Questions on switching domain name of my site
-
Hey guys,
I purchased a domain name on May 1st and have been running my site on it since then. At the time when I added the domain name to the shopping cart, I felt that it was the best domain name a human could possibly come up with.
But now, after two months, I am not so sure about it. And that means I am thinking of getting a new domain name and redirecting the old domain to the new one.
Give that the domain is only two months old, there is not much to lose. However, my domain name does have some valuable backlinks, and has built some credibility in the eyes of search engines. According to MOZ Open Site Explorer, its Domain Authority is 10 and Page Authority (homepage) is 20. It's not much, but I fear that if I switch the domain name, I will reset the clock and the new domain name will have to earn the rankings from scratch
That said, after searching this forum, I come across articles like this one from google and this 2012 article from MOZ that gave me some confidence.
The MOZ article is from 2102, and there have been several changes since then. Is there an updated version of that article, or another legit article on the internet that you can point me to?
As you can tell, I want to be more than sure that we don't take any hit during the migration process.
Also want to mention that the site is on WordPress -- in case that is relevant.
Thank you for your help.
-
Thank you John, Marcus:
The situation is exactly what MArcus described.
Seems like the process is going to be rather straightforward.
To answer this, "is this a brand change or just a URL change?" -- it's just a URL change for a news site and there is no official label or brand behind it.
I am familiar with the tools your mentioned, so I should be able to handle it. If anything comes up, I will update this thread.
-
anybody can help me ?
i have web site one old can not change anything with good ranking one new no ranking and work with wix
what should i do?
-
Hey
If you are simply changing domain and not actually moving or redesigning the site then this is a pretty simple process. There is much to learn from the Moz article linked above but this goes into detail beyond your requirements.
- We are not moving anything.
- Page names wont change
- All that will happen is that www.old.com becomes www.new.com
If that is the case I would suggest three main steps here
- Change the URL and implement a catch all 301 redirect to enforce that
- Add the new and old URL in Webmaster Tools (Search Console) and inform Google of the change of URL
- Conduct a link audit and request updates to links where possible
I would like to have a rank check as well so I can measure the success and you could be lazy and not worry too much at this point about the link audit or only change key links.
There is likely some nuance here and I would want to crawl the site using Screaming Frog or some such once you have actioned the change to ensure there are no hard coded URLs (widgets in WordPress can cause a few issues here). If you review screaming frog crawl data and look for all 301's you should be able to iron out any kinks that are not sorted by steps 1 and 2 above.
The only other implication is whether the actual name of the business changes - that is, is this a brand change or just a URL change? If the brand is changing then I would want to make sure you factor that into any external platforms and mentions (this is a bigger issue if you are a local business).
If you take the right steps and inform the search engines using redirections and the search consoles then you have little to worry about here.
Hope that helps
Marcus -
The 2012 article from Moz is still current. There are other more current dated articles but in short same outcome.
From what you are describing you are on the right track. Make sure you address the backlinks correctly. http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2207168/how-to-conduct-a-link-audit
You sound like you are in safe territory by taking a considered approach. Well done.
Let me know if any more queries.
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
-
Recently re-built our site and changed domain. Now I want to go back to old domain - it it a bad idea?
About a year ago I rebuilt our website and changed our domain name. We rent villas in Tuscany, we used to be 'invitationtotuscany.com'. Then I started doing the same in Provence, and in the italian lakes, so i had further sites called invitationtoprovence.com and invitationtotheitalianlakes.com. But maintaining them was awkward and I wanted to have one site. So I put them all onto invitationto.com and did 301s from the old domains and sites. Now I'd dropped off organic search results and I've also realised that invitationto.com is far less clear as a business address. My inclination is to go back to invitationtotuscany.com - Tuscany is still 80% of our business and have the other areas in there too - optimised for SEO for Provence etc. I'm being told its a really bad idea to change domain, 301 the old one, and then revert to the original domain. But I'm suffering anyway, so I wonder if I sjhouldn't just bite the bullet. A lot of my old good backlinks still point to invitationtotuscany.com (BBC, Sunday Times, etc) and the DA is 33 against 22 on the new one.. All help gratefully received! : )
Technical SEO | | DanWrightson0 -
Linking shallow sites to flagship sites
We have hundreds of domains that we are either doing nothing with, or they are very shallow. We do not have the time to build enough quality content on them since they are ancillary to our flagship sites that are already in need of attention and good content. My question is...should we redirect them to the flagship site? If yes, is it ok to do this from root domain to root domain or should we link the root domain to a matching/similar page (gymfranchises.com to http://www.franchisesolutions.com/health_services_franchise_opportunities.cfm)? Or should we do something different altogether? Since we have many to redirect (if this is the route we go), should we redirect gradually?
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions0 -
I noticed all my SEOed sites are getting attacked constantly by viruses. I do wordpress sites. Does anyone have a good recommendation to protect my clients sites? thanks
We have tried all different kinds of security plugins but none seem to work long term.
Technical SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
301'ing domain to an addon domain
My googlefu failed me in finding this... How to 301 a domain to an addon domain? Domain structure is as follows: http://addondomain.maindomain.com/ http://www.maindomain.com/addondomain/ http://www.addondomain.com/ <--(addon domain has its own domain as well) I want main domain to all point to the addon domain like so: http://www.maindomain.com/ --> http://www.addondomain.com/
Technical SEO | | JasonJackson0 -
Domain with more Languages
Hey folks! I was wondering what you would do. I do have a Website. The website is provided in 8 other languages. Right now every language has it's own Domain name. The domain name is always the country in the language. I'm thinking about combine everything to one domain and hope to get some great linkjuice from the other 7 domains. So it would be www.example.com/en/ www.example.com/fr/ and so on. How do you handle that. Would this have a big positive impact on that one domain I'm forwarding to?
Technical SEO | | leitpix
I really think so!0 -
Hyphenated Domain Names - "Spammy" or Not?
Some say hyphenated domain names are "spammy". I have also noticed that Moz's On Page Keyword Tool does NOT recognize keywords in a non-hyphenated domain name. So one would assume neither do the bots. I noticed obviously misleading words like car in carnival or spa in space or spatula, etc embedded in domain names and pondered the effect. I took it a step further with non-hyphenated domain names. I experimented by selecting totally random three or four letter blocks - Example: randomfactgenerator.net - rand omf act gene rator Each one of those clips returns copious results AND the On-Page Report Card does not credit the domain name as containing "random facts" as keywords**,** whereas www.business-sales-sarasota.com does get credit for "business sales sarasota" in the URL. This seems an obvious situation - unhyphenated domains can scramble the keywords and confuse the bots, as they search all possible combinations. YES - I know the content should carry it but - I do not believe domain names are irrelevant, as many say. I don't believe that hyphenated domain names are not more efficient than non hyphenated ones - as long as you don't overdo it. I have also seen where a weak site in an easy market will quickly top the list because the hyphenated domain name matches the search term - I have done it (in my pre Seo Moz days) with ft-myers-auto-air.com. I built the site in a couple of days and in a couple weeks it was on page one. Any thoughts on this?
Technical SEO | | dcmike0 -
Switching Site to a Domain Name that's in Use
I'm comfortable with the steps of moving a site to a new domain name as recommended by Google. However, in this case, the domain name I'm asked to move to is not really "new" ... meaning it's currently hosting a website and has been for a long time. So my question is, do I do this in steps and take the old website down first in order to "free up" the domain name in they eyes of search engines to avoid large numbers of 404s and then (in step 2) switch to the "new" domain in a few months? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | R2iSEO0 -
How do I set up a site review for a password protected site?
We need to conduct a SEO analysis for a website that is on a private, password protected development site -- is there anyway for SEOMoz tools to access and analyze a PW protected site? Thank you, Sara Merten
Technical SEO | | kev110