Domain Change Before or After Site Revamp?
-
In the last year traffic to our site has dropped in half and ranking has dropped significantly. Very little no content has been added in that time. We would now like to improve ranking by adding new content.
2 domains effectively exist for the site. The existing domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. But www.metro-manhattan.com redirects to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Our company is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc.. We registered www.metro-manhattan.com and created the redirect to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com in 2012. www.nyc-officespace-leader.com was registered in 2006. Many links to the site show www.metro-manhattan.com and I believe this may be a source of confusion for Google. Would it be best to make the domain consistent at this time by redirecting it once and for all and to do so before adding new content? If this is done correctly can we avoid taking a hit on ranking?
Note:
-www.nyc-officespace-leader.com is the old domain.
-www.metro-manhattan is the new domain but has existed since 2012 and has been redirecting to the old domain since then
-The company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space (similar in branding to the new domain)Am I correct in assuming that having the 2 domains may be causing issues with Google involving domain authority? Change the domain before adding content or add content before?
-
The links to metro-manhattan may be losing a small amount of value as they pass through the redirects. Google has previously stated that this is not the case, but I think it's more accurate to say that it's not always the case, and I have certainly seen a measurable decrease in link value (usually around 15%) when passing through a redirect. I doubt that Google is confused about the two domains, though, since metro-manhattan has been redirecting to nyc-officespace-leader for 4 years and, unless I'm reading your question wrong, has never had content on it.
If metro-manhattan has more inbound links pointing to it than nyc-officespace-leader, AND is a better reflection of your current brand, it may indeed be worth moving the domain. I would not move the site from one domain to the other just based on the reasons you've outlined above, though. Moving your site from one domain to the other is likely to negatively impact your rankings and traffic in the short term as Google gets used to it being in the new spot. This is entirely possible to overcome through marketing the new site, but will not be a quick fix to the problems you've outlined. So if you want to move the site, and commit to marketing that site, go ahead, but don't do it just to capture link value pointing to metro-manhattan.
If you do decide to move the site, my advice is always to make a domain change separate from making other major site changes in layout, content, etc. So you would either want to:
- Move the site as-is, do some proactive link building to the new domain/reach out to people who link to the old domain to get them to update their links, get a marketing and promotion plan in place, and then once your rankings and traffic have stabilized from the move, start making improvements, or:
- Make the improvements to the site you want to make now, and revisit moving the domain after those changes have been in place for a while.
Your other option would be to reach out to sites that link to metro-manhattan and ask them to update their links to point to nyc-officespace-leader. That would allow you to get more value from those links, but I know it's not always possible to do. So like I said, unless you have additional compelling reasons to move the site beyond what you've said in your question, I would leave it where it is and focus on improving it.
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
-
Move domain to new domain, for how much time should I keep forwarding?
I'm not sure but my website looks like is not getting it's juice as supposed to be. As we already know, google preferred https sites and this is what happened to mine, it was been crawling as https but when the time came to move my domain to new domain, I used 301 or domain forwarding service, unfortunately they didn't have a way to forward from https to new https, they only had regular http to https, when users clicked to my old domain from google search my site was returned to "site does not exist", I used hreflang at least that google would detect my new domain been forwarding and yes it worked but now I'm wondering, for how much time should I keep the forwarding the old domain to the new one, my site looks like is not going up, I have changed all the external links, any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fulanito1 -
Using a Sub Domain as a Main Domain?
Hi, I'm working on a site at the moment and the sub domain is acting as the main domain. This occurred when the site was redesigned and built on a sub domain for testing but it was never moved to the main domain when it went live (a couple of years ago). So little or no pages are live on domain.com but all on sub.domain.com. It's a large company but they have very poor rankings. Would you recommend that they move the sub domain back into the root folder? Does this involve renaming/re-pointing URLs? Thanks Louise
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MVIreland1 -
Building a product clients will integrate into their sites: What is the best way to utilize my clients' unique domain names?
I'm designing a hosted product my clients will integrate into their websites, their end users would access it via my clients' customer-facing websites. It is a product my clients pay for which provides a service to their end users, who would have to login to my product via a link provided by my clients. Most clients would choose to incorporate this link prominently on their home page and site nav.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emzeegee
All clients will be in the same vertical market, so their sites will be keyword rich and related to my site.
Many may even be .org and ,edus The way I see it, there are three main ways I could set this up within the product.
I want to know which is most beneficial, or if I'm missing anything. 1: They set up a subdomain at their domain that serves content from my domain product.theirdomain.com would render content from mydomain.com's database.
product.theirdomain.com could have footer and/or other no-follow links to mydomain.com with target keywords The risk I see here is having hundreds of sites with the same target keyword linking back to my domain.
This may be the worst option, as I'm not sure about if the nofollow will help, because I know Google considers this kind of link to be a link scheme: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en 2: They link to a subdomain on mydomain.com from their nav/site
Their nav would include an actual link to product.mydomain.com/theircompanyname
Each client would have a different "theircompanyname" link.
They would decide and/or create their link method (graphic, presence of alt tag, text, what text, etc).
I would have no control aside from requiring them to link to that url on my server. 3: They link to a subdirectory on mydomain.com from their nav/site
Their nav would include an actual link to mydomain.com/product/theircompanyname
Each client would have a different "theircompanyname" link.
They would decide and/or create their link method (graphic, presence of alt tag, text, what text, etc).
I would have no control aside from requiring them to link to that url on my server. In all scenarios, my marketing content would be set up around mydomain.com both as static content and a blog directory, all with SEO attractive url slugs. I'm leaning towards option 3, but would like input!0 -
Domain remains the same IP address is changing on same server only last 3 digits changing. Will this effect rankings
Dear All, We have taken and a product called webacelator from our hosting UKfast and our ip address is changing. UKFasts asked to point DNS to different IP in order to route the traffic through webacelator, which will enhance browsing speed. I am concerned, will this change effect our rankings. Your responses highly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tigersohelll0 -
How much change should you make to your site in one go?
Hey everyone, So we are currently working on a new website and are in the final stages right now. We have some plans for a brand name change too and there is some debate internally whether we should: a) roll out the new site now and hold off on the rebrand - let the redirects kick in and the site bed in so to speak. Then when the dust settles look at a domain name change b) Roll out the new site with the domain name change too - an all in change A bit of background on the changes being made: The new website will have some structural changes but the main blog content will remain the same - this is where we get the majority of our traffic. The blog will have a slight page layout change but the core content, structure, urls, etc. will be exactly the same. The core website surrounding the blog will change with 301 redirects from old out of date content pages consolidated to fewer, more relevant pages. I hope I've explained enough here, if not please let me know and I'll add more detail
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hotchilidamo0 -
3 Wordpress sites 1 Tumblr site coming under 1domain(4subdomains) WPMU: Proper Redirect?
Hey Guys, witnessSF.org (WP), witnessLA.org(Tumblr), witnessTO.com(WP), witnessHK.com(WP), and witnessSEOUL.com(new site no redirects needed) are being moved over to sf.ourwitness.com, la.ourwitness.com and so forth. All under on large Wordpress MU instance. Some have hundreds of articles/links others a bit less. What is the best method to take, I understand there are easy redirects, and the complete fully manual one link at a time approach. Even the WP to WP the permalinks are changing from domain.com/date/post-name to domain.com/post-name? Here are some options: Just redirect all previous witinessla.org/* to la.ourwitness.org/ (automatic direct all pages to home page deal) (easiest not the best)2) Download Google Analytics top redirected domains about 50 urls have significant ranking and traffic (in LA's sample) and just redirect those to custom links. (most bang for the buck for the articles that rank manually set up to the correct place) 3) Best of the both worlds may be possible? Automated perhaps?I prefer working with .htaccess vs a redirect plugin for speed issues. Please advise. Thanks guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vmialik0 -
Changing domains - best process to use?
I am about to move my Thailand-focused travel website into a new, broader Asia-focused travel website. The Thailand site has had a sad history with Google (algorithmic, not penalties) so I don't want that history to carry over into the new site. At the same time though, I want to capture the traffic that Google is sending me right now and I would like my search positions on Bing and Yahoo to carry through if possible. Is there a way to make all that happen? At the moment I have migrated all the posts over to the new domain but I have it blocked to search engines. I am about to start redirecting post for post using meta-refresh redirects with a no-follow for safety. But at the point where I open the new site up to indexing, should I at the same time block the old site from being indexed to prevent duplicate content penalties? Also, is there a method I can use to selectively 301 redirect posts only if the referrer is Bing or Yahoo, but not Google, before the meta-refresh fires? Or alternatively, a way to meta-refresh redirect if the referrer is Google but 301 redirect otherwise? Or is there a way to "noindex, nofollow" the redirect only if the referrer is Google? Is there a danger of being penalised for doing any of these things? Late Edit: It occurs to me that if my penalties are algorithmic (e.g. due to bad backlinks), does 301 redirection even carry that issue through to the new website? Or is it left behind on the old site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
How To Detect Primary Site With Duplicate Domains?
I'm working with some backlink data, and I've run into different domains that host the same exact content on the same IP. They're not redirecting to each other, just looks like they're hosting the same content on differnet virtual hostnames. One example is: borealcanada.ca borealcanada.com borealcanada.org www.borealcanada.ca www.borealcanada.com www.borealcanada.org www.borealecanada.ca I'm trying to consolidate this data and choose which is the primary domain. In this example, it appears www.borealcanada.ca has a high number of indexed pages and also ranks first for "boreal canada". However, I'm trying to think of a metric I can use to definitively/systematically handle this (using SEO Tools or something like it). Anyone have ideas on which metric might help me determine this for a large number of sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brettgus0