Change domain.com to www.domain.com - influence on linkbuilding, seo, etc.
-
Hello, Do you know what can happen when i change domain.com to www.domain.com? Will it have an influence to my link-building portfolio (external links to domain.com), position on google search, etc. Thank you for help.
-
Hi there,
It's a delusion that 30x redirects can lead to PageRank loss. This has now been confirmed multiple times by Gary Illyes and John Mueller. As long as you properly implement a 301 redirect, there shouldn't be any issues.
-
Reyzer, there really is no risk when you move from http://domain.com to http://www.domain.com on the same domain. If you were to move from one domain name to another, that would be different--and you'd want to use Google's Change of Address tool to tell them that you're moving from one domain name to another.
But, when you move from one subdomain to another subdomain (which you are doing in your case), there is NO loss as long as you properly implement 301 Permanent Redirects on the pages. Google has been very public about this, and as long as you move using a 301 redirect and it's on the same domain name, there is NO loss whatsoever.
The same goes for moving from http:// to https:// as well, as it's the same domain name.
-
Hello there!
Yes, there will be risk.
Making that change is technically a redirect from non-www to www domain.
I'd advise you to read this article about new redirection rules and PR loss, it states that usually there is a 15% of PR loss and that theoretically nowadays there will be no loss.Also, if you decide to do it, remember these 4 things:
- Add and correctly configure in Search Console the preferred version.
- If you can, try to change the links already created. Set the new domain as the link.
- Of course, from that time and on, all the links should have the www.
Hope I've helped.
GR. -
Typically this doesn't really matter - links built to a domain will always benefit that particular domain, regardless of whether it can be accessed at 'www.', 'non-www.', 'http://' or 'https://'. I would bet my bottom dollar that there will be almost zero impact on your positions.
Remember to couple this change with a change in Google Search Console to set your 'Preferred Domain' appearance in Google Search results - this can be done under 'Settings' > 'Site Settings'.
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
-
Planning to transition to a new website domain - should I press pause on SEO initiatives?
Hello - my company is planning to transition to a new website domain sometime this year, probably about six months from now. Our current website does not currently get much organic traffic from unbranded search terms. I would really like to fix that by publishing lots of new blog posts and trying to get more backlinks. But with the website transition on the horizon, I'm wondering if I should hold off on posting new pages and getting backlinks for the time being. Then once the new website is live, I can start to ramp things up. What would you do in this situation? Also, does anyone know of any thorough guides or walk-throughs that cover all of the best practices (re: SEO) when migrating to a new website domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | collinburkewg0 -
UK company not ranking .com domain in UK
Hi, we have a slight issue with our website. We have been proactively doing SEO for the past year, but we have run into a slight issue. Our website is ranking for search terms everywhere except Our local area (UK) We have tried creating separate sections of our site targeted just at the UK In search console. As well as targeting the whole site as UK preferred and setting the hreflang tags to en-GB. Nothing seems to be working, any ideas? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODale1 -
Can subdomains hurt your primary domain's SEO?
Our primary website https://domain.com has a subdomain https://subDomain.domain.com and on that subdomain we have a jive-hosted community, with a few links to and fro. In GA they are set up as different properties but there are many SEO issues in the jive-hosted site, in which many different people can create content, delete content, comment, etc. There are issues related to how jive structures content, broken links, etc. My question is this: Aside from the SEO issues with the subdomain, can the performance of that subdomain negatively impact the SEO performance and rank of the primary domain? I've heard and read conflicting reports about this and it would be nice to hear from the MOZ community about options to resolve such issues if they exist. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BHeffernan1 -
Legacy domains
Hi all, A couple of years ago we amalgamated five separate domains into one, and set up 301 redirects from all the pages on the old domains to their equivalent pages on the new site. We were a bit tardy in using the "change of address" tool in Search Console, but that was done nearly 8 months ago now as well. Two years after implementing all the redirects, the old domains still have significant authority (DAs of between 20-35) and some strong inbound links. I expected to see the DA of the legacy domains taper off during this period and (hopefully!) the DA of the new domain increase. The latter has happened, although not as much as I'd hoped, but the DA of the legacy domains is more or less as good as it ever was? Google is still indexing a handful of links from the legacy sites, strangely even when it is picking up the redirects correctly. So, for example, if you do a site:legacydomain1.com query, it will give a list of results which includes pages where it shows the title and snippet of the page on newdomain.com, but the link is to the page on legacydomain1.com. What has prompted me to finally try and resolve this is that the server which hosted the original 5 domains is now due to be decommissioned which obviously means the 301 redirects for the original pages will no longer be served. I can set up web forwarding for each of the legacy domains at the hosting level, but to maintain the page-by-page redirects I'd have to actually host the websites somewhere. I'd like to know the best way forward both in terms of the redirect issue, and also in terms of the indexing of the legacy domains? Many thanks, Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | clarkovitch0 -
How to switch brand domain and address previous use of domain
We recently acquired a new domain to replace existing as it better fits our brand. We have little/no organic value on existing domain so switching is not an issue. However the newly acquired domain was previously used in a different industry and has inbound links with significant spam scores. How can we let Google know that these links are not valid for our business and start rebuilding reputation of the domain? Disavow tool?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marlette0 -
SEO question
Hi there! I'm the SEO manager for 5 Star Loans. I have 2 city pages running. We are running our business in 2 locations: Berkeley, CA & San Jose, CA. For those offices we've created 2 google listings with separate gmail accounts. Berkeley (http://5starloans.com/berkeley/) ranks well in Berkeley in Gmaps and it shows on first page in organic results. However the second city page San Jose (http://5starloans.com/san-jose/) doesn't show in the Gmaps local pack results and also doesn't rank well in organic results. Both of them have authentic backlinks and reviews. It has been a year already and it's high time we knew the problem 🙂 any comment would be helpful. thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moonalev0 -
Are sub domains considered completely different than the root domain?
We have a project that is going to generate duplicate content. If we move the new content to a sub-domain (E.g. product.domain.com) will it still be considered duplicate content to the root domain? Or is it like having two completely different domains? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tripled5110 -
Exact match domain or root domain for speedy SEO?
I am doing SEO for a website that has constantly rotating and only temporarily pertinent subjects on it. Let's say these information and subject cycles go for about 6 months. Assuming this would it be more effective to optimize exact match domains for each 6 month cycle or make a main domain with a few of the keywords and just target a page for each roaming subject? Advantage of the subject is I get domain authority to feed off of, advantage of the exact match is, of course exact match domains are a powerful tool to rank highly and it is only a medium competitive market, usually about 40 domain and page authority. What do you guys think? Do you have any techniques to dominate temporary and rotating markets?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarloSchneider0