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
-
Highly ranked pages to new domain?
Hi everyone! We are ranked #1 for about 30 product pages at www.oldsite.com/product1 and we are wanting to move about 30 of those pages to a new site www.newsite.com/product1 (new domain and hosting - which we own). What is the best way to do this? I'm confused if you recreate those pages on the new domain vs. ftp move them, 301 re-directs, etc. Looking for the things we must do and the sequence to do it all, etc. Thanks so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jamesmcd030 -
If a page ranks in the wrong country and is redirected, does that problem pass to the new page?
Hi guys, I'm having a weird problem: A new multilingual site was launched about 2 months ago. It has correct hreflang tags and Geo targetting in GSC for every language version. We redirected some relevant pages (with good PA) from another website of our client's. It turned out that the pages were not ranking in the correct country markets (for example, the en-gb page ranking in the USA). The pages from our site seem to have the same problem. Do you think they inherited it due to the redirects? Is it possible that Google will sort things out over some time, given the fact that the new pages have correct hreflangs? Is there stuff we could do to help ranking in the correct country markets?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ParisChildress1 -
New site migration (multiple sites into one + new domain)
Hi, I have read so many very helpful guides and experiences from you guys that will greatly help me but I have a few questions please. Our company has 3 sites, the main site and 2 sites for different product ranges: BrandProductName.com (main site - DA = 22 raking well for product name) Productname2.com (DA = 10 ranking very well for product name and little competition) BrandProductName3.com (DA = 10 poor ranking) We wish to bring all the sites into one with categories for the 3 different product. The main site is an e-commerece site whereas the other 2 are not (currently). On top of this as the main domain has one of the product names in it they wish to change the domain to be just Brandname.com. So the plan is to combine site 2 and 3 into site 1 and change that domain name. As you can imagine this is going to be quite a job. I am fairly happy with the steps required (having read all the guides and migrated many sites in the past) but with the added domain name change this is a little daunting. So my questions are: Should I merge the 3 sites into 1 and then changed the domain at a later point? Should I change the domain of the main site first and then merge site 2 and 3 in later? Should I just do it all together? Or based on the data i have provided do you disagree with the plan, what would you recommend? We are not in a massive rush to complete all of this so we have the time to plan and execute this when we are fully ready. Any help / advise would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | csimmo0 -
Ranking after redirecting two URLs to a new domain
I run two websites which operate in similar business sectors. Each has a calculator tool that offers the same functionality. The pages rank 2nd and 5th for the key search term. I'd like to improve the functionality of this and have thought about setting up a new domain for this calculator to move it away from the main sites. If I did this and 301 redirected both pages to the new domain do you think I'd maintain a strong ranking position for this search term on the new domain? Thanks for any advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | craigramsay0 -
Purchasing an existing domain + redirecting to company's domain
Let's pretend that competitor.com ranks well for certain search terms and generates some traffic from organic search. If a company were to acquire the competitor (or their domain), what's the smartest way to redirect that SEO value to the acquiring company's website? Does a 301 redirect work between different root domains? Even if it does work, is that the smartest approach? Thanks for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Raleigh0 -
Client rebranded with a new website but can't migrate now defunct franchise website to new website.
Hi everyone, My client is a chain of franchised restaurants with a local domain website named after the franchise. The franchise exited the market while the client stayed and built its own brand with a separate website. The franchise website (which is extremely popular) will be shut down soon but the client will not be able to redirect the franchise website to the new website for legal reasons. What can I do to ensure that we start ranking immediately for the franchise keyphrase as soon as the franchise website is shutdown. We currently have the new website and access to the old website (which we can't redirect) Thanks, T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tarek_Lel0 -
Weird Google SERPs after New Domain Transfer 301
Hi, I have some very weird results in the SERPS - We did not do a complete 301 of the entire domain, but rather individual pages. We did the transfer back on 10th of June, and I was checking to see if there were any results on old domain of pages that were transferred to new domain via 301. There were, but... Now I have the following occurring in the search results: Title of Page (Links to old domain!! )
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
www.oldomain.com › ... › Figures & Sculptures › Tall Sculptures (these last 2 breadcrumbs link to NEW domain??!!)
Bla bla bla (meta description from new domain meta description I know it's Monday, but this one has got me quite concerned! - Any insight appreciated! Am I going nuts?0 -
Brand new domain with a lot of old links.
So I just bought http://penny-auctions.co/ a couple of days ago, ignore the fact it's not set up yet and generally just a mess, and something kept bugging me about why the domain authority kept showing as 25 in the SEOmoz toolbar. Now initially I'd set it up as www. and with the trailing slash so the PA was 1, however after a bit of exploration it seems that someone has been building links to the non-www version of the domain for at least a year! The site has never been owned before so I've now made the non-www version the default and have a 5 day old site with PA 35 and DA 25! SEOmoz shows PA - 45 links, 20 domains and DA - 341 links, 113 domains. Majestic Historic - 8598 links, 236 domains and Fresh - 160 links, 62 domains. Brilliant! Except they're all spamtastic. What do you think this will do for my future attempts at ranking? Should I create pages that have links to them or just 301 them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StalkerB0