Dropped ranking - new domain same IP????
-
We dropped ranking late last year for our site, so decided to start over with a new domain. However we didn't change IP address. Would this cause any issues???
-
I think many of the commenters have good points here. It's really tough to make a call like this without a deep knowledge of the situation, and for any of us to tell you what to do would probably be irresponsible. Generally, I don't think Google transfers penalties across IPs like they used to occasionally do. With IPv4 space running out, sharing IPs is just a lot more common than it used to be. Google also has other cues, like domain ownership (they're technically a registrar, so they have access to a lot of data) to go by.
To be safe, you could isolate it and get a new IP. I'm not sure it's necessary, but if you're going to go so far as to start over, you might as well do it as cleanly as possible.
The question is whether starting over with a new domain will solve the problem. If you want to avoid the penalty transferring, you can't 301-redirect the old site, which means that you'll lose all of your link equity and leave past visitors stranded. That's a huge loss to take, and it's going to take time to rebuild (as Michael B. said). Will the content be the same? There may be other aspects of the site that caused you problems, and if they're related to the content or site structure, they could just come back.
-
This does sound like a drastic move, likely unnecessary in the first place. I recently had to take a site through a reconsideration request following a manual action penalty and found this article very informative: http://moz.com/ugc/the-anatomy-of-a-successful-reconsideration-request
If you are already down the path with a new site, you may want to consider switching the IP (or host) as a safeguard. I would also be cautious of the content, site structure, 301s, etc. If all you did was port the site, redesign it and plug it into a new domain, you probably have the same challenges (and infractions) that caused deteriorated rankings in the first place.
If the old site and domain is still active, I would go back there and see if you can clean up and disavow bad links and run a reconsideration path. That could even aid in the success of the new site on the same IP.
-
Jason,
One thought: if your last sight was penalized, do you not just want to disavow links / clean up your link profile and content, and then ask for reconsideration by Google?
If you do continue to move to a new domain, and you stay on the same IP (without disavowing / cleaning link profile) you may end up bringing down your new site based on association... Plus, with the site being completely new, it will take a while to gain traction.
Eli
-
we think over doing anchor text.....
-
Seems drastic. What caused the drop in rankings - penalty, algorithmic penalty, competition, content, poor link profile...?
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
-
Bad Backlinks to my website. Rankings Dropped
Hi guys, My name is Flavius and I work for a website named LaserPRocessing.ro from Romania. In april this year the site was infected with a virus and got around 1k bad backlinks. I found those backlinks on Moz Backlinks Tools. I added them on GSC disawow file. What next steps do you recommend to tell Google to block those links? Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nojaflaviusalex0 -
Nice Domain Authority but Not Ranking
Hi, A client of mine who owns a website reached out to me. He got penalized a while ago and has long since recovered (not sure exactly, but for sure a year). His domain authority is in the upper 30s but is still not ranking for many of his keywords that he ranked on the first page. I am not so familiar with the technical aspects of penalties and such, but is this a common scenario? Why is his domain authority great but his ranking downright awful? Does he have a chance if he builds great links, or is something else wrong that we can't figure out?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rachel_J0 -
Subdomain vs totally new domain
Problem: Our organization publish maps for public viewing using google maps. We are currently getting limited value from these links. We need to separate our public and private maps for infrastructure purposes, and are weighing up the strengths and weaknesses of separating by domain or sub domain with regards SEO and infrastructure. Current situation: maps.mycompany.com currently has a page authority of 30 and mycompany.com has a domain authority of 39. We are currently only getting links from 8 maps which are shared via social media whereas most people embed our maps on their website using an iframe which I believe doesn't do us any favour with SEO. We currently have approx 3K public maps. Question: What SEO impact can you see if we move our public maps from the subdomain maps.mycompany.com to mycompanypublicmaps.com? Thanks in advance for your help and happy to give more info if you need it!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eSpatial0 -
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 -
Working to Start an Shopping Idea Site - Which Totally Based On Scraping product from Ecom. How Quickly I should Add products and categories in this new domain.
How Quickly I should Add products and categories in this new domain. We are going to start its promotional by google adwords and facebook. I worrying about 10000's of product pages. kindly guide me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innovatebizz0 -
Create new subdomain or new site for new Niche Product?
We have an existing large site with strong, relevant traffic, including excellent SEO traffic. The company wants to launch a new business offering, specifically targeted at the "small business" segment. Because the "small business" customer is substantially different from the traditional "large corporation" customer, the company has decided to create a completely independent microsite for the "small business" market. Purely from a Marketing and Communications standpoint, this makes sense. From an SEO perspective, we have 2 options: Create the new "small business" microsite on a subdomain of the existing site, and benefit from the strong domain authority and trust of the existing site. Build the microsite on a separate domain with exact primary keyword match in the domain name. My sense is that option #1 is by far the better option in the short and long run. Am I correct? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | axelk0 -
Buying an existing domain with higher ranks for redirecting
I've recently came across one of my competitors who's looking to sell their domain. Now they currently rank higher than my primary site for a few keywords we are targeting. Would it be wise to buy the domain and do a name server change over to my primary domain? Would it even help boost ranks for the keywords they rank higher for? Or will the link juice be minimal? Any thoughts would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | upick-1623910 -
Why did my rankings drop?
Hi all, In July I started to re-energise my link building efforts by getting a proper campaign together to build links. Despite building about 20 new links my traffic has actually fallen. Here a a breakdown of what happen: 1)Late June I noticed my toolbar page rank up at about PR4 which, despite only being a small part of the algo, was nice to see. Early July I started my link building campaign by getting together a massive list of potential link partners by using Open Site Explorer on my competitors sites. 3)Because I'm a bit pressed for time I decided to go for the easier links first. I sorted my link list by Domain Authority and started to list on high DA directories used by my competitors. I listed on about 20 of these directories. I also livened up an old links page I'd previously hidden from the SE's because I was planning to do a bit of Link exchanging too. A few days after I started building links from these directories I noticed my traffic start to drop off gradually. I also noticed the toolbar PR go down to PR3. I decided to stop at 20 submissions because it looked like this was effecting traffic. I also removed the links page I'd livened up which produced a temporary improvement in traffic but it's since gone on to get a bit worse. Traffic is now down by about 10% on when I started buying submissions to directories. I must add that during this period we have also been taking on new clients which, as a a real estate listing site, means we put loads of content on our site for the client. That content is also on the clients website and on other competitors sites. So there would be lot's of a content that appears elsewhere on the net. Not really sure which of the two has caused the problem and not really sure how to progress. Do I remove the links on the directories? Do I wait for this newly added content to bed down so that new fresh can take it's place in our results which we rank from? Any help would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith0