Trying to understand 301 redirect and backlinks

I am trying to understand if one way of using a 301 redirect could/would work. I was told this would work but I do mostly SEO work on my own pages im working with...not someone elses....so...The easiest way to ask it so to make up a situation.


Lets say you want to do work for a client. They are on page three for a term that is fairly easy to rank for. You do the on page seo and such and get that out of the way.

Now, I set up my own website with maybe keyworded domain and other good stuff like that and spend some time building up backlinks to my own site and basically get my own site to number one or page one...basically dominate that first spot.

If I then setup a 301 redirect on my domain to redirect to the clients website which is on page three...does all my backlink power then get shifted to the client? I realize I will loose the onsite and keyword power from my site but if their site has good onsite seo already that shouldnt be much of an issue...but will the off site backlinks and stuff from my domain all carry over and basically instantly super charge up the clients site and as long as their site also had pretty good on page seo it SHOULD shoot up to first page or around where my domain was located. Is that correct understanding?

I was told the reason you do this is in case the client stops paying you or screws you you can change the 301 redirect from your domain and instantly they loose all those backlinks and you get them back and they will drop ranks and loose the backlink SEO work you did for them (and then you could take your site and find another client and then setup the 301 redirect for them)

Is the correct understanding of how this could work?

Just to add: What i was told was you could do all the prep work like backlink building to your site and get that all setup and then when you got the client you already had a majority of the work done as the backlinks were already created and you could show results to the clients website much faster than if you had to start from scratch when they hired you.

And also wouldnt it be much safer for the clients site since its your domain you are building the backlinks up to before it ever sees the clients site?

Last question: Would the sudden increase of backlinks to the clients site via the 301 redirect cause any problems with their site and a sandbox or does google realize its a redirect and previously built backlinks and not just massive backlink spam

Alright, as I did some MORE searching on here and I think my understanding is correct (I had already searched some just not enough I guess)

But if anyone has any tips, pointers, or comments to help clear it up anymore I would love to hear it.

Thanks!

yes, 301 pass on link history. your better off creating a page with the clients critical keyword in it and have relvant backlinks with strong anchor text keyword. also have backlink from your main domain to the page. the sudden amount of backlinks should cause too much of a problem, never has for me aslong as your using quality backlinks.

Thanks. The idea i was thinking was creating a site..maybe micro niche style in the same niche as potential clients..such as "bloomington dentist" ...something local that would be easy to rank for...then once I have my site to number 1 start contacting potential clients and offering them two options...my number one keyworded site branded as an entrance page to their site or to focus on their current site and eventually get it to around the same rank as my site (if choosing option two I i would then put in place the 301 redirect since I would/should already at that point have all the needed backlinks in place to rank it and would just need to adjust the onsite seo accordingly )

I'm glad to have found your thread. I've been playing around with 301 redirects and I agree with your theory (I have read an ebook about offline SEO services with the same 301 redirect trick exposed and I though that I could benefit from it).

I'm not into offline services, I decided to use 301 redirects because I had a website with copyrighted name in the domain and I was ready to give it up in case somebody would ask me to. I would build links to a subdomain of another site of mine and I would build links pointing to that subdomain. On the subdomain, I would put a 301 redirect to the site. This way I thought that I could change the redirect and all the link building activity wouldn't be in vain, but just redirect to a new URL.

This is what I did. I used a 301 redirect with a few lines of PHP. But frankly I haven't had the success I used to have (I've already ranked several sites on the top spots for good kws and made money with, so I think I know a thing or two about SEO).

I'm not sure why this happens, but I've noticed it takes a lot of more time to improve the ranking when using a 301 redirect.

Now that I ponder about it:
- the URL where backlinks are pointing was new and the domain the URL was redirecting the juice to was new and unindexed as well. this may have slow down the whole thing.

- the redirecting URL is not even indexed at the moment when searching for inurl:subdomain.domain.com

this may be a cause.

I'm not sure though. I can notice the up-and-down dance but it's taking too freaking long for my tastes and habits.

There may have been some new changes in google's algorithms in this direction.

Is anybody out there able to bring some light to the subject?

To the OP: try it

I think that if you build a site, rank it and someday redirect it you'll be fine. Just be ready to wait more than what you would expect

I've done this type of work for clients before. The 301 would work in your favor, but depending on the type of site you're using it might be better to keep it as a separate entity. Using your example of "Bloomington Dentist" you could make the niche site 100% DR focused, i.e., "Fill out this form for free referrals to Bloomington Dentists near you."

I've worked with a ton of education clients in the past and their .edu sites *suck* at getting any type of conversion, so the agency I worked with did microsites that just focused on getting people to fill out a form, not all the other happy horse crap you see on "corporate" sites.

Plus as you alluded to, if they ever don't pay in this scenario it would be easier to pitch the site to their competitor than changing the redirect back and waiting for all that.

yeah, thats kinda what I was thinking. If I set up a simple landing page site that basically was a welcome page or had a form on it for that business I would not have to deal with their site at all and could make SURE the on site was good and had the best chance of ranking well. I would charge a little less but it would be much less work to design a site specifically for ranking well (like the niche sites) than trying to take their crappy site and get it in the shape it needs to be. Thanks everyone for the great ideas!

Do yall have any suggestions on pricing for something like this? I was thinking 150-200/mo. Is that to low?

air360 said:

yeah, thats kinda what I was thinking. If I set up a simple landing page site that basically was a welcome page or had a form on it for that business I would not have to deal with their site at all and could make SURE the on site was good and had the best chance of ranking well. I would charge a little less but it would be much less work to design a site specifically for ranking well (like the niche sites) than trying to take their crappy site and get it in the shape it needs to be. Thanks everyone for the great ideas!

Do yall have any suggestions on pricing for something like this? I was thinking 150-200/mo. Is that to low?

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It's hard to tell. it depends on how deep your clients' pockets are and how much money they will make thanks to your services.

It depends on you location as well, a small town and big city are 2 differents scenarios that has to be dealt in person to have an idea.

It even depends on your salesman skills LOL

I guess, the question is this one: what's the minimun money I should expect to earn to make it worth my time? Would you do it for 200? for 100? Set a minimum price.

Then you have to see if there are people in the area of your interest that may be willing to invest in your services.

I guess nobody can tell you the proper pricing, the only way is to get out there and do some reasearch.

Not able to make a long post, but depending on your client you can approach this a few ways, including what you suggested. Easiest thing to do is ask your client what leads are worth to them, then figure in your traffic, maybe a 2-3% conversion rate, and go from there.