Changing Domains - How much link juice is lost with 301 redirect?
-
My company is thinking about rebranding and moving over to a new domain. While we dont have a lot of backlinks, we do have some very valuable ones that we hate to lose. That being said, I think we are in such an infancy that the backlinks we have shouldnt prevent us from rebranding if thats what we choose to do.
I am just trying to get an idea of how moving to a new domain will effect the domain authority if we redirect all the pages? Is the best thing to do simply re-direct, or should we reach out to our most valuable links and let them know the domain/link has changed and hopefully they change their link to us?
How much is lost by simply 301 every page? We are getting around 70 organic clicks per day and would rather not start from zero again
-
See, if you going to change domain name and aptly make correct 301 redirect to corresponding pages (following the same url pattern) of new site with same **content, title and description - **then you are home.
Adding to what Mr. Robert said - you can also check on url hierarchy through Xenu Link Sleuth or Screaming frog seo spider of your old domain and new site (post migration). Compare the link structure. If everything goes on well - you may experience 301 redirect working upto 99% and can almost see your similar rankings with new domain
-
Great so there really isnt much to be lost as long as the redirects are all done properly, thanks!
-
Demi,
You will not start from even close to zero if you do the 301's correctly. You need to do a couple of things: The redirects are url to url from old domain to new. Since you are changing the domain name, I recommend also putting in a change of address with GWMT. This will last for 180 days and will insure you have been indexed a few times prior to it going off.
From a lot of experience with 301's, if you do it correctly you should not lose more than a percent or so of link juice, especially given the current age of your site. I suggest running a link profile in something like ahrefs and then after you do the change, running regular ones for the new site so you can watch the progress. That way you will learn what happens with redirects first hand.
Hope this helps,
Robert
-
Hi,
Doing a 301 permanent redirect sends 90 - 99% of the link juice to the new domain. This is by far the most recommended approach when changing domain name.
Below is a URL to a MOZ article regarding redirection.
http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirectionI hope this helps
--
Jørgen Juel
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Contest to generate link building ideas?
Basically, I am looking for new ideas for inbound link generation - WHITE-HAT (merit based links) for the car insurance vertical. E.g. Creating infographics, and promoting them to blogs/news sites. To clarify, the other site is only linking to me because I have something they like about my site, and choose to link to it (so things like guest blogging and directories do not work here, at least in the conventional sense). There are tons of seo blogs that give advice on how to get links, but either: 1. I have already tried, or hired someone, to do them. Those that I hire are specialists (I have hired lots of reputable companies that most people know here, but they always slow down after a few months/years in terms of link volume; 2. Many of the popular methods just don't work in my niche: Take for example one of the more recent ones: skyscraper" method. I really dont think it works in my niche. It only works in niches where "information based content" is vary valuable, like SEO, not car insurance. It is also hard to scale this. 3. The link topics sometimes get too far off-topic. E.g. Links from travel websites is probably not going to work; even car topics can be off-topic wen they get too gimmicky. So my idea is to start a contest here where I basically award the best link building idea $1000, $5000, or whatever amount that would get enough people participating. These ideas have to be relatively proven, and scalable. If it helps to know my background, I am very seasoned at SEO. What do you think of this idea? How can I improve it? Has this been done before (I am not talking about a general SEO contest).
Industry News | | onlinefun0 -
Will editorial links with UTM parameters marked as utm_source=affiliate still pass link juice?
Occasionally some of our clients receive editorial mentions and links in which the author adds utm parameters to the outbound links on their blog. The links are always natural, never compensated, and followed. However, they are sometimes listed as utm_source=affiliate even thought we have no existing affiliate relationship with the author. My practice has been to ask the author to add a rel="norewrite" attribute to the link to remove any trace of the word affiliate. I have read that utm parameters do not affect link juice transfer, however, given the inaccurate "affiliate" source, I wouldn't want Google to misunderstand and think that we are compensating people for followed editorial links. Should I continue following this practice, or is it fine to leave these links as they are? Thanks!
Industry News | | Terakeet0 -
How much to charge for my E-commerce SEO services and web design
Hello, I'm starting a web design company doing standard web design, E-commerce web design, and E-commerce SEO. I've been doing the nuts and bolts of an E-commerce business with four online stores, one very successful, for nine years. Since that's my main experience, I'm sticking with helping others with the nuts and bolts of their E-commmerce SEO. I also do the web design, which I've been doing since 2001. What should I charge per hour for my web design and E-commerce SEO services? I live in Boise, Idaho. I'm thinking $100 an hour for everything, is that too much for web design or too little for SEO? The SEO would be billed exact but my web design estimates are more generous. Looking for honest opinions. I don't want to over or under charge. Thanks Bob
Industry News | | BobGW2 -
Old Domain Redirection
Hi, Recently we have purchased a domain (example www.test.com) with very good Page Rank , Domain Authority and back links. Here my question is should we do 301 redirection from www.test.com to my domain www.test1.com, and if we do that what we will be the impact of seo on www.test1.com. Kindly elaborate.
Industry News | | RuchiPardal0 -
How Google could quickly fix the whole Links problem...
A Thursday morning brainstorm that hopefully an important Google manager will see... Google could quickly end all the problems of link buying, spammy links, and negative SEO with one easy step: Only count the 100 best follow links to any domain. Ignore all the nofollows and everything beyond the 100 best. They can choose what "best" means. Suddenly links would be all about quality. Quantity would not matter. Fiverr links, comment links, and all the other mass-produced spam links would literally be ignored. Unless that's all a domain had, and then they would surely be stomped by any domain with 100 decent natural links. Would it be an improvement over today's situation?
Industry News | | GregB1230 -
Paid links from directory listing and business listing sites are good or bad according to Penguin 2.1 update?
Hi Friends, Recently on October 4<sup>th</sup>, 2013, a new spam filtering algorithm got live named Penguin 21. / Penguin 5. The update goes after sites that may have purchased paid links. I would like to know is it safe, if we submit website details with links in paid directories, eg: https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/ (yahoo directory) and quality business listing sites provided the categories are related to our website. Our competitor sites having the backlinks from those kind of directories and they are performing (ranking) well in major search engines. May I know how Google treat these kinds of links according to this recent algorithm update?
Industry News | | zco_seo0 -
Strange video site adding unwanted links.
Today I was checking our backlink profile and noticed a lot of strange back links coming from grosezinga.com apparently this site is some type of search engine for videos, and it somehow pulls videos from Youtube, and Daily Motion, and adds them to the grosezinga search engine. I have never placed a link on this site, I do not want a link there, and I never even knew it existed until today. We do have video tutorials on the web, and somehow this site has pulled them from our video page without our permission, and added them to this site. Anyone ever had this problem, should I ask for them to be removed? When I do a Google video search my url is showing up on about a hundred different videos that are not ours. I don't want to be accused of building unnatural links.
Industry News | | TinaGammon0 -
Help! I need to hire a SEO / SEM Specialist - Am I asking for too much?!
Hey all! I'm expanding my in-house marketing team and I need to add an SEO / SEM Specialist that will strategize, execute & manage the following: Organic SEO PPC across multiple channels (Google, Bing & also social sites like Facebook) Remarketing & Display marketing Banner ads Retargeting We're a lean company that's all about doing more with less. But not being very familiar with the SEO / SEM world I'm afraid I'm asking for too much! What do you guys think? What's your experience been? If you do think that this is potentially a single position, what would be the best title for attracting talent? SEO / SEM Specialist? Digital Marketing Manager? With the research I've done - jobs / titles have been totally across the board! I'm not able to find much consistency. Thank you all for your help 🙂 It's greatly appreciated!!!!!
Industry News | | RochelleRietow0