We sold our site's domain and have a new one. Where do we go from here?
-
We recently sold our established domain -- for a compelling price -- and now have the task of transitioning to our new domain. What steps would you recommend to lesson the anticipated decline from search engines in this scenario?
-
You should have migrated the sold domains "authority" to the new site using Google Webmaster Tools. Doing this would have transferred all of your SEO to the new site. However, since this was not done (or 301 redirect each link to the new site), i'm sorry to say that you'll need to start over
-
Thanks! We have a grace period of time of roughly 120 days before the new domain owners can switch the DNS on the domain, so it sounds like we should jump on the 301s immediately.
-
As mentioned above, if I had just bought your domain, I wouldn't leave any 301s in place and would probably be the first thing I removed, so unless you have it in the contract that they have to leave any 301s in place, its basically a brand new domain.
What you could do is contact the web masters who are linking to your old domain, explain that you have changed domain names and would they like to update their site. Explain to them, this will help their users otherwise they the user could get a bad experience of getting a 404 page and could hurt the web masters brand, if they are seen to be linking off to dead pages.
I would also recommend doing a lot of social messages, same great website just a new name, otherwise people will still be searching for your old name.
But the bad news is, you have a new domain and you are basically starting from scratch, (with the little help of being able to contact previous web masters and changing links). You will suffer a drop in rankings and will take a while to recover.
-
If you were not able to do any redirects on the old domain, there won't so much be a decline as it will be starting over from scratch. Were you able to put any 301 redirects on the old domain that the new owners will leave?
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
-
New Site (redesign) Launched Without 301 Redirects to New Pages - Too Late to Add Redirects?
We recently launched a redesign/redevelopment of a site but failed to put 301 redirects in place for the old URL's. It's been about 2 months. Is it too late to even bother worrying about it at this point? The site has seen a notable decrease in site traffic/visits, perhaps due to this issue. I assume that once the search engines get an error on a URL, it will remove it from displaying in search results after a period of time. I'm just not sure if they will try to re-crawl those old URLs at some point and if so, it may be worth it to have those 301 redirects in place. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandBuilder0 -
Site's disappearnce in web rankings
I'm currently doing some work on a website: http://www.abetterdriveway.com.au. Upon starting, I detected a lot of spammy links going to this website and sort to remove them before submitting a disavow report. A few months later, this site completely disappeared in the rankings, with all keywords suddenly not ranked. I realised that the test website (which was put up to view before the new site went live) was still up on another URL and Google was suddenly ranking that site instead. Hence, I ensured that test site was completely removed. 3 weeks later however, the site (www.abetterdriveway.com.au) still remains unranked for its keywords. Upon checking Web Master Tools, I cannot see anything that stands out. There is no manual action or crawling issues that I can detect. Would anyone know the reason for this persistent disappearance? Is it something I will just have to wait out until ranking results come back, or is there something I am missing? Help here would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavo0 -
Does anyone know why my website's domain authority has dropped from 51 to 49
However this does not seem to be in isolation. All of my competitors websites have taken a similar 1 or 2 points hit. I am thinking that as an industry we may have been affected by a mutual linking site being taken down, redesigned or just loosing its own domain authority. We do rank well for our keywords and we have been on a continual rise since I took over in January, we do a little bit of a guest blogging and I am trying to build links to the site but I am doing it slowly. Would anyone else have an idea on what has happened that would cause 4 sites in the same industry to take a 1 or 2 point hit? Thanks, Emmet
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CertificationEU1 -
What NAP format do I use if the USPS can't even find my client's address?
My client has a site already listed on Google+Local under "5208 N 1st St". He has some other NAPs, e.g., YellowPages, under "5208 N First Street". The USPS finds neither of these, nor any variation that I can possibly think of! Which is better? Do I just take the one that Google has accepted and make all the others like it as best I can? And doesn't it matter that the USPS doesn't even recognize the thing? Or no? Local SEO wizards, thanks in advance for your guidance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft0 -
Does it make sense to combine multiple news sites under one domain?
My company operates multiple news site brands across several markets and typically operates one website per market/brand. We've been advised that in the case of one of the newer markets, where each brand might only be publishing 3 articles a week, that combining all that market's brands under one domain will drive higher traffic from search because Google values higher article flow. Getting this done will be a lot of work. Is the juice worth the squeeze? And assuming we get the UX right and execute 301 redirects correctly, are there major risks to search traffic?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlecD0 -
SEO for New Web Site Launch
I am going to launch a new website with digital marketing included SEO, SMO, PPC, SEM, ORM services. Please anyone suggest me what would be marketing & brand promotion strategy for this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | afycon0 -
Is it possible for a multi doctor practice to have the practice's picture displayed in Google's SERP?
Google now includes pictures of authors in the results of the pages. Therefore, a single practice doctor can include her picture into Google's SERP (http://markup.io/v/dqpyajgz7jkd). How can a multi doctor practice display the practice's picture as opposed to a single doctor? A search for Plastic Surgery Chicago displayed this (query: plastic surgery Chicago) http://markup.io/v/bx3f28ynh4w5. I found one example of a search result showing a picture of both doctors for a multi doctor practice (query: houston texas plastic surgeon). http://markup.io/v/t20gfazxfa6h
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CakeWebsites0 -
What's going on with my organic traffic from Google?
I am working on eCommerce website Vista Stores. My website's traffic is going down due to certain reason. I have done R & D and have assumption with auto generated content which I have added on few product pages. You can find out attachment to know more about current situation of traffic. 6789134845_d1a1578960_b.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0