Redirecting main www. subdomain to new domain. Can you then create a new subdomain on the old domain?
-
Hi there,
The scenario is this:
- We have been working on a rebrand and have changed the company name
- So, we want to redirect www.old-name.com to www.new-name.com
- However, the parent company is retaining the old brand name for corporate purposes
- So, in an ideal world, we'd be able to keep www.old-name.com active - but clearly that would sacrifice all of the authority built up over the years, so we do have to redirect the main www. subdomain in it's entirity.
- However - one suggested solution is to redirect www.old-domain.com to www.new-domain.com... but then create a new corporate subdomain: for example, business.old-domain.com
- business.old-domain.com will not be competing with the new site on any service/product related terms; it will only need to appear in SERPs for the company name
I'd appreciate some thoughts on this, as I've not done this before or found any examples of anyone that has.
Is that a massive risk in terms of sending a confusing message to Google?
Thanks for your help
-
I have done this many times and if you are sending the redirects to appropriate urls on the other site this is a non issue. I have done it with sites with 100K links.
If they were in some way buying non relevant domains and redirecting that would be different.
-
Robert,
when redirecting one domain to another, all the links pointing to the old domain will be pointing to the new domain, that will increase drastically the number of liks on the new domain. That could be taken as a SPAM action by Google.
Well, technically speaking it would not harm the new domain linkbuilding. It would make look it really unnatural.
-
How does redirecting the old domain to the new harm new domain link building? I can't see it even if the new domain had one link and the old had 20K.
-
You need to separate SEO from branding for a minute.
You are saying subdomain and then presenting the www subdomain and I want to be clear that is what your intent was? If instead you are saying we have domain old-company.com and now we are going to be under domain new-company.com and we want the authority built on old-company.com then, YES, you need to do the 301 redirect of urls on old-company.com to new-company.com urls.
Now, in terms of the parent owning brand Old-Company you need to first be clear with them they do not own domain old-company.com in any way as that would negate your ability to keep the redirects once they start using it.
Google is looking at the brand only in terms of branded searches, etc. There is no branding issue beyond that. So, if the parent has domain oldcompany.com vs old-company.com or they add in The-old-company, etc. they are ok if they are ok from a business sense with that change. they do not need to have a subdomain to the previous domain like best.old-company.com
I cannot see them using the old domain in any way as being good for you. But, any variant of that old domain (not your sub domain variant with something.old-company.com) would be fine.
If I were parent and brand were a real issue, I would not relinquish the domain for any reason. If I were you and you believe you must have the redirects, I would negotiate with, "we cannot do the deal if we cannot "retire" the domain and use it as we wish except not visible on the Internet." I think you understand.
Hope that helps,
Robert
-
Hi,
The risk that you're taking depends on how different are the old and the new brand. Also, considering the case that this change implies a change in the category of the site. (i.e. technology to furniture).
In the part of the subdomains, I dont see any complications on redirecting the subdomains and creating the new "business.old-brand.com". Of course you do have to analyze the linkbuilding profile of the old domain, and how it would impact in the new domain.
A quick and easy example, old domain has 10k links and new domain has 2k links. After the redirect, 10k links will go to the new domain, this could do much harm to the new domain linkbuilding.Hope I was clear enough to make me understand.
GR.
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
-
Migrating Subfolder content to New domain Safely
Hello everyone, I'm currently facing a challenging situation and would greatly appreciate your expertise and guidance. I own a website, maniflexa.com, primarily focused on the digital agency niche. About 3 months ago, I created a subfolder, maniflexa.com/emploi/, dedicated to job listings which is a completely different niche. The subfolder has around 120 posts and pages. Unfortunately, since I created the subfolder, the rankings of my main site have been negatively impacted. I was previously ranking #1 for all local digital services keywords, but now, only 2 out of 16 keywords have maintained their positions. Other pages have dropped to positions 30 and beyond. I'm considering a solution and would like your advice: I'm planning to purchase a new domain and migrate the content from maniflexa.com/emploi/ to newdomain.com. However, I want to ensure a smooth migration without affecting the main domain maniflexa.com rankings and losing backlinks from maniflexa.com/emploi/ pages. Is moving the subfolder content to a new domain a viable solution? And how can I effectively redirect all pages from the subfolder to the new domain while preserving page ranks and backlinks?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davidifaso
I wish they did, but GSC doesn't offer a solution to migration content from subfolder to a new domain. 😢 Help a fellow Mozer. Thanks for giving a hand.0 -
Choosing root domain for a subdomain
We own two root domains in the .edu space. According to Open Site Explorer, one has a domain authority of 76, while the other has a DA of 94. We operate a collection of degree microsites as subdomains of the lower-ranking root domain, e.g. www.degreename.domain76.edu. All other things being equal, would these sites benefit if we migrated them to www.degreename.domain94.edu? The question seems to hinge on whether subdomains inherit any of the root domain's authority, and the answers I have seen to that question are "sometimes" and "maybe". Lastly, as an alternative, would we realize greater SEO improvements by moving the degrees to a directory structure under domain94, i.e. www.domain94.edu/degrees/degree-name? Thank you for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | UWPCE0 -
Subdomain SEO question (php script on domain + wordpress on subdomain)
Hi Moz fellows, I am doing my first website which is entirely .php scripted. But I would like to have a wordpress blog to create content and blog posts, while the .php side of the website is more for sales pages and user generated listings.The only way to do this is to install wordpress on a subdomain "blog.website.com" QUESTION: If all my keywords targeted content is on the subdomain's Wordpress blog, but all my guest blogging efforts link to my main website, which one will rank? The subdomain or the domain? I need the domain to rank well as it is a Fiverr-like script, so if tons of people land on my "blog.website.com" subdomain, they will not convert into users... Let me know if you have experience with such a scenario, and thank you all in advance for your help! -Marc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marcandre0 -
Redirecting non www site
Hello Ladies and Gentlemen. I 100% agree with the redirecting of the non www domain name. After all we see so many times, especially in MOZ how the two different domains contain different links, different DA and of course different PA. So I have posed the question to our IT company, "How would we go about redirecting our non www domain to the www version?", "Where would we do that?", " we cant do the redirect on our webserver because the website is listed as an IP address, not a domain name, so would we do the redirect somewhere at GoDaddy?" who is currently maintain our DNS record So here is the response from IT: " I would setup a CNAME record in DNS (GoDaddy), such that no matter if you go to the bare domain, or the www, you end up in the same place. As for SEO, having a 301 redirect for your bare domain isn't necessary, because both the bare domain and the www are the same domain. 301 is a redirect for "permanently moved" and is common when you change domain names. Using the bare domain or the www are NOT DIFFERENT DOMAINS, so the 301 would not be accurate, and you'd be telling engines you've moved, when you haven't - which may negatively impact your rank. It sounds to me that IT is NOT recommending the redirect. How can this be? Or are we talking about two different things? Will the redirect cause the melt down as the IT company suggests? Or do they nut understand SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davenport-Tractor0 -
Changing a subdomain to a full domain to rank for a keyword
We have been attempting to get our blogsite to rank for our business name(Instabill). We are now considering changing the url from blog.instabill.com to something like instabillblog.com. I have following concerns about the change; Will changing the domain really be that helpful (i.e. will the change get our blog on page one for the term instabill) We have over 350 pages of content on our blog. Will changing the domain have possible negative effects ( I was thinking of using url updater in webmaster tools and creating a permanent 301 redirect from the older url to the new) Having never changed a url for a site with this much content and seo value for my company I would like to know the following from someone who has made mistakes here before; what not to do what steps you would take to make the transition easier Any help here will be greatly appreciated. cheers, Instabill
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Instabill0 -
Can I redirect duplicate blogs to give credit to one?
I have two sites that have no duplicate content (yet). One ranks better than the other but has a crappy hyphenated domain name (Domain A), and the other one is the "brand site" with a better domain name (Domain B). I'm creating a blog with technical articles and corresponding videos. I want the videos to refer to the better domain name (Domain B) because I can't see referring people to a hyphenated domain (it would sound horrible). But, the hyphenated domain has a better chance of improving it's rankings (long story why). Can I duplicate the content and just use a canonical tag on Domain B to give the credit to Domain A? If I do that, is it done on each post? Or the blog's main page? What I think would happen is any links to Domain B would pass the juice to Domain A. Is that correct? I know Canonical's are tricky and I don't want to screw this up, so I'd greatly appreciate some advice from the experienced people on here. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PhoenixDev0 -
Redirecting 2 aged site to brand spanking new one
Does 301 redircting 2 aged domain to a new one have a compounding effect? Ive redirected domain #1 to teh new site and my new domain has now jumped to position 6 on Google for the keyword. I have noticed that the sites above me are all aged domains and some with very few backlinks. Number 1 is 4 years old and 20 backlinks, thats it! I am wondering, if I redirected a 11 year old domain that is in the same niche, but never really targeteed that same keyword, would that bump my site even higher? Obviously i am building quality backlinks to the new domain and making sure these are hard to get high quality backlinks. Thanks for your help guys
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
Old Redirecting Website Still Showing In SERPs
I have a client, a plumber, who bought another plumbing company (and that company's domain) at one point. This other company was very old and has a lot of name recognition so they created a dedicated page to this other company within their main website, and redirected the other company's old domain to that page. This has worked fine, in that this page on the main site is now #1 when you search for the other old company's name. But for some reason the old domain comes up #2 (despite the fact that it's redirecting). Now, I could understand if the redirect had only been set up recently, but I'm reasonably sure this happened about a year ago. Could it be due to the fact that there are many sites out there still linking to that old domain? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VTDesignWorks1