Redirecting main www. subdomain to new domain. Can you then create a new subdomain on the old domain?
-
Hi there,
The scenario is this:
- We have been working on a rebrand and have changed the company name
- So, we want to redirect www.old-name.com to www.new-name.com
- However, the parent company is retaining the old brand name for corporate purposes
- So, in an ideal world, we'd be able to keep www.old-name.com active - but clearly that would sacrifice all of the authority built up over the years, so we do have to redirect the main www. subdomain in it's entirity.
- However - one suggested solution is to redirect www.old-domain.com to www.new-domain.com... but then create a new corporate subdomain: for example, business.old-domain.com
- business.old-domain.com will not be competing with the new site on any service/product related terms; it will only need to appear in SERPs for the company name
I'd appreciate some thoughts on this, as I've not done this before or found any examples of anyone that has.
Is that a massive risk in terms of sending a confusing message to Google?
Thanks for your help
-
I have done this many times and if you are sending the redirects to appropriate urls on the other site this is a non issue. I have done it with sites with 100K links.
If they were in some way buying non relevant domains and redirecting that would be different.
-
Robert,
when redirecting one domain to another, all the links pointing to the old domain will be pointing to the new domain, that will increase drastically the number of liks on the new domain. That could be taken as a SPAM action by Google.
Well, technically speaking it would not harm the new domain linkbuilding. It would make look it really unnatural.
-
How does redirecting the old domain to the new harm new domain link building? I can't see it even if the new domain had one link and the old had 20K.
-
You need to separate SEO from branding for a minute.
You are saying subdomain and then presenting the www subdomain and I want to be clear that is what your intent was? If instead you are saying we have domain old-company.com and now we are going to be under domain new-company.com and we want the authority built on old-company.com then, YES, you need to do the 301 redirect of urls on old-company.com to new-company.com urls.
Now, in terms of the parent owning brand Old-Company you need to first be clear with them they do not own domain old-company.com in any way as that would negate your ability to keep the redirects once they start using it.
Google is looking at the brand only in terms of branded searches, etc. There is no branding issue beyond that. So, if the parent has domain oldcompany.com vs old-company.com or they add in The-old-company, etc. they are ok if they are ok from a business sense with that change. they do not need to have a subdomain to the previous domain like best.old-company.com
I cannot see them using the old domain in any way as being good for you. But, any variant of that old domain (not your sub domain variant with something.old-company.com) would be fine.
If I were parent and brand were a real issue, I would not relinquish the domain for any reason. If I were you and you believe you must have the redirects, I would negotiate with, "we cannot do the deal if we cannot "retire" the domain and use it as we wish except not visible on the Internet." I think you understand.
Hope that helps,
Robert
-
Hi,
The risk that you're taking depends on how different are the old and the new brand. Also, considering the case that this change implies a change in the category of the site. (i.e. technology to furniture).
In the part of the subdomains, I dont see any complications on redirecting the subdomains and creating the new "business.old-brand.com". Of course you do have to analyze the linkbuilding profile of the old domain, and how it would impact in the new domain.
A quick and easy example, old domain has 10k links and new domain has 2k links. After the redirect, 10k links will go to the new domain, this could do much harm to the new domain linkbuilding.Hope I was clear enough to make me understand.
GR.
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
-
Is there a way to forward banklink benefits from one domain to another without a redirect?
In this situation I have SiteA, and SiteB on completely separate domains. SiteA is the marketing front for the company and SiteB is an app that company owns. SiteB receives a fair amount of backlinks as it has the login page of the application where customers link to a branded version for their members to login. Additionally none of that domain is indexable including the login page. SiteB's domain can't be changed to be a subdomain of SiteA as it isn't technically feasible. Initially I was reluctant to use canonical because as it isn't really duplicate content. Is there a method for forwarding any link-juice from SiteB to SiteA without the use of a redirect and would canonical be appropriate in this case? Additionally would SiteB's not being indexed negate any link benefit? Edit: Typo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OCN0 -
Moving site to new domain without access to redirect from old to new. How can I do this with as little loss to SERP results as possible?
I've been hired to build a new site for a customer. They were duped by some shady characters at goglupe.com (If you can reach them, tell them they are rats--phone is disconnected, address is a comedy club on Mission in SF). Glupe owns the domain name and would not transfer or give FTP access prior to dropping off the face of the earth. The customer doesn't want to chase after them with lawyers, so we are moving on. New domain, new site with much of the same content as previous site. All that I have access to is the old wordpress site. I plan to build the new site, then remove all pages/posts from the old site. Is there anything I can do to salvage the current page 1 ranking? Obviously, the new domain will take some time to get back there. Just hoping to avoid any pitfalls or penalties if I can. If I had complete access, I would follow all the standard guidelines. But I don't. Any thoughts? Thanks! Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | c_estep_tcbguy0 -
Risks of moving a site back to an old domain
Hi Nearly 2 years ago our site was moved from a .co.uk domain to .media. Because this TLD isn't supported for DA, it's hard to measure whether linkbuilding campaigns (for example) are having a positive effect. The old site has a DA of 38 (even after 2 years of inactivity) and the new one is 1, but the new one has better Trust and Citation flow, for example. I'm now investigating whether it's worth moving back to .co.uk and I want to fully understand the risks involved. So far I know of the following potential risks: It's a lot of work so human error is a real risk Could create a redirect loop as the old site has 301 redirects in place to the new one It will take several months for metrics to recover Any thoughts on more risks, how these challenges can be overcome etc will be welcome. Or do I just set fire to the lot and create a new site with yet another 301 redirect from the .media site? What would you do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AxonnMedia0 -
Tough 301 redirect with a /www in it
Hi Mozzers, I'm using Eggplants 301 redirect via wordpress and for some reason I can't redirect one url. The example of it is below: www.website.com/news/www.website.com As you can see, it looks like there's 2 url's and this plugin doesn't do the trick. Does anyone have any suggestions? Maybe via .htaccess? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
What happens to a domain in SERPs when it's set to redirect to another?
We have just acquired a competing website and are wondering whether to leave it running as is for now, or set the domain to redirect to our own site. If we set up this redirect, what would happen to the old site in Google SERPs? Would the site drop off from results? If so, would we capture this new search traffic or is it a free for all and all sites compete for the search traffic as normal? Thanks in advance. Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevinliao0 -
301 Redirect to a new domain, Need linkbuilding ideas
Hi, I just 301 redirected my 3 year old domain to a new domain which was created yesterday. Now i want to start link building to my new domain. Should i start slowly by publishing 4-5 articles on article directories and a 1 press release a week? Can someone suggest me some ideas on how to handle a new domain. Will be waiting for replies.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dex3783783780 -
Redirecting www.example.com to www.example.com/directory/
Hi All, There's been some internal debate going back and forth about redirecting the homepage of a site to a directory. There are a few different POVs circulating, one of which is that it's no different than redirecting to a /index page. Basically, the homepage is ranking for the keyword that we want the directory to rank for but I can't seem to justify placing this type of redirect. The content on both pages is different, but for the term both the homepage and the directory make sense to rank. Has anyone ever done anything like this before? Can anyone see any reason to do something like this? I believe this move would dilute the link value we currently have going to the homepage and potentially cause us to lose our #2 slot with the homepage in favor of a lower spot with the directory. I'd love to hear any thoughts on this/learn if anyone has experimented with this tactic. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamieCottle280 -
Are sites that leave out www from domain at a disadvantage to domains with www in url
I know this has been discussed but was wondering what would be the best approach from an SEO perspective. I quite like the idea of setting up websites with domains without www but always worry that setting up domains without www has a disadvantage because user are use to referring to sites with the www included. Thus one of my fears are that users would link back using www version which will mean even if you do a 301 redirect that some of the link juice would be lost. I know some famous sites have used this convention such as http://searchenginewatch.com/ so think it would be possible but still concerned that for new sites it would be better to rather stick to conventions. What are your opinions about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SABest0