301 Redirect - What happens to backlinks

[Prime85]

Hello...

One of my sites is losing rankings in G.

I received the webmaster notification of unnatural links...

My question is, should i do a 301 redirect of every page on my site to a new domain?

If so, do the backlinks (which i believe are causing my rankings to drop) carry over?

How about the good backlinks?

Also, what would happen to the rankings i currently have on page 1?

Thanks

[Mudaserseo1]

I would not 301 redirects because it passes link juice, it will also pass the link juice from sites that have nothing to do with your phrases. What I would recommend is starting a new site. Manually check all your old backlinks.

[amanxxx]

i still don't have enough info on this topic. in my case, i purchased a domain name didigames.biz. actually it is expired domain name with 25DA already. but you know .biz domains difficult to rank in top ten. i purchased new domain name didigamesgirl.com and started making links. now i am thinking about redirecting my .biz domain to this domain. need expert opinion on this.

[gfiorelli1]

Personally I would not do a 301, as Donnie have said. With the 301, also the backlinks will be redirected. Actually one of the problems Wil Reynolds had with SeerInteractive was because of old backlinks to his previous domain name, then 301 to the actual one.

If you are thinking of creating a new site as a solution in order to avoid the penalization for unnatural links, then - during the migration - contact the "not-crappy" sites which linked to your old one, and inform them that you're changinge domain name and, therefore, you are asking them if they may update your link. 99% the link will be updated.

Obviously, all the link equity the "unnatural links" are passing to your site will disappear, which means that a loss in ranking in quite sure, but not at the same level a penalization could cause.

Another solution should be to try to quit all the unnatural backlinks but maintaining the same site. I don't know if this can be possible: if the domain is http://www.simplastics.com/ (taken from the email you use to register in SEOmoz) from OSE is see exact match links from comments, maybe a signature, and from blog related to politics (not quite related indeed).

Said that, and because the site has also other on page issue (i.e.: domain canonicalization), maybe to create a new site is the best decision.

[Thos003]

There are many individuals that claim redirecting these sites will filter out the crap links. They juice up a site, then 301 it. My suggestion would be to test it. If the penalty is algo based and if you get hit with this penalty after your 301 then simply undo it and the penalty should go away. I don't believe it's a manual audit. Or you listen to google and start removing the unnatural links. Or you take Donnie's approach if you want to build a new, longer standing web presence.

[JordanGodbey]

I'm not the expert on this topic, so I'd love to hear some others jump in on this.

This is a very hot topic right. Wil Reynolds was talking about a new potential technique of putting up spam crap sites and building tons of anchor text links to them and letting them live for a few weeks until they get burned. Then put up a new one and repeat the process.

Ethan Lyon mentions in the comments something similar to what you're talking about

Ethan Lyon Apr 23, 2012

A strategy that is really big right now is 301 redirecting burned sites to new sites. So if you build 10,000 links to site A, then it gets burned, 301 redirect site A to site B. Build 10,000 links to site B, so now it has 20,000 links. When site B gets burned, 301 redirect site A and B to site C, so now you start with 20,000 links. Then build 10,000 links to site C so you have 30,000 links. Rinse and repeat and you have a strategy to rank consistently in the top spots in some of the most competitive spaces. Insane that it works, but it painfully does.

So I know that doesn't really answer your question, but sheds a little more information and validates the fact that  a lot of people are doing this, or thinking about it right now.

So for people that have done this, do 301 redirects carry the original anchor text and thus can result in burning the new site as well?

[SEODinosaur]

I would not 301 redirect because it passes link juice, it will also pass the link juice from sites that have nothing to do with your phrases. What I would recommend is starting a new site. Manually check all your old backlinks. Find the backlinks that are authoritative and relevant to your topic (usually sites that have your keyword phrases in them), and contact them. Your email should be: Dear____ , we have moved our site to a new location can you please edit our link?

I love giving value.. The more value I give the more value I get (aka karma, and yes I am a hippie)

When you contact these sites webmaster you can check their sites in a broken link checker tool or find something to help them improve. If you cannot find something to improve at least be somewhat entertaining. Remember webmasters are people too!