for everything. My general opinion is that it's usually best to avoid complicated solutions and try to keep things simple.

[Painter]

what about 301 redirect?from old one to new one?

[RedBar]

Any comments on my options?

What type of website is it?

Ecommerce/informational?

What is the purpose of the website?

Is this purely job justification?

[sbook]

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