Website Migration and SEO
-
Recently I migrated three websites from www.product.com to www.brandname.com/product. Two of these site are performing as normal when it comes to SEO but one of them lost half of its traffic and dropped in rankings significantly.
All pages have been properly redirected, onsite SEO is intact and optimized, and all pages are indexed by Search engines. Has anyone had experience with this type of migration that could give some input on what a possible solution could be?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
-
Thanks Jeff! Your response was very helpful. It is true that the old domain contained a competitive keyterm which was lost in the migration. The competition is also higher for that space so this explains why we took a hit in PageRank. I will be working on regaining that competitive edge in the coming months.
Thanks again!
- Sheena
-
Sheena -
Two out of three isn't bad
Without seeing the actual sites, my best guess is that the www.product.com is an strong domain name with exact match keywords. And when it was moved over to the brandname.com/product the new location didn't work as well as in the past.
301 Redirects transfer about 85% of the link value, according to the Moz blog article here:
http://moz.com/blog/save-your-website-with-redirects"When done properly, we know from testing and statements from Google that a 301 redirect passes somewhere around 85% of its original link equity."
According to an interview with Google's Matt Cutts: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021832.html
"Eric Enge: Let’s say you move from one domain to another and you write yourself a nice little statement that basically instructs the search engine and, any user agent on how to remap from one domain to the other. In a scenario like this, is there some loss in PageRank that can take place simply because the user who originally implemented a link to the site didn't link to it on the new domain?"
_ "Matt Cutts: That's a good question, and I am not 100 percent sure about the answer. I can certainly see how there could be some loss of PageRank. I am not 100 percent sure whether the crawling and indexing team has implemented that sort of natural PageRank decay, so I will have to go and check on that specific case. (Note: in a follow on email, Matt confirmed that this is in fact the case. There is some loss of PR through a 301)."_
Perhaps the other two that are performing well are in a less competitive space; this one might be more competitive from other established players in the industry.
For the other two sites, taking a 15% hit probably didn't make a difference, but for the one site, it's likely that it did.
Hope this helps!
-- Jeff
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
-
Relaunching a website - SEO implicataions
Im looking to relaunch a current website, that will undergo a complete makeover. Can you you tell me what factors I need to consider in doing this, particularly with regards to maintaining seo and migrating the current site in general
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aplnzmarch180 -
SEO Migration Options
Hi Guys, We have a www.sitename.com.au domain name and looking to move into the US market, and other markets in the future such as UK, Canada, etc. We are reviewing our options. Currently the .com.au is ccTLD to Australia so won't perform well in US. It seems the best option at this stage is to get a generic domain Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) like a .com. Then create different sub-folders for each country for example: .com our main country .com/us/ target us .com/uk/ Then in Google Search Console don't set country targeting for entire domain but use Hreflang Tags to specify the targeting for each page? -- This seems like a complex strategy to execute so i just want to check if this would be a optional option? Any suggestions would be very much appreciated! Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cerednicenko0 -
Multilingual Version of a Website
Hi All, We created 'EN' and 'FR' version of a website and translated all labels and message from English to France with the help of Google Translator. Lets take an example: English version URL - https://www.sitegeek.com/softlayer France version URL - https://fr.sitegeek.com/softlayer France version also contain same reviews available on English version page. So the reviews content or language is same on both pages. To eliminate the duplicate content issue we put following meta tags on both 'EN" and 'FR' version pages : So My question is that (1.) Is this the correct implementation of Multilingual Version of a Website? (2.) Is Added meta tags work for both Google and Bing Search engine? (as Bing not indexing all pages) (3.) We are translated labels and messages from Google Translator. Is this the issue pages not being Indexed in Bing? (4.) Finally, What would the correct SEO approch if we translate our site in other languages? Rajiv
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gamesecure0 -
Movil Migration
I have a question!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | romaro
We are about to migrate from one version of mobile where we used a different desktop to a mobile version (non-adaptive) which has the same URL URL desktop. We must make a 302 redirect and remove the Canonical and linkages by code? That's the way to do migration?
Thank You !!0 -
4 questions about a paragraph of SEO friendly text in my e-com websites header.
Hi guys, I'm trying to understand the SEO behind our websites header. www.mountainjade.co.nz As you can see we have a paragraph of relevant introductory text that is also SEO friendly in our header. What I would like some help with is understanding how google views and assigns 'juice' to information like this in the header or footer of a website. Usually certain pages have content specific to a given topic, and google ranks these pages accordingly. But with a websites header / footer its content appears on every page as the header is always at the top and footer at the bottom. 1. In what way does my website benefit from the paragraph of text in the header? e.g at the domain level? Just the home page? etc etc 2. How does google assign 'juice' to the paragraph of text? (similiar to Q1). 3. How would my website be effected if I moved the text to the footer? (Aesthetic change) 4. When I 'inspect element' on the paragraph, it is labelled 'div id=site description.' Can someone please explain the relevance of a sites description to SEO for me. This paragraph of text was in the websites header before I came onboard, and I've been too concerned to change / move it as I don't know enough about it. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks team, Jake
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jacobsheehan0 -
Is Q&A on a website good or bad for SEO?
I am considering adding a Q&A section to my website and I have a few questions for you PROs!: is it a good thing for SEO? Or a potential pitfall for SEO? If it is used often and users post relevant topics related to the website content, will it help the overall DA and websites SERP performance? Are there inherent risks for website security when using a Q&A? Are there any other questions I should be asking? I am using Joomla! 3.0 with Stackideas Easy discuss/easy social. Thanks for any advice! BB
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BBuck0 -
Is .ME domain is effective in SEO ?
I am always listening about TLD. com. org .net but what about the .me domain. Can this will be effective in SEO. Can i able to beat down my competitors, if i choose .me . I also have a .com or other TLD option but if i am making my name than .me is for me but i need your suggestion for the seo purpose. Is there really domain affective in term of SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pnb5670 -
New website : SEO approach and strategy
We are a small startup company looking at starting a complaints website in India having user generated content(complaints) . Would some one help me to draw overall strategies on how we can achieve good traffic over one year. We realise that there is no magic wand to improve positions in search ranking for a site which hosts user generated content esp. since we dont know what key words to target. In this context i was looking form some expert suggestion on how we can go ahead with the SEO for the next 1 year .. We are open to paying for the services if you prove that you have the required experience . Otherwise any suggestions from other who have experience in such situations are welcome ...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ShoutOut0