Trying to 301 a domain and remove any link equity from the first domain

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Trying to 301 a domain and remove any link equity from the first domain

mppmr6

4:15 pm on Jun 28, 2012 (gmt 0)

We bought a two letter domain for branding and rep management purposes; however, the previous owners of the domain practiced some very spammy/blackhat link building techniques.

We still want our users to be able to forward from the 2 letter domain to our actual domain, but we want to just cut all link ties going to it, so none of the spammy links are associated with our domain.

So my question is, can we set up a redirect that is permanent redirect, but nofollows all the links from the two letter domain to the full domain?

Thanks for any help in advance!

1script

6:34 pm on Jun 28, 2012 (gmt 0)

I would not forward it right away and instead setup one page announcing that there will be automatic forward setup in the future. Include a normal link to your site, too. Then fire off a reconsideration request to Google saying that you're the new owner and would like to disavow any wrongdoing by the previous owners. Sit tight for a couple of months and keep checking the logs to see where people are coming from so you can use that info in the future. if it's really, truly bad, you may even cancel your forwarding idea.

If not much traffic is coming anyhow and as soon as Google sends a canned response, if the response if ambivalent (or you get lucky and it's positive), go ahead with the redirect. If the response is negative ("Still violates") see if you can correct any issue there may be with it or simply scrap the idea of redirect.

tedster

8:18 pm on Jun 28, 2012 (gmt 0)

...fire off a reconsideration request to Google saying that you're the new owner and would like to disavow any wrongdoing by the previous owners.

YES - in fact, I'd do that right away, or at least as soon as you've made the content "your own". Matt Cutts and others have Google have suggested it, and I know of one case where it really helped.

And on to your question, you cannot 301 redirect a domain without also sharing its link equity and other influences with the target domain. As far as I know, there's no such "forwarding" available technically in any way. Even a simple meta-refresh usually associates the two domains for Google.