Domain Change, loss of inbound links ...
-
We're strongly considering a domain name change; this is purely for marketing reasons. We think in the long term, this will be a good thing. I believe we can mitigate the page redirection, branding changes, etc.
My concern are the inbound links: from 200+ domains, 3,000+ links.
So, I guess we can contact each of the top sites linking to us and hope they update our links. I'm not hopeful. I believe we'll loose must of the links.
Has anyone been down this road and have experience to share?
What should I expect, worst case? Is there a way to mitigate?Thanks much.
Jim -
We just went through this exact same change for marketing reasons. With a combination of 301 redirects and a ton of new content we found our organic dropped significantly on day one but after a period of about two weeks now things have bounced back and in some cases the new content has allowed us to rank better.
Our previous site had tons of outdated code and was not particularly clean. Pages now load much faster, the new look seems to have increased the number of pages per visit as well as time on site. If we had to do it over again tomorrow we certainly would. Sometimes not renovating the site I think costs you more in the long run.
Hope this helps.
Gary
-
Hi Jim,
Yes you actually have to do quite a bit to keep your site from losing its traction. You will most likely see a drop in rank regardless of how well you do it. The amount of time could be a day to a week if you do it right if you do it wrong it could be until you fix it or regain the links
It is not wise to lose that amount of links it will be like your site is committing suicide. Simply 301 redirect them using the information below if you cannot get the original owner of the site who links to you to link to your new domain.
When done properly you must use all the tools at your disposal to find your back links
Moz open site Explorer
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/
MajesticSEO
Ahrefs
if I were you I would subscribe to the other 2 for one month in order to get the data I needed. Some people use Raven tools because it incorporates MajesticSEO for back links however I do not believe it is as good as actually using MajesticSEO
http://raventools.com/marketing-tools/seo-software/
Sost of what you need is answered in this question below.
http://moz.com/community/q/how-to-keep-old-url-juice-during-site-switch
here is a bigger version of the and photograph if it cannot be seen very well.
http://www.aleydasolis.com/images/seo-website-domain-migration.gif
I strongly recommend buying the tool called screaming frog SEO spider if you're going to be the one doing this
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
combine that with the SEER interactive guide on screaming frog and the information in the URL above and you will be in good shape.
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/screaming-frog-guide
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
Hi Jim-
If there are any links in your control or from places you have a close relationship with, I would recommend updating those. However, you don't need to worry about updating the rest of the external links.
You simply need to set-up 301 redirects from the old website to the corresponding page on the new website.
oldsite.com/blue-widgets.html-> 301 to newsite.com/blue-widgets
Make sure a 301 redirect is used. Read more about redirects here: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection
After making the updates, you will usually see a slight loss in organic traffic that tends to recover after time. Changing websites, replacing old pages with new pages, etc are all common practices on the web. In general the search engines handle them really well when a 301 is in place.
Good luck!
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
-
Subdomain with higher domain authority vs. ccTLD with lower domain authority
Our website is active in many countries and we are considering if it is worth it to switch from ccTLD to subdomains.The reason is that our company.com domain has a domain authority of 65 and some of the ccTLD's like company.fr and company.de etc have a domain authority of 30. From what I have read, moving these to a subdomain structure like fr.company.com and de.company.com will give them all the same domain authority (of 65 vs 30) which is considerably higher. 1. Would a subdomain with domain authority 65 rank better than a ccTLD with authority 30 (considering all else is the same)? 2. When we 301 redirect all ccTLD's to the subdomains, will our domain authority increase (to more than 65) for company.com, given that it can benefit from all redirected links to our ccTLD's? Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | rens.vd0 -
When link building yourself where would you advise are the best places to add links?
Hi I am not having much success with SEO companies so am looking at link building and doing SEO myself. Where would you advise are the best places to add links? Also is it better to add links to specific pages or just to the home page? Thanks in advance
Link Building | | Briggzy0 -
Internal Links - First Link Rule Confusion
Hello All - I would like to create a guide for my team of rules for internal links and I could use some help. My understanding is that Google only counts the first link to a page, so any crafted keyword text links within the content do not count if the page in question is linked to from the main navigation. Is this correct? For example, if the menu or drop down menu in main site nav (which exists on all pages of the site) includes a link to a particular section that will be the only one that ever counts since the menu is on every page? Example: let's say a website selling cat toys includes a drop down menu on the homepage with links to "holiday cat toys". Does this mean that no other text links in content on the site will support that page from an SEO perspective since the link is in the main nav and will always be the first one counted? In the past we have added text links in the content on the homepage to important pages on the site. It seems to work, though now I'm questing these tactics based on the first link rule. I would appreciate some advice, clarification, thoughts, etc. Thanks!
Link Building | | JBMediaGroup0 -
Can I find out how many of a competitors 25k links are coming from which domains?
Can I find out how many of a competitors 25k links are coming from which domains?You can see in the image I uploaded, the first competitior, Suzuki of Wichita, they have 25,000 total links. dRTAKAt.png?1
Link Building | | Mrupp440 -
My website has no links to it at all :(
I paid good money for a company to build me a website, I just put my domain into open site explorer and I have no links at all, how do I get links to other domains etc ? Thanks for any help -James
Link Building | | Stoz0 -
Link building when your domain name is your head term.
Hello, I am working with a company that their domain name is the same as the head term. For example, if I was going for the head term coffee, and my site was coffee.com. This is specifically in the medical space, and i'm competing directly with Web MD and The Mayo Clinic, my advantage on the term is the EMD. We have a legitimate site with thousands of pages of relevant content, and I am starting a guest blogging campaign on relevant health sites. My real challenge is when I go for anchor text links should I ideally go for [head term] or [headterm.com] as the anchor text. Thanks in advance for your insights Zach
Link Building | | Zachary_Russell0 -
Back links from more then one page from one domain
howdy SEO peeps, quick question. If i get a back link from two different pages from one domain, and both pages have different PR values. does google take both into its value PR or does google only take one of the links as PR juice to your site. thanks guys
Link Building | | david3050 -
Links below the snippet
Hello, Does anybody know how can i obtain links under the snippet (see the example in the image attached) ? Thank you in advance! Cosmin zXhsG
Link Building | | cosmin_bicoiu0