Considering Switch to old Domain - Any Bad Karma?
-
So here is the issue. I am working with a company that used to have a branded domain. Then they split the domain into two separate keyword rich domains and tried to change branding to match the keyword rich domains.
This made for a really long brand name that is difficult to actually rank for as it is mostly hi traffic key terms and also created brand confusion because all of the social accounts still operate under the old brand name.
We are considering a new brand initiative and going back to the original brand name as it better meets our business objectives (they still get traffic from branded searches under the old brand) and the old branded web domain.
My question is if there is any added risk in going back to an old domain that has been forwarded for the past 2 years to the new domain?
I know the risks and problems of a domain name change, but I am not as certain about the added complication of moving back to an old domain and essentially reversing the flow of 301's. Any thoughts?
Cheers!
-
Sure! I'm glad you found that useful, it's always good to ask since in seo there's no clear path to the success, share the experience and doubbt is always helpful
-
Hi Mememax,
Thanks for the feedback, that I what I was hoping for but just thought I would get some thoughts from the great community here. Thanks for weighing in!
Josh
-
HI Josh I think that you won't run inmore problems than the normal issues of a domain migration.
Considering you have your social media set up withthe old domain would make sense for the users to have everything under that site, that makes a lot less confusio for users lanidng in your site.
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
-
Migrating educational resources for a SaaS product to an existing domain?
Odd situation I'm hoping some folks may have insight on. We have a product site and an educational site (two entirely separate domains). The educational site has: Existed for longer (24 years vs 13). Currently ranks for far more keywords and drives more traffic. Is an entirely separate brand from the product. Has historically driven sales to the product site (through email and onsite ads) but that channel has diminished over time. The product site Also has educational resources Is a more recognizable brand When prioritized resources here often drive far more revenue The Challenge
Branding | | pasware
Both sites cover very similar topics, making prioritization challenging and splits our topical focus. We are considering making the educational site our sole place for resources, migrating content from the product site, and rebranding the site to line up more closely with the product. Basically retain the domain, make it our sole focus for updates and new content, but align it with the strength of our more recognizable product. The Questions Does anyone have any experience with this type of rebrand where a separate domain is retained? Are we risking the loss of branded search queries in the process or some other risk? While potentially risking ranking/traffic loss would it make more sense to migrate all valuable content to the product site instead? Sorry for the long-winded questions here and appreciate any thoughts/ideas!0 -
Switch to naked domain that has higher page authority
Brilliant Moz community! I just started here and find it so helpful and am confident that I can get an answer to this. Our domain is currently https://www.example.com. I have been wanting to move to https://example.com just for a cleaner URL. To my surprise, https://example.com has the same DA but a significantly higher page authority than our current https://www.example.com. Of course my immediate reaction is to 301 to the https://example.com but I wanted to get some advice and anything we should consider before doing this. My other question would be - how is this possible? I don't remember that we ever used that domain but we also had some rather bad developers a couple of years back. Thank you so much in advance!
Branding | | kris-fannin0 -
Branding-Advantages of New Domain
Our current domain (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) is spammy, using 2 hyphens and several keywords. So we are planning on migrating to a new domain. Our company is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc.. We are Manhattan commercial real estate brokers specializing in office and commercial leasing. For 5 years we have owned an alternative domain but never migrated the site to it. The alternative domain is www.metro-manhattan.com. But I am not sure it is a good choice since it contains one hyphen. Any suggestions for creating a strong URL for rebranding? It appears the really good names are already taken. Thanks, Alan
Branding | | Kingalan10 -
Scribd embed links - bad idea?
My client's site in question has a TON of outstanding, constantly updated, highly detailed articles. The site owner also has a branded collection of nearly all of them on Scribd. I guess I can live with that because dupe content isn't an issue and the pdfs there link back to the site and another domain of ours. Plus it gets a lot of eyeballs on our newish brand and content, and we can run reports on users. BUT, we have Scribd social share buttons on each article on our site that (among other things) allows a user to grab a direct link to the content on Scribd or an embed link for their blog or whatever. So, two questions really - Foremost, shouldn't we get rid of that embed option on our page? I mean, isn't is stealing from our backlink potential? I can't imagine juice would somehow pass back to us through a Scribd-located doc or embed but I haven't found info affirming or contradicting that. And secondly, isn't a Scribd collection a bit analogous to posting videos on YouTube and hoping your page will ultimately benefit from it via clickthroughs, etc? At this year's MozCon I heard a strong argument against that. Thanks -
Branding | | Jen_Floyd0 -
What is the weight of .pro domains? Will they rank?
.pro Domains have ben out there for a while but seem to as late started to be adopted. Thoughts and opinions welcome.
Branding | | bozzie3110 -
What's the best strategy for dealing with old ripoff reports that dominate your name rankings?
We are just now starting to work on our site optimization. There are a lot of old ripoff reports and other complaints that surface, specifically around our name search. Our competitors use this commonly and our clients come accross regularly. We have made management changes, and real changes in the business since then, but we don't know the best way to get our positive news to replace old negative news. Any ideas? Specifics would be great. Thanks,
Branding | | JosephFrost0 -
Can creating a subfolder and seperate domain blog build external links?
So I am currently going through the creation of a blog with a client that has a company that sells tennis equipment. I have talked to their development team, who is a third-party ecommerce platform, and come up with an idea to create an sub-folder (domain.com/blog) with an article page using their existing framework that would feature full articles in a blog format. Then I would create multiple blogs for them using tumblr and wordpress with their company name and a few with unique names targeted to their niche. These would feature snippets of the content taken from their article page (domain.com/blog) with some responses or reviews on the full articles to further their outreach and then link to the main articles on their article page. These snippets would be divided up amongst the blogs and posted on different days of the week to divide the traffic. Each blog will feature fresh content and focus on a rotating schedule of the latest videos, re-blogs, memes, photos, highlights, scores, upcoming tournament reviews, etc. I will set each one up to rotate through these different topics on different days and times to create a steady stream of traffic. I want to make sure that I stress the fact that I wont be stuffing the unique blogs with links only to the clients company store, I will be making sure to keep it to an amount that isn't spam worthy. Now if these blogs feature rich content including the snippets of the articles from my sub-folder page (domain.com/blog) will these blogs pass link juice to the blog set up on my sub-folder? Also is this a good way to ensure brand awareness and create external links without damaging their reputation? Are there other risks that people have encountered by doing something similar? Please share your experiences so I can make an educated decision.
Branding | | cscoville0 -
Use blog.domain.com or socialbrand.com?
I've got a little bit of a dilemma. A company I'm working for has an ecommerce site that is moving to Volusion. It is impossible to add "domain.com/blog" so I am forced to use a subdomain in order to keep consistency. We are starting a push in Social media and have secured shorter handles for the brand to use on the different networks. One of the main goals originally for developing a blog is to build trust but since the domain names are so big (26 characters) and the ecommerce sites already have a good amount of trust building factors in them I am beginning to question my original plan. My question is this: If I go with a shorter brand recognized domain name to develop the blog on which is different than the ecommerce domain (keyword matched) will I loose too much trust and ranking opportunity because of the difference in domains. I know there isn't a golden bullet for this question but i would love to get you your take on it.
Branding | | BenRWoodard0