How Often Are Domain Redirections For Organic Growth Successful?

[harrytwatter]

Specifically, approximately what percent of 301 redirects of juiced domains into money sites or 301 redirecting money sites onto juiced domains result in hokey stick-like organic growth?

What I am trying to do is crowdsource a confidence level in the "301 building block" strategy from this deeply skilled forum.

*I am aware there are a lot of variables here, including how juiced the domain was, how topically aligned it was, the history of the domain, how the redirects were implemented, what niche the site is in etc. Perfection is impossible, I'm just trying to get a rough gauge of the viability of the tactic.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I just had a pretty long discussion about this with several people. The discussions all ended up centered around "how do we make sure this works at a higher success rate?" Because it's not even obvious if it's working or not.

That could be something Google is doing where the trust is rebuilt over time to smear the effects out over time so you can't measure it.

I've done it quite a few times and could never tell the difference, but when I removed the domains later I'd get a 15%-20% drop in traffic. So smeared at the start, abrupt at the end?

But the thing is, the juice should have accounted for way more than 20% regardless. So for cheaper redirected domains, maybe it's worth it. You play a numbers game and really stack them up all pointed to one domain. You're buying links by buying domains and only getting a fraction of the juice or credit, so you have to scale up the domain purchases.

In my mind, that'd be a fun experiment. I've never done it at mass scale. Don't really care to but admittedly it'd be fun just to try to slam a site up Google's "hmm-hmm" again. Have Immaculate content + this spam and see how it shakes out.

But realistically I'd be far more willing to buy real sites with real traffic with a real income, and absorb those in, content and all. It'd be way more pricey but it's less a shot in the dark. If you're monetizing the traffic better or equally to the previous owners, you're going to be fine. It's a more risk-reducing investment. And the cherry on top is you get the links too, which was the original goal.

That's my thinking on it. I'd isolate this kind of "301 domain stacking" stuff to a project you can afford to lose, or that's built with churn and burn in mind. I can't see it lasting forever. But absorbing operational sites with traffic is a different story. That's mergers & acquisitions.

 

[harrytwatter]

Thank you for the well-thought our reply as always Ryuzaki. I've done four 301s for link value in my life, 3 tiny and 1 of moderate authority (number and quality of RDs). I never saw a big impact from the tiny redirects but have grown the sites over time without other big link spend so your smearing of effects theory tracks with me. I believe I am seeing a more abrupt lift with the moderate authority redirect, but need more time/data to be certain.

Agree on the real sites with real traffic absorption. I've tried this with affiliate sites from smaller marketplaces but they have turned out to be a wash, presumably because they didn't have much real link authority or well-balanced content mixes. Essentially "built-to-flip-once-hitting-minimal-monthly-earnings-to-qualify-for-marketplace-inclusion".

I don't want to continue down that path and have floated the big auction domain buy + rebuild to eventually redirect purely for links but have to be careful about where I allocate resources and the lack of confidence in direct or even high likelihood of provable ROI has kept me from pursing this tactic.

A well-isolated test of various 301 tactics to determine success rates would be a test I'd be keen to read as well