Parked former company's url on top of my existing url and that URL is showing in SERPs for my top keywords
-
I have the URL from my former company parked on top of my existing URL. My top keywords are showing up with the old URL attached to the metadsecription of my existing URL. It was supposed to be 301 redirected instead of parked but my web developer insists this was the right way to do it and it will work itself out after google indexes the old URL out of existence. Are there any other options?
-
Thanks, again. Will try these options today. It'll be nice going in more knowledgeable so it's a very good thing you do Mr. Kley.
-
Nothing he can do? Lmao what a terrible answer. On the old site, you should still have Ftp setup. In that account, go into your htaccess file and add the rule that redirects all traffic to your existing domain, or the one you want to get indexed. Also add a robots rule denying any access to the old domain ftp.
Option 2 is to delete any and all old site files in the domain Ftp you want to get rid of, have the site urls return a 404 error, and do a url removal request in webmaster tools. Option 1 would be safer imo, but doing option 2 will get rid of the old domain for good.
-
Thank you both for your responses.
@DavidKley, They do both show up and the developer says there's nothing more he can do since the old site no longer exists. Everything I've read online seems to contradict his though.
The domains in question are:
old - www.aceystowing.com
new - www.jonnystowingnow.com
Any further insight would again be greatly appreciated.
-
Just wanted to add:
Do both urls show up for a page? Meaning if you had a page about dog treats, can that page be accessed through both urls on the Web (manually or in serp results)? If so, you need to redirect the domain you don't want to use immediately to prevent duplications. Just parking one on top of the other usually will not take care of replacing the other url. You don't want to have both indexed at the same time.
-
In addition to parking the domain, did you add a parked domain htaccess rule? In addition to search engines, make sure your visitors are getting to the right place, without duplicate content.
After a while, all the new urls should replace the old ones, but I have seen this process take up to 6-8 months.
-
The definition of words like "parked" can vary in the FAQ documents of one hosting company to another. When I have moved domains I have "parked" them on my hosting and then 301 redirected specific old URLs on the old domain to specific URLs on the new domain.
There are a lot of really competent people out there, but sometimes webdevelpers have a "mechanical knowledge" of how things work but for search engines to treat your domain perfectly something else is required.
If this was my site I would have a technical SEO look at it. I've done this stuff for myself but always paid someone else to review my plan and check to see if it is workin' properly.
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
-
My Website's Home Page is Missing on Google SERP
Hi All, I have a WordPress website which has about 10-12 pages in total. When I search for the brand name on Google Search, the home page URL isn't appearing on the result pages while the rest of the pages are appearing. There're no issues with the canonicalization or meta titles/descriptions as such. What could possibly the reason behind this aberration? Looking forward to your advice! Cheers
Technical SEO | | ugorayan0 -
Should I create a new site or keep company on parent company's subdomain?
I am working with a realty company that is hosted on a subdomain of the larger, parent realty company: [local realty company].[parent realty company].com How important is it to ride on the DA of the larger company (only about a 40)? I'm trying to weigh the value of creating an entirely separate domain for simplicity of the end user and Google bots: [local company].realtor They don't have any substantial links to their subdomain, so it wouldn't a huge loss. I have a couple options... Create an entirely new site on their current subdomain, leveraging the DA of the larger parent company. Create an entirely new site on a new URL, starting from scratch (which doesn't hurt you as much as it seems it once did). Create two sites, a micro site that targets a sector of their audience that they really want to reach, plus option (1) or (2). Love this community!
Technical SEO | | Gabe_BlueGuru0 -
Site Migration between CMS's
Hi There, I have a technical question about migrating CMS's but not servers. My client has site A on Joomla install, He want's ot migrate to Wordpress and we will call this site B. As he has a lot of old content on site A he doesn't want to lose, he has put site B (wordpress install) on a subdirectory site.com/siteb (for example). and will use a htaccess to forward the root domain to this wordpress site. Therefore anyone going to www.site.com will see the new wordpress site and the old content and joomla install will sit on the root of the server. Will Google have an issue with this? Will it even find the old content? what are the issues for the new site and new content? Look forward getting your guys input
Technical SEO | | nezona1 -
Content Based on User's IP Address
Hello, A client wants us to create a page on two different sites (www.brandA.com/content and www.brandB.com/content) with similar content and serve up specific content to users based on their IP addresses. The idea is that once a user gets to the page, the content would slightly change (mainly contact information and headers) based on their location. The problem I am seeing with this is that both brandA and brandB would be different Urls so there is a chance if their both optimized for the similar terms then they would both rank and crowd up the search results (duplicate content). Have you seen something similar? What are your thoughts and/or potential solutions? Also, do you know of any sites that are currently doing something similar?
Technical SEO | | Rauxa0 -
Keywords, when are you overdoing it in the URL?
Hi guys, I'm auditing a site covering compensation for cancer. Keywords could include: Undiagnosed cancer 20 cancer compensation 10 undiagnosed cancer symptoms 10 cancer misdiagnosis claims 20 cancer claims 10 misdiagnosis of cancer 50 cancer misdiagnosis 70 So, when structuring the URL for the category, this was previously selected: www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-misdiagnosis Although sub-pages appear like this: www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-misdiagnosis/breast-cancer-misdiagnosis-claim/ 'Cancer misdiagnosis' as a keyword attracts the most traffic, but if we're using it on sub-pages - is there a need to include it twice on all sub-page URLs? With that in mind, would it be better to follow the following format? www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-compensation www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-compensation/breast-cancer-misdiagnosis-claim/ Or is there a better way to structure this? Thanks in advance guys!
Technical SEO | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
HTTP Status showing up in opensiteexplorer top pages as blocked by robot.txt file
I am trying to find an answer to this question it has alot of url on this page with no data when i go into the data source and search for noindex or robot.txt but the site is visible in the search engines ?
Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve0 -
Https-pages still in the SERP's
Hi all, my problem is the following: our CMS (self-developed) produces https-versions of our "normal" web pages, which means duplicate content. Our it-department put the <noindex,nofollow>on the https pages, that was like 6 weeks ago.</noindex,nofollow> I check the number of indexed pages once a week and still see a lot of these https pages in the Google index. I know that I may hit different data center and that these numbers aren't 100% valid, but still... sometimes the number of indexed https even moves up. Any ideas/suggestions? Wait for a longer time? Or take the time and go to Webmaster Tools to kick them out of the index? Another question: for a nice query, one https page ranks No. 1. If I kick the page out of the index, do you think that the http page replaces the No. 1 position? Or will the ranking be lost? (sends some nice traffic :-))... thanx in advance 😉
Technical SEO | | accessKellyOCG0 -
What is the most likely reason we aren't ranking #1 for our keyword.
So we are targeting a keyword and we are ranking 2nd for it. Another company is ranking number 1. What is the best element to target for us to improve into position number one? Page authority: them 41, us 40. mozRank: them 5.52, us 3.38. mozTrust: them 5.86, us 5.58. mT/mR: them 1.1, us 1.4. Total Links: them 6571, us 68. Internal Links: them 1138, us 1. External Links: them 5431, us 63. Followed Links: them 6569, us 64. Nofollowed Links: them 2, us 4. Linking Root Domains: them 25, us 41. Broadkeyword usage in page title: them YES, us YES. KW in domain: them no, us partial. Exact anchor test links: them 161, us 21. % of links with exact anchor text: them 2%, us 30%. Linking Root domains with exact anchor text: them 2, us 11. Domain Authority: them 41, us 40. Domain MozRank: them 3.7, us 4.5. Domain MozTrust: them 3.8, us 4.5. External links to domain: them 22574, us 217. Linking root domains: them 50, us 48. Linking C-blocks: them 46, us 42. Tweets: them 1, us 12. FB shares: them 6, us 26.
Technical SEO | | Benj250