Should I let 22-year-old website go or revamp it?
-
Hi,
I’m trying to decide whether to renew annual hosting for my old website and hoping a wiser brain than mine in these matters might be able to advise me.
The website was the home of a weekly website review column, e-newsletter, content writing tips and other web content/marketing related content so has lots of backlinks since 1997, though hasn't been updated for about 10 years.
The domain email address is listed on some spam lists as I suspect it was harvested from the site by crawling spambots. I haven't bothered trying to de-list as don't use the address or website anymore. The site has never been used for PBN or sending spam (at least not by me).
There's lots of good content in there, and some would still be relevant, but not sure if it's worth keeping for backlinks and for redirecting to my new website when it’s built. Plan to build a new WordPress website for my new writing as no longer in the content marketing business.
It's a country-specific domain so can't really sell it as need to own the business name to own the domain name. I no longer use the business name either as plan to set up new brand for new website.
But it might be useful to direct traffic to my new website domain once it's up and running if I cleaned up all the many broken links to expired websites in the databases of hundreds of website reviews.
It's all on archive.org but I'm still very attached to the old site, even if it's no longer useful from a business point of view.
Did a Moz check which showed:
Domain Authority
20Linking Domains
89Discovered in the last 60 days
1Lost in last 60 days
4Inbound Links
1.9kRanking Keywords
0My web host stats show the site gets between 300 and 500 visits a month. Had about 138,200 visits since October last year. And about 653,200 hits.
Is that amount of traffic worth the time and expense of pruning the site of hundreds of expired links and fixing up other glitches? It's very dated in design and layout and is written in .asp
I could send you the URL in private message if you would like to look at the website first.
Been agonising over this decision for months as budget is very tight but don’t want to lose the site if it might have future value.
Would greatly appreciate advice from someone who's up on this stuff as I've been out of the game for a long time and the deadline to renew the site hosting is very soon.
Thank you in advance for your time and help.
-
Thanks for that. You certainly know your stuff.
I'm beginning to wonder if it is worth keeping the old site alive as it might require a lot of work to clean up and be useful linking to my new website when it's built. Not sure its ranking and links will help my new website that much, or hinder it. Big decision.
-
Looks like there could be some spammy domains in the backlink profile, however, most of the linking domains are fine. The next step is for you to go through all these domains and see what kind of domains they are, and what is the nature of the backlink coming to your website. If it turns out to be a spammy domain, then you can disavow the whole domain through Search Console.
-
Thanks for that.Spam Score BreakdownPercent of Linking Domains with a Spam Score of:1-30%82.1%31-60%16.7%61-100%1.3%Linking Domains89Domain Authority20Spam Score2 %Not sure what that means? the domain is brizcomm.com.au Backlinks look legitimate but not sure I'm checking the right thing.
-
The fact that the domain is on spammy lists (I'm assuming email lists here) does not mean that the domain itself is in a bad shape. You can check the following:
-
See if the domain has any Manual Actions on Google Search Console
-
Check the MOZ Spam score
-
Check the backlink profile of the domain to see if any spammy domains are linking to your domain - this matters much more than the domain being on email lists. If you find the domain to be on some spammy websites, you can disavow them.
Also, keeping the domain does imply that there will be an upkeep effort/cost.
As for whether to keep it or not, it really comes down to if you can benefit from keeping or redirecting it. If so, then it's worth it.
-
-
Thanks very much for your response and advice.
I'm worried that the fact the domain is on so many spam lists will mean it could be a negative benefit to redirect to my new site when it's built.
I would also have to get it de-listed from spam monitors and fix up the site to remove the email address, among many other broken links in the database.
Nobody else could buy the domain as they would need to have a business in the same name to comply with my country's domain registration rules.
So confused about this and renewal expires next week. If I do let the hosting renewal lapse, I'm guessing I would quickly lose any search engine rankings the old site has gathered, though not sure if 20 is much of a ranking anyway.
I can send you the URL if it helps?
-
Sounds like the site is in decent shape. I'm pretty sure that if you let it go, it will be picked up very quickly by someone else.
I think you have a couple of options:
1- You can keep it and continue to maintain it on a minimal basis. This will allow you to link out to your new domain where appropriate.
2- Redirect it to a new site, or a section of a new site, provided it's in the same space. This would require you to keep the domain name without the hosting & maintenance expenses.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
What is the best SEO friendly way to combine two websites.
I have two websites, eg: widgets.com - sells expensive widgets as gifts everydaywidgets.com - sells cheap widgets for everyday use. I would like to combine them both under the widgets.com domain name, because its easier to run the SEO campaign for one rather than two. But i still want two different product collections, and two different sites. widgets.com is by far the larger of the two sites so my current thought is to have that the main landing site, and have a button at the top to take the user to widgets.com/everydaywidgets where they have a similar but different site, and different products. I can set this all up no problem with the correct 301 redirects from everydaywidgets.com, but is it SEO friendly? Does anyone know of a real world example of a business doing this? Cheers
Branding | | SEOhmygod0 -
Best practices to rank a new website that does not produce much content.
Hi What would be the best practice for ranking a new site .. lets say a business site that does not have a blog to produce regular content in it. Building backlinks are not just the options when these days people are all focused in content marketing. And specially, when you are competing against big competitors. Big competitors are of course getting their contents published on bigger sites since they are already established. No one will talk about you when you are new in the market. And you still need to bring up your site to people and SEO is the only option for that. What would you suggest ? Thanks
Branding | | MindlessWizard0 -
Product expansion on website. Best practices for Retargeting Interior Pages with a high concern for brand.
For the past year, I've worked on a website that offered one product (Product 1). The homepage targeted both branded terms and the highest volume keywords for the one product. We've built a lot of strong links to the homepage using the natural variations of the targeted Keywords & the homepage ranks very well for these terms. The brand is now expanding its offerings to two products (Product 1 & 2). Thus necessitating the creation of two product subpages. I'm not concerned about ranking of Product 2's page, only Product 1. From a branding perspective, the homepage URL works wonderfully for the expanded offerings. And from an SEO perspective, offering two products allows me to target a very high volume group of keywords on the homepage that now makes more sense given the offerings. This new group of keywords will make even more sense if brand is able to roll out a 3rd product. The profitability of Product 1 & 2 are about the same. The profitability of potential product 3 is far greater 1+2 combined. Product 3 also has the most natural correlation with the group of KWs I plan to target on the homepage, i.e., I care more about the ranking of the homepage once Product 3 has launched. Product 3 will have its own interior product page as there is plenty of search volume for KWs specific to this product. I'm worried about hurting the rankings of the old product and URL confusion between the homepage & the to-be-created Product 1 page. I don't see myself having a lot of options. Options 301 - It does not make sense to 301 redirect the homepage to the Product 1 interior page. The homepage URL has strong branding and will be used in future marketing. I do not believe that I value the maintaining the rankings of Product 1 enough to push for making the new homepage example.com/home or similar to allow for the 301 redirect. Canonical - The content of the homepage will be changing, thus a rel=canonical to the Product 1 page does not make sense, nor does it make sense from a ranking perspective as I also want the homepage to rank for the new set of KWs I will be targeting The only real option I see is attempting to reach out to strong back links with Product 1 anchor text (or context) & asking them the switch the URL to the Product 1 interior page. Combine this with proper site-wide internal linking to the new Product 1 interior page & an anchor text link on the homepage to the new Product 1 interior page. Am I missing something? Am I dismissing either one of the above options too easily. Am I over-thinking this (yes probably)? Would love another set of eyes on this.
Branding | | 2uinc0 -
Experience/suggestions in redirecting old URLs (from an existing site) to new URLs under a new domain
Please share your experiences/suggestions in redirecting a set of pages (10,000 or more pages/URLs) from an existing domain to new URLs under a new domain. Thanks in advance!
Branding | | esiow20130 -
Competitors' dummy websites --- What SEO (or other?) strategy is this?
I work for an e-retailer. I've noticed that at least one of our competitors (and, I think, a second as well) has set up a neutral "third party" website that attempts to provide unbiassed information about different manufacturer's products. Of course, their products always win out over the competitor in these comparisons. But this one site (and another whose corporate backer I can't seem to figure out) is keyworded so poorly, and not branded at all. There are very few (if any) links to the corporate sponsor, or links, period. It's definitely not serving to have "Little Brand x" appear next to "Big Brand Y" in search results, either (again, really poorly keyworded). Other SEO seems really minimal. What do you think their strategy is? Is it a dumb waste o' money or something really smart that I'm not picking up on? Your insights most appreciated!
Branding | | Novos_Jay1 -
Whar are the Keyword and Link Implications of renaming a Website
I'm about to change the name of a popular site classyauto.com to nationalvehicle.com. The reason for the name change is mainly because of the negative report on classyauto from years past. We've decided to rename the company to National Vehicle for that reason and other reasons. With that, the current site does not currently rank high for many of the natural organic niche keywords we want to target. But, it does have a good amount of links and traffic. I would like recommendations on the best method to rename the site including any ideas on what to do with existing directories, links, etc. efficiently and effectively. I would also like input on what NOT TO DO. Thanks in advance and any tools, tricks, or additional resources you can point me to would be greatly appreciated.
Branding | | JosephFrost0 -
Need advice on old brand names
A couple of years ago my company put all effort into one brand name, closing multiple sites with good names. All traffic going to ie OldBrandName.com is now redirected to www.newbrandname.com/OldBrandName. Here our customers are being told about the fusion/merge and we are linking to the key-products of OldBrandName, on our new age. We have 4 of these pages for 4 different brandnames. These pages still get a lot of traffic. Now to my question: how do I get as much juice as possible out of these OldBrandNames? They have high page authority and many inbound links. But I would like to pass the juice and the links to our frontpage or other relevant pages. What is optimal? Should I just redirect all the traffic to www.newbrandname.com? The redirects was made approximately 2 years ago. We are in the travel & leisure business, so customers often visits numerous times a year, closing deals 1-2 times a year. All 4 OldBrandNames have their own specialities (family, low budget, off-the-beaten-track, wellness). Any recommendations on how to approach this?
Branding | | alsvik0 -
Video's Pros and Cons - YouTube vs My website or both?
This isn't really a question per say, but more of a request for advise. We are in the process of creating videos for our travel website. They are more informational and do not promote any products as such. I am aware of the options, and I am leaning towards creating a pro account with Vimeo so that the videos are available only on our website. The reason for this is so that we can at least get credit for our work, as when they are on you tube, anybody can syndicate the video without linking to our website. I am also aware that there are allot of searches happening on YouTube, and it may be worse if we choose not to upload our videos there as we would loose out on a big audience. it would be GREAT if we had the best of both options. And i had an idea i want to get your opinions on. Create the video and upload onto our website with "lower competitive" title / meta / body. Submit the video on YouTube with a "Higher competitive" keyword / title /meta and description. When someone finds our video, they might search YouTube to avoid linking back and wont find it, (although it is there getting traffic from a similar keyword) Branding is the number 1 objective for these videos, so you tube + many other video sites would be the way to go. However, i would also like our own "private" video blog on our site so that if web masters like the video, we can give them the option of embedding it on there site (like SEOMOZ do it on there whiteboard Fridays) Your comments and suggestions will be muchly appreciated. Greg
Branding | | AndreVanKets0