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I moved domains over a year ago. The traffic remains at 1/2 the level it was before hand. I used 301 redirects to do this, most of which were page to page redirects, rather than page to root redirects.

More specifically I merged two blog sites into one. I also added a 301 redirect from http to https.

The old 301 redirects are still in place. Should I be switching off the old sites completed by now?

Could the combination of a redirect to the new domain and the secondary redirect to https, be causing the problem?

Is there anything else that could be penalizing my site?

There are no obvious problems noted in GWT.

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  • Did you do a change of address in Webmaster Tools?
    – Max
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 2:25
  • @Max yep, I completed that back on November 14, 2014
    – Rebecca
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 13:12

2 Answers 2

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It is difficult to know how your redirects have effected your site without getting into detail.

When redirecting an old site to a new site, I recommend a blanket redirect. Not doing this may not give you the effect you want.

From there, I then recommend doing page specific redirects on your new site to make corrections.

This method seems to work the best. It may not be too late to change your redirect methods and recapture rank/traffic.

Since it has been a year and you have not seen a rebound, I would be considering if inbound (back) links to the old site are important to retain. You may consider dropping the old link profile by deleting the old domain. Because there has been no recovery, it seems to me that this can be a viable option.

I would make sure that as much as you can, replacing the link profile to the old website with links to the new site before deleting the old site. I would skip the low values links and try and replicate valuable links or replace with links of relatively equal or better value. You can do this fairly quickly if you are not too hung-up on lower value links and are able to capture new links of value. It may be that your new site already has a link profile that trumps losing links from the old site.

This a personal decision you have to make after reviewing the link profiles of both sites.

But then again, sometimes it is best to cut bait and fish- meaning you may be better of cutting your loses and moving on. This is something only you can decide.

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  • Can you clarify 'blanket redirect', as in the question it sounds like he has redirected correctly.
    – Max
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 2:24
  • @Max The first example in my answer here will help to clarify: webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/77987/… It is a redirect of the entire site from one to the other.
    – closetnoc
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 2:31
  • But on a page to page basis?
    – Max
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 5:38
  • I don't know if this helps, but the site is benpowell.co.uk. The initial redirect goes to benpowell.org and then another redirect takes the user to benpowell.org
    – Rebecca
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 8:41
  • @Max A blanket redirect is a redirect of the whole site using a wildcard. Not page by page. I rather believe that doing a page by page redirect from one site to the other degrades the effect in search. A blanket redirect from old to new is advised then any redirect on the new server to correct the ultimate target.
    – closetnoc
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 15:40
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If you have done proper 301 redirect with on-page SEO than there should be no drop i site traffic.

Your visitors should be redirect to new domain easily. Odesk is best example to this.

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