Migrating EMD to brand name domain. Risk of Penguin Penalty?
-
We would like to migrate from an EMD to a brand name domain, since our service offer has become much broader than indicated by the current EMD. The current domain name is a money keyword.
Do you believe there is a big risk of suffering a penguin penalty if we go ahead with the domain migration, due to large share of anchor texts containing keyword of old domain name?
Quick facts about our site:
-about 500.000 pages indexed by google- PR6
-
10 years old
- 1200 linking root domains
- 30% of linking root domains contain our domain name with domain ending as anchor text
- 5% of linking root domains have just the domain keyword as anchor text
Any thoughts?
Thanks -
Marie, thanks a lot for clarifying.
-
Hi,
"To clarify, our link profile is very clean, but naturally people used the keyword from the domain name and the domain name to link to us.
It really comes down to the question:
How will google penguin value anchor text to the old domain and will 301 to new domain increase the risk of a penguin penalty."It's not the exact match anchor text that makes the Penguin algorithm affect a site. If you have natural links and those links contain exact match anchor text then that's a good thing.
The reason why the percentage of exact match anchors is stated by many to be a risk factor for Penguin is because sites that have built spammy links generally, in the past, did so with exact match anchors. For most sites that have not had manipulative backlinks made, the most common anchors will be variations of the url and brand name. If you've been building your own links in the past though, the most common anchors are often keywords because that's what used to work. So, many people assume that Google looks at the percentage of keywords as anchors when deciding whether Penguin is going to affect the site. I don't believe that that's what happens though.
Penguin is way more sophisticated than that. The goal of Penguin is to find self made links and devalue them. The reason for this is that Google wants only links that are truly natural citations to count towards rankings. For some sites, if there's the odd self made link then when Penguin rolls around they probably just lose the link equity they once had. But, if there are LOTS of self made links detected then this sends a signal to Google that your links cannot be trusted and your site will not be shown as highly in the SERPS.
So, if the links are natural then don't worry about it, even if they do contain a keyword as anchor.
-
It probably depends on the anchor. If the EMD was bluewidgets.com, then 'http://www.'bluewidgets.com' or 'bluewidgets.com' or 'bluewidgets' type anchor should be ok. If there was a high level of 'blue widgets' I would start to be a little concerned.
-
To clarify, our link profile is very clean, but naturally people used the keyword from the domain name and the domain name to link to us.
It really comes down to the question:
How will google penguin value anchor text to the old domain and will 301 to new domain increase the risk of a penguin penalty.Anybody with experience of migrating an EMD? Anybody experiencing Penguin shortly afterwards?
Certainly would be useful to consult with someone specialized in penguin recoveries who has dealt with a very large volume of penguin cases and learn about their impression of this risk.
-
If you are seriously concerned about a penalty which could result in your business having to close it's doors, you should probably be seeking out help from an agency rather than looking for free advice here. If the situation is that dire, then getting an audit and quote from an agency will probably be your safest bet at this point.
-
Thanks Bradley.
Yes we plan page level 301 redirects from old to new domain and will follow best practices for domain migration.
I am afraid changing anchor text clean up of EMD may have only limited success in our case since many links are very old and some sites may not be maintained anymore. However targeting especially the 5% links with keyword as anchor text may be good idea to try.
Having to disassociate the old domain and losing 10 years effort of clean link building would probably mean that we would need to close down the company as our segment is too competitive to get a new domain quickly up in the rankings. So therefore I really want to understand the associated penguin risk as well as possible.
-
Migrating to a branded domain is probably the best step to avoid a penalty at this point. Get away from the EMD and over-optimized anchor text ASAP.
If your domain is penalized, it won't be your branded domain - it will be your EMD domain. It's hard to say if it could be penalized in the future, but it hasn't been yet, so you might be OK.
I assume that you'll 301 redirect all pages on the EMD to the new branded domain. You should be prepared to put in a lot of effort to clean up the anchor text of the EMD link profile, or completely disassociate the old domain in the event of a penalty.
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
-
Sub-domain vs Root domain
I have recently taken over a website (website A) that has a domain authority of 33/100 and is linked to from 39 root domains. I have not yet selected any keywords to target so am currently unsure of ranking positions. However, website A is for a division of a company that has its own separate website (website B) which has a domain authority of 58/100 and over 1000 legitimate linking root domains. I have the option of moving website A to a sub-domain of website B. I also have the option of having website B provide a followed link to website A. So, my question is, for SEO purposes, is my website better off remaining on its own existing domain or is it likely to rank higher as a sub-domain of website B? I am sure there are pros and cons for both options but some opinions would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BallyhooLtd0 -
Domain Name Redirect Question
My agency just built a new website for a client who is a franchisee. It's not launched yet - it's currently under an IP address. I suggested to client that he buy a keyword-rich domain name for it, which he did. Then he found out that the franchisor will not allow it to be his main domain name. They want him to use a domain name with the franchisor name in it. But they WILL allow him to put a 301 redirect on that franchisor-approved domain name, and redirect it to his keyword-rich domain name. He is interested in having my agency perform an SEO Campaign for this new website. But would SEO and link marketing work for a website that has a new non-keyword domain name that 301 redirects to a new keyword-rich domain name?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netsites0 -
Best strategy for "product blocks" linking to sister site? Penguin Penalty?
Here is the scenario -- we own several different tennis based websites and want to be able to maximize traffic between them. Ideally we would have them ALL in 1 site/domain but 2 of the 3 are a partnership which we own 50% of and why are they are off as a separate domain. Big question is how do we link the "products" from the 2 different websites without looking spammy? Here is the breakdown of sites: Site1: Tennis Retail website --> about 1200 tennis products Site2: Tennis team and league management site --> about 60k unique visitors/month Site3: Tennis coaching tip website --> about 10k unique visitors/month The interesting thing was right after we launched the retail store website (site1), google was cranking up and sending upwards of 25k search impressions/day within the first 45 days. Orders kept trickling in and doing well overall for first launching. Interesting thing was Google "impressions" peaked at about 60 days post launch and then started trickling down farther and farther and now at about 3k-5k impressions/day. Many keywords phrases were originally on page 1 (position 6-10) and now on page 3-8 instead. Next step was to start putting "product links" (3 products per page) on site2 and site3 -- about 10k pages in total with about 6 links per page off to the product page (1 per product and 1 per category). We actually divided up about 100 different products to be displayed so this would mean about 2k links per product depending on the page. FYI, those original 10k pages from site2 and site3 already rank very well in Google and have been indexed for the past 2+ years in there. Most popular word on the sites is Tennis so very related. Our rationale was "all the websites are tennis related" and figured that the links on the latest and greatest products would be good for our audience. Pre-Penguin, we also figured this strategy would also help us rank for these products as well for when users are searching on them. We are thinking through since traffic and gone down and down and down from the peak of 45 days ago, that Penguin doesn't like all these links -- so what to do now? How to fix it and make the Penguin happy? Here are a couple of my thoughts on fixing it: 1. Remove the "category link" in our "product grouping" which would cut down the link by 1/3rd. 2. Place a "nofollow" on all the links for the other "product links". This would allow us to get the "user clicks" from these while the user is on that page. 3. On our homepage (site2 & site3), place 3 core products that change frequently (weekly) and showcase the latest and greatest products/deals. Thought is to NOT use the "nofollow" on these links since it is the homepage and only about 5 links overall. Heck part of me debated on taking our top 1000 pages (from the 10k page) and put the links ONLY on those and distribute about 500 products on them so this would mean only 2 links per product -- it would mean though about 4k links going there. Still thinking #2 above could be better? Any other thoughts would be great! Thanks, Jeremy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jab10000 -
Migrating a very large site
hello, we are thinking about changing imageworksstudio.com to imageworkscreative.com we have TONS of of pages and want to make sure that our Page Rank and Rankings are maintained. Are there any best practices or specific guides for redirecting for such a large site (which already has a bunch of redirects in place in the first place) Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imageworks-2612900 -
Domain Name Change - Best Practices?
Good day guys, We got a restaurant that is changing its name and domain. However they are keeping the same server location, same content and same pages (we are just changing the logo on the website). It just has to go a new domain. We don't want to lose the value of the current site, and we want to avoid any duplicate penalties. Could you please advise of the best practices of doing a domain name change? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael-Goode0 -
Which domain should I use?
I own a couple domains that are specific to a product and would like to know which one folks on here recommend. Primary Google Search Term Example: "Tax Bond" Example Domain 1: www.taxbonds.net Example Domain 2: www.tax-bond.net I've done research on here before and have come to the conclusion that hyphenated domains aren't bad (no more than 2 hyphens though). So, do I go for the EXACT search term with the hyphen or do I go for the pluralized search term without the hyphen, even though most people will not add the "s" in the Google search? Thanks, Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dbuckles0 -
Redirecting Powerful Domains
What do you do if you have a client that never implemented a 301 redirect on their domain? For example here are the OSE stats for the URLs; http://url.com PA: 48 DA: 50 LRD: 65 TL: 1,084 FB: 178 FB: 14 T:5 http://www.url.com PA: 51 DA: 50 LRD: 165 TL: 2,271 FB: 178 FB: 14 T:5 G+1:3 My first instincts are to redirect the first one to the second one, but is it too late for that? Will that screw up all of their established stats? Any input or examples of past experiences with this would be great.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Domain migration strategy
Imagine you have a large site on an aged and authoritative domain. For commercial reasons the site has to be moved to a new domain, and in the process is going to be revamped significantly. Not an ideal starting scenario obviously to be biting off so much all at once, but unavoidable. The plan is to run the new site in beta for about 4 weeks, giving users the opportunity to play with it and provide feedback. After that there will be a hard cut over with all URLs permanently redirected to the new domain. The hard cut over is necessary due to business continuity reasons, and real complexity in trying to maintain complex UI and client reporting over multiple domains. Of course we'll endeavour to mitigate the impact of the change by telling G about the change in WMC and ensuring we monitor crawl errors etc etc. My question is whether we should allow the new site to be indexed during the beta period? My gut feeling is yes for the following reasons: It's only 4 weeks and until such time as we start redirecting the old site the new domain won't have much whuffie so there's next to no chance the site will ranking for anything much. Give Googlebot a headstart on indexing a lot of URLs so they won't all be new when we cut over the redirects Is that sound reasoning? Is the duplication during that 4 week beta period likely to have some negative impact that I am underestimating?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Charlie_Coxhead0