Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Outranking a crappy outdated site with domain age & keywords in URL.
-
I'm trying to outrank a website with the following:
Website with #1 ranking for a search query with "City & Brand"
- Domain Authority - 2
- Domain Age - 11 years & 9 months old
- Has both the City & brand in the URL name.
- The site is crap, outdated.. probably last designed in the 90's, old layouts, not a lot of content & NO keywords in the titles & descriptions on all pages.
My site ranks 5th for the same keyword.. BEHIND 4 pages from the site described above.
- Domain Authority - 2
- Domain Age - 4 years & 2 months old
- Has only the CITY in the URL.
- Brand new site design this past year, new content & individual keywords in the titles, descriptions on each page.
My main question is.... do you think it would be be beneficial to buy a new domain name with the BRAND in the URL & CITY & 301 redirect my 4 year old domain to the new domain to pass along the authority it has gained.
Will having the brand in the URL make much of a difference?
Do you think that small step would even help to beat the crappy but old site out?
Thanks for any help & suggestions on how to beat this old site or at least show up second.
-
Thanks all. This is what I had recommended to the client to begin with. I just needed some backup from all you smart SEO's out there.
Unfortunately the URL would not be for sale as it's a brick and mortar business.
Thanks again!
-
I personally lean more towards the reaction of EGOL. If you put enough effort in it, keep it straight white hat and do all the steps suggested in the SEOblog section (like link earning in stead of link building) then over time you can outrank that site for sure. But keep working on it. Be social.. share everything you can on facebook, twitter and off course the BIG G+.
Tricks can help you in the short run but hurt you in the long run so i wouldn't go for that straight away.
You could also try registering the other domain you mentioned, put up some content and everything and build it next to your existing website (without copying text etc.). You could do this as a supporting role for your primary website if you wish. But i would focus on my primary website first and improving that one.
regards
Jarno
-
I like irving's suggestion to see if the webmaster is willing to sell the site. whats the link profile like? any particular high authority links that might be giving it the advantage over your site?
-
**Will having the brand in the URL make much of a difference? **
The brand? Yes, if people know you.
Really, I would not change domains for the tiny advantage that you think a keyword in the domain might bring. It is very possible that you will lose more linkjuice in the redirect than you will gain from the keyword in the domain.
Do you think that small step would even help to beat the crappy but old site out?
heh... That crappy old site is beating you because they are beating you.
It is easier to beat an old crappy site with "work" than it is to beat them with "tricks'.
-
Absolutely not, your site is aged. A new site is like starting all over even if you do 301 the old site to the new.
a) work on improving the on page SEO on your site
b) if that new domain is available you could play around with setting that up as a stand alone site and see if you can get it ranked #1, it could take 6-12 months before Google really trusts it enough.
c) if it's that old and outdated maybe he wants to sell it at a reasonable price if it's worth that much to you?
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
-
How do I treat URLs with bookmarks when migrating a site?
I'm migrating an old website into a new one, and have several pages that have bookmarks on them. Do I need to redirect those? or how should they be treated? For example, both https://www.tnscanada.ca/our-expertise.html and https://www.tnscanada.ca/our-expertise.html#auto resolve .
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Dec 5, 2020, 9:40 AM | NatalieB_Kantar0 -
Remove Product & Category from URLS in Wordpress
Does anyone have experience removing /product/ and /product-category/, etc. from URLs in wordpress? I found this link from Wordpress which explains that this shouldn't be done, but I would like some opinions of those who have tried it please. https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/removing-product-product-category-or-shop-from-the-urls/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Sep 20, 2018, 8:31 PM | moon-boots0 -
URL Structure & Best Practice when Facing 4+ Sub-levels
Hi. I've spent the last day fiddling with the setup of a new URL structure for a site, and I can't "pull the trigger" on it. Example: - domain.com/games/type-of-game/provider-name/name-of-game/ Specific example: - arcade.com/games/pinball/deckerballs/starshooter2k/ The example is a good description of the content that I have to organize. The aim is to a) define url structure, b) facilitate good ux, **c) **create a good starting point for content marketing and SEO, avoiding multiple / stuffing keywords in urls'. The problem? Not all providers have the same type of game. Meaning, that once I get past the /type-of-game/, I must write a new category / page / content for /provider-name/. No matter how I switch the different "sub-levels" around in the url, at one point, the provider-name doesn't fit as its in need of new content, multiple times. The solution? I can skip "provider-name". The caveat though is that I lose out on ranking for provider keywords as I don't have a cornerstone content page for them. Question: Using the URL structure as outlined above in WordPress, would you A) go with "Pages", or B) use "Posts"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 25, 2018, 5:17 AM | Dan-Louis0 -
Sitewide Footer Links & Sister Sites
Hi We have a number of sister sites across Europe - the sites are under a different domain name, but have a very similar layout & product offering. When looking at duplicate content, they are flagged as being a moderate risk with similar content - we don't duplicate product content, however it's similar. We also link to them in the footer in a drop down - not anchor text links - however this is still seen by Google. I don't think I'll be able to remove links to our sister companies, but should I implement the Href lang if the sites are slightly different? Or find another way to link to them? Here's an example http://www.key.co.uk/en/key & https://www.manutan.fr/fr/maf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 27, 2015, 2:20 PM | BeckyKey0 -
Community inside the domain or in a separate domain
Hi there, I work for an ecommerce company as an online marketing consultant. They make kitchenware, microware and so on. The are reviewing their overall strategy and as such they want to build up a community. Ideally, they would want to have the community in a separate domain. This domain wouldn't have the logo of the brand. This community wouldn't promote the brand itself. The brand would post content occassionally and link the store domain. The reasoning of this approach is to not interfere in the way of the community users and also the fact that the branded traffic acquired doesn't end up buying at the store I like this approach but I am concerned because the brand is not that big to have two domains separated and lose all the authority associated with one strong domain. I would definitely have everything under the same domain, store and community, otherwise we would have to acquire traffic for two domains. 1. What do you think of both scenarios, one domain versus two? Which one is better? 2. Do you know any examples of ecommerce companies with successful communities within the store domain? Thanks and regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 21, 2014, 6:31 AM | footd0 -
New Site: Use Aged Domain Name or Buy New Domain Name?
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 2, 2012, 4:47 PM | peterwhitewebdesign
I have the opportunity to build a new website and use a domain name that is older than 5 years or buy a new domain name. The aged domain name is a .net and includes a keyword.
The new domain would include the same keyword as well as the U.S. state abbreviation. Which one would you use and why? Thanks for your help!0 -
Multiple stores & domains vs. One unified store (SEO pros / cons for E-Commerce)
Our company runs a number of individual online shops, specialised in particular products but all in the same genre of goods overall, with a specific and relevant domain name for each shop. At the moment the sites are separate, and not interlinked, i.e. Completely separate brands. An analogy could be something like clothing accessories (we are not in the clothing business): scarves.com, and silkties.com (our field is more niche than this) We are about to launch a related site, (e.g. handbags.com), in the same field again but without precisely overlapping products. We will produce this site on a newer, more flexible e-commerce platform, so now is a good time to consider whether we want to place all our sites together with one e-commerce system on the backend. Essentially, we need to know what the pros and cons would be of the various options facing us and how the SEO ranking is affected by the three possibilities. Option 1: continue with separate sites each with its own domains. Option 2: have multiple sites, each on their own domain, but on the same ecommerce system and visible linked together for the customer (with unified checkout) – on the top of each site could be a menu bar linking to each site: [Scarves.com] – [SilkTies.com] – [Handbags.com] The main question here is whether the multiple domains are mutually beneficial, particularly considerding how close to target keywords the individual domains are. If mutually benefitial, how does it compare to option 3: Option 3: Having recently acquired a domain name (e.g. accessories.com) which would cover the whole category together, we are presented with a third option: making one site selling all of these products in different categories. Our main concern here would be losing the ability to specifically target marketing, and losing the benefit of the domains with the key words in for what people are more likely to be searching for (e.g. 'silk tie') rather than 'accessories.' Is it worth taking the hit on losing these specific targeted domain names for the advantage of increased combined inbound links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 12, 2012, 12:59 PM | Colage0 -
Robots.txt & url removal vs. noindex, follow?
When de-indexing pages from google, what are the pros & cons of each of the below two options: robots.txt & requesting url removal from google webmasters Use the noindex, follow meta tag on all doctor profile pages Keep the URLs in the Sitemap file so that Google will recrawl them and find the noindex meta tag make sure that they're not disallowed by the robots.txt file
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Feb 14, 2013, 8:53 AM | nicole.healthline0