October 4, 2012 by Shane Jones

Page Rankings Taking a Blow? Maybe You Need to Move your Content

What if you created a site all about farm equipment, something happened and Google penalized it? Or maybe you just decided you wanted to move it to another domain? Is this safe? What will happen to any existing ranking? Will Google penalize you for moving the content? With all the Google updates, many webmasters are facing this decision because of bad linking strategies, DMCA penalties and other issues.

If you are facing issues that have caused your website to drop in rankings, and you know it’s not a content issue, moving your content might help. This could give you a fresh start without wasting the content you already have on the site.

Before you move your content from one site to another, you need to understand what to expect.

How Each Situation Will Differ

1. Bad Linking

If you were penalized by Google because of bad links —links that used to work for ranking before the update — and you cannot get them all removed, moving your content to a new domain name might help.

You can buy an aged domain or register a new domain to get a completely new start. You’ll eliminate the bad links because the new domain name won’t have any backlinks built.

You can expect this type of strategy to work well, but it will take a little time for Google to de-index the content from the original site and recognize it on the new site. Make sure you download all of the content and save it, delete if from the original site, and then schedule it all to go live on your new site over time.

2. DMCA Issues

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects website content from being stolen and used without authorization. If your site was penalized due to a DMCA issue, you may need to consider fixing your content before you move it. It may not be necessary to move the content if you can figure out which part is causing the penalty.

Find the original filer of the notice and see if you can get a copy of the complaint. This will lead you to the actual content that has been used from their site on yours and you can fix the issue. If the issues cannot be fixed, but you know it’s only a few pages or posts, you can move the rest of the content to a new site and gain ranking once again.

3. Changing Domain Name

Another common reason to move all the content from one site to another is if you decide to move from an “exact match domain” to a domain that can be branded. For example, if you have a site about heavy equipment called bestheavyequipment.com and you want to move all the content to a site that uses the domain name yourcompanyname.com, you can do so.

This isn’t a big deal and can be done quite easily. You will need to make sure you delete the content from your original site and you don’t just move it all at once. Schedule it over time to go live, so that it doesn’t look unnatural.

Bio
Latest Posts

Shane Jones

Owner at Shane Patrick Jones

Shane Jones is a Senior Social Outreach Specialist with management roots in online PR. A strong proponent for the power of personal, "humanized," digital collaboration, Shane shares his opinions and knowledge on Social Outreach and Digital Marketing. Additionally he blogs about his life's adventures, as he continues to "Empty his Bucket." He's always on the lookout for more bucket list ideas. Follow me on Twitter @ShaneJones15, Google +, and LinkedIn.