Do 301 redirections carry Google penalty?

Question

I have run a domain for 9 years, which had PR5 two years back with DA 49 (which I remember). Now I have run another domain for 4 years in similar keywords but from a different location (as you can see from the CCTLD).

As my old .np domain is not being useful, I am thinking to redirect it to my new .au domain. Both of them have similar keywords.

Now, my question is: if I do 301 redirection from the old to the new domain, is that going to carry Google penalty with link juice? (I am not sure why PR is down to nothing in two years. I remember it was hacked a few times and I couldn't fix on time.)

The point is I want to take credit of my own domain, which I maintained for almost 9 years and has very good link juice. Saying that, I am very concerned about losing my new domain's SEO value which I have run for 4 years and worked my butt off to bring into good position.

I can't take a risk to experiment at this stage as my business relies on the new domain. Instead, I would like to add some value from my old domain, which can make my life easier.

Thanks for showing interest. I expect to get some expert advice here.

Answer 1

301 redirects do result in a small amount of PR being "lost". But it isn't a penalty and it doesn't matter. PR is obsolete.

Additionally, PR is not per domain. It's per page. So your home page may have a certain PR but your inner pages will not have the same PR.

Answer 2

301 redirection will not do any harm in your case.

As you are redirecting a 9-year-old domain & its link juice to a 4-year-old website, it will certainly not bring any negative effect.

If 301 redirection could harm, then negative SEO would work and anyone could redirect the affected website to competitors & spoil the competitor's business.

.np to .au redirection is no use. As both the countries are different, your redirection may not give better results.

If your business 100% depended on Google organic traffic, then my suggestion to you is, don't take this risk as it might not give a great result. That is, this redirection may not be the worth the risk.

Last one: You may know that 1000s of companies who depend 100% on Google organic traffic have closed their businesses. Google can throw you out of the first page any time. So running a business based on Google organic is 100% risky business.

Answer 3

You have a 9-year-old domain and, as you might already know, Google does not update its PR toolbar in any way like a browser or its API which are used by third-party websites to check PR online.

And for your kind note, PR is calculated in microseconds (maybe in nanoseconds). I don't want to mention all the process, but if your domain is very old, then it might be those links pointing to your site may be becoming inactive, so your pagerank will go down day by day.

Another thing is that if links are coming from untrusted sites (for example, webpages which have been spammed by webmasters to get backlinks to their own sites), then Google will not consider those links in pagerank calculation.

So don't think, your pagerank is down. It means you got Google penalty.

If I was there, then I would only check my Google Webmaster Tools. And if I saw messages like link spam then I would not redirect that domain to a new one. Otherwise feel free to redirect to new one.

Answer 4

301 redirection will replace old url to new url in SERP. ranking of new url depends on content of new url and search-query performed. 301 is mainly for replacement of old url to new url. To get same rank, content should be better ,atleast equivalent.

Ranking fluctuate within 1st or 2nd week while complete transition take place. Afterthat if new url have nice content,you can expect good ranking compared to old ranking ( better or close enough)

301 is for url replacement in SERP. Ranking depend on content of new url.

Answer 5

There will be no loss in your link juice if you apply 301 redirection, all the links you created for your old site will now work for your new site.