Dropped ranking - new domain same IP????
-
We dropped ranking late last year for our site, so decided to start over with a new domain. However we didn't change IP address. Would this cause any issues???
-
I think many of the commenters have good points here. It's really tough to make a call like this without a deep knowledge of the situation, and for any of us to tell you what to do would probably be irresponsible. Generally, I don't think Google transfers penalties across IPs like they used to occasionally do. With IPv4 space running out, sharing IPs is just a lot more common than it used to be. Google also has other cues, like domain ownership (they're technically a registrar, so they have access to a lot of data) to go by.
To be safe, you could isolate it and get a new IP. I'm not sure it's necessary, but if you're going to go so far as to start over, you might as well do it as cleanly as possible.
The question is whether starting over with a new domain will solve the problem. If you want to avoid the penalty transferring, you can't 301-redirect the old site, which means that you'll lose all of your link equity and leave past visitors stranded. That's a huge loss to take, and it's going to take time to rebuild (as Michael B. said). Will the content be the same? There may be other aspects of the site that caused you problems, and if they're related to the content or site structure, they could just come back.
-
This does sound like a drastic move, likely unnecessary in the first place. I recently had to take a site through a reconsideration request following a manual action penalty and found this article very informative: http://moz.com/ugc/the-anatomy-of-a-successful-reconsideration-request
If you are already down the path with a new site, you may want to consider switching the IP (or host) as a safeguard. I would also be cautious of the content, site structure, 301s, etc. If all you did was port the site, redesign it and plug it into a new domain, you probably have the same challenges (and infractions) that caused deteriorated rankings in the first place.
If the old site and domain is still active, I would go back there and see if you can clean up and disavow bad links and run a reconsideration path. That could even aid in the success of the new site on the same IP.
-
Jason,
One thought: if your last sight was penalized, do you not just want to disavow links / clean up your link profile and content, and then ask for reconsideration by Google?
If you do continue to move to a new domain, and you stay on the same IP (without disavowing / cleaning link profile) you may end up bringing down your new site based on association... Plus, with the site being completely new, it will take a while to gain traction.
Eli
-
we think over doing anchor text.....
-
Seems drastic. What caused the drop in rankings - penalty, algorithmic penalty, competition, content, poor link profile...?
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
-
Phasing in new website on www2 domain - 301 plan
Hi, I work for a large company and we're planning to phase in a new website. The idea is to develop key journeys on the new site and serve them on a www2 domain, removing them from the old website which is served on the www domain. The reason for this is because the old website is over 2,000 pages, and the management want to see new, improved journeys sooner rather than later. So, rather than launching all new pages and journeys at the same time, which will take a long time to design and develop, key journeys will move across to the new site / design sooner and made available to visitors. Whilst the overall journey might be a bit disjointed in parts (i.e. sending people from old to new site, and vice versa) I can't see a better way of doing it... Once all new content is complete, 301s will be implemented from old content on www. to new content www2. Once the phasing is complete, and all new content is in place on www2, 301s will be implemented to point everything back to www. Does anybody see any problems with this approach? Or any ideas on how to better handle this situation? Thanks Mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RWesley0 -
New site. How important is traffic for a new site? And what about domain age?
Hi guys. I've been building a new site because i've seen a real SEO opportunity out there. I'm a mixing professional by trade and so I wanted to take advantage of SEO to help gain more work. Here's the site: www.signalchainstudios.co.uk I'm curious about domain age. This site fairly well optimised for my keywords, and my site got pretty good content on it (i think so anyway). But it's no where to be seen on the SERP's (link at all). Is this just a domain age issue? I'd have though it might be in the top 50 because my site's services are not hard to rank for at all! Also what about traffic? Does Google want to see an 'active' site before it considers 'promoting' it up the ranks? Or are back links and good content the main factor in the equation? Thanks in advance. I love this community to bits 🙂 Isaac.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | isaac6631 -
Should I start new domain and redirect site?
I recently my rankings for http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com (some adult content) drop off a cliff. Google tells me there's no manual penalty therefore it might be algorithmic. I don't know why my rankings went but I think it could be that I added A LOT of category pages pulling the same content from posts and this could have caused both duplicate content issues and too many on page links causing an algo penalty. Ive deleted the categories and therefore fixed duplicate content issue (perhaps you guys could check out the site and see that you agree with me) but rankings have not improved even thougo most of the pages have been recrawled. I read somewhere its extremely hard to recover from such a penalty so should I move my site to a and domain and redirect all urls? I can't think of another solution. Any help appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
SERP Drop overnight for one of our domains - could it be the title changes?
Hi Scratching our heads here over SERP drop for some of our product pages, Although they are all uniquely titled with the product name, we have recently added 4 words at the end of our title, like a slogan which are repeated on every one of our product pages. However, we've also seen a drop, but not as far, on related category pages, these have unique titles. When we talk about "unique title" being important for SEO, does that mean 0 reptition between page titles? I see many companies use their site name in the title (even here see | SEOMOZ Q&A - would four words at the end of a title do this? Or am i barking up the wrong tree entirely? Ive seen so much movement over the past few weeks its hard to correlate anything we do with the result, so even after advise I think i'll wait a week
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | xoffie0 -
Hit by Penguin, Can I move the content from the old site to a new domain and start again with the same content which is high quality
I need some advice please. My website got the unnatural links detected message and was hit by penguin.. hard. Can I move the content from the current domain to a new domain and start again or does the content need to be redone also. I will obviously turn of the old domain once its moved. The other option is to try and identify the bad links and change my anchor profile which is a hit and miss task in my opinion. Would it not be easier just to identify the good links pointing to the old domain and get those changed to point to the new domain with better anchors. thanks Warren
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | warren0071 -
301 a strong but under-performing landing page to a new domain?
Hi guys, Our website have a very strong landing page (PA 80, more than 1,000 domains linking) but is currently not ranking at all as the targeted terms are dominated by exact match domains. We are thinking of redirecting this particular page to a new partial match domain targeting the same keywords. Is it a good move?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sssrpm0 -
Multiple IPs (load balancing) for same domain
Hello, I'm considering moving our main website to a multiple servers, perhaps in multiple different datacenters and use a DNS round robin load balancing by assigning it 4 different IP addresses (probably from 4 different C classes). example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maddogx
ourdomain.com A 1.1.1.1
ourdomain.com A 2.2.2.2
ourdomain.com A 3.3.3.3
ourdomain.com A 4.4.4.4 Every time you ping the domain you will get a response from another IP of the group. Therefore search engines will see a different IP each time they scan the site. We have used the main IP for our website for past 6 years without changing it. We have a quite good SEO in our niche which I don't want to loose of course. My question is, will adding more IPs to the domain affect any how on the ranking ? What is the suggested way to do it anyway? What is recommended to do before and after? Thanks for you attention and help in advance. Dmitry S.0 -
Drop in rankings, next step
So based on a question asked yesterday, I am wondering what my next step is. Yesterday's question was, I have made updates to Title and Meta Descriptions for my client's site and suddenly they are not showing up in the top 50 for numerous keywords that they used to. The only words in the page source that were edited were "fluff" words that were replaced with relevant keywords reflected in much of the on-page copy yet now the client is not showing up. Ideas? From responses and research, it seems there's a lag time in Google to pick up the updated titles/info and these changes can cause a drop in rankings for a short time - however, I can't very well turn to my client and say sorry your website isn't showing up for a few weeks...wondering what my next step should be, or is there a greater issue I'm missing.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | laidlawseo0