Domain Change behind Drop in DA from 49 to 9?
-
Hi,
We have recently gone through a domain change and thought we had done this by the book. We 301'd the old site extensively and optimized our new site as best we can. All done with the help of a leading agency.
However our old site had a DA score of 49 and checking our new site's DA almost 3 months after the changes its scores 9!
Furthermore with rankings 2-3wks after the change we saw small drops (1-3 positions), 3-10 weeks saw more gradual slides but remaining page 1 for most terms. Currently some core terms are slipping back to page 2.
I have the below question on this and would like you to get your opinions and views.
-
After a well planned domain change would its be expected that the DA score would remain in the same region or is a drop like this normal?
-
Is the domain change the most likely cause of this drop or are there other factors that may cause this?
-
What is the best approach for trouble shooting this situation?
-
-
Thanks Thomas, yes i guess this may well be the reason. We had the new URL live for a period of 3-4 months before we made the 301 of the old site so the score of 9 may be from the new site being scored before the actual change is my assumptions... I've checked other software to now like Majestic and Ahrefs and scores in these are similar to pre domain change.
-
This could possibly be due to: https://moz.com/community/q/10-14-mozscape-index-update-details
See the following snippet: "Second, many PA/DA and other metric scores will look very similar to the last index because we lost and had problems with some metrics in processing (and believe that much of what we calculated may have been erroneous). We're using metrics from the prior index (which had good correlations with Google, etc) until we can feel confident that the new ones we're calculating are correct."
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
-
Why have my rankings dropped?
I have a client who has just seen his average page rank creep up from around 39 to 34 over about two months, then it appears to have dropped back to position 40+ in the space of a week. I believe he's made a lot of changes to targeted keywords, so I'd like to think it's simply because his old targeted keywords are dropping and new keywords still have to build their rankings. But I'm also worried in case he has over-optimised and might get getting penalised. Any advice on where to start digging?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
Domains and Domain Authority
Looking for some advice 🙂 I have a domain that has been registered since 1999 and currently hosts my website - the problem is that my business has moved in a different direction and my URL is no longer associated with my main product offering. For example in the past I was xyzgarden.com however now something like xyzhomedecor.com is much more appropriate. How should I handle this so that I am not at a disadvantage for SEO. thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Domain Authority
Hi Our website Domain Authority isn't as high and was wondering why it's not increasing. Compared to 1 or 2 competitors we're not scoring as high as them. Are rankings are good for all chosen keywords. Just trying to get a better handle where our site is falling short on.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia1 -
Consolidating two separate domains and redirecting towards a new replatformed domain
A client has two different sites selling the same products with the same content, they would like to replatform onto Magento while redirecting those 2 sites to the new URL. The question is, besides monitoring the 301 redirects is there anything else to take into consideration when consolidating two sites into one new site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RocketWeb0 -
Sub Domain or New Domain?
Hi All, We have a client that has a business with three different services. 2 of these services compliment each other in a really obvious way, but the 3rd, while related is not such a obvious complimentary service. For this reason, service 3 kind of weakens the content of the website SEO wise for the two main services. Also, internally at the business it is run by an entirely different team so it feels culturally somewhat different. So, the client wants to pull all the content about service 3 and put it on a different website. Which would you chose as a domain for this new site: service3.existingdomain.co.uk or www.service3+brandname.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoisyLittleMonkey0 -
Help! My Domain Authority keeps dropping! What do I do?
Hey! I just noticed my Domain Authority keeps dropping? What's happening? What do I do to get it better. I'm scared and dont know the next move to make to get this site better. Help please! Thanks! http://www.moondoggieinc.com Kristy O
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KristyO1 -
Suddenr Ranking Drop
Hello all . Im experiencing a sudden ranking drop for one of my websites . Keyword = Green Tea Search Engine = google.lk URL = www.eswaran.com/greenTea.html This page was at 7th on 1st page . Since coupe of weeks back its moving backwards . I didn't even do any link building for this page other than doing little changes to titles tags . What would be the reason for such a issue ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Osanda0 -
Sudden drop in ranks and traffic after migrating community website into main domain
Hi, We recently moved our community website (around 50K web pages) to our main domain. It now resides as a sub-domain on our main website. e.g. Before - we had www.mainwebsite.com and www.communitywebsite.com After - we have www.communitywebsite.mainwebsite.com This change took place on July 19th. After a week, we saw 16% drop in organic traffic to mainwebsite.com. Our ranks on most of the head keywords including brand keywords have dropped. We had created 301 redirects from pages on www.communitywebsite.com before this change was made. Has anybody seen this kind of impact when domains are merged? Should we expect that within 3-4 weeks Google will be able to re-index and re-rank all the pages? Is there anything else we could do to rectify the situation? Any feedback/suggestions are welcome!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Amjath0