Domain Migration Question
-
Lets say there is a brand that has one primary product type at different optional tiers. (Think something like SMB/Enterprise/Individual) Lets also say that 1 year ago this brand migrated from having everything under 1 domain (Domain A) to moving 2 of their product tiers to another domain (Domain B), a new domain. They have done some initial SEO work on this domain and had a pretty successful migration but it has also been decided that they are going to no longer offer one of these product tiers and they intend to eventually migrate everything back under the 1 domain (Domain A) They just are not sure whether they should do this now or later.
During this next year or so there is also going to be some likely re-branding/design, etc...stemming from this decision, on the domain, meaning content changes and all that fun that goes into a migration/re-design/re-branding strategy. The timing of this has not been fully decided on.Here is the question:
Should they a) Migrate back to Domain A first and then do the re-design or b) Keep 2 separate domains for now, figure out the re-design/re-branding, make content changes and then migrate Site A over in a year or so after all changes have been made?
My concern with option a) is that they migrated a little less than 1 year ago and will be migrating back which I feel could have a negative impact on the content and the domain. The positive side I see here is that this impact could be just as large even if we waited so doing this now might be a better, more efficient use of our time if we can migrate and make content changes fairly close together or concurrently.
My concern with option b) is that the tier they no longer offer makes up the majority of that sites business and traffic, leaving us with not much in terms of content that ranks well and garners much traffic. Trying to optimize for the remaining product tier by itself on it's own domain could be quite hard and then having to migrate it in a year or so back to Domain A could negatively impact any small organic impact I can make on applicable pages/domain.Does anybody have any input here? I am leaning towards Option A and but wanted to get some other opinions.
Thanks Everybody!
Edit: So far, this has received a lot of views but no input. I am hoping to have a bit of a dialog on this so any ideas or input is welcome.
-
The question that isn't being asked here is if rebranding to establish a brand is the better play. As you are finding out, when you register domains and build out sites determined by your offering/product your site is a bit limited. So why not reconsider the rebrand with a new domain that doesn't put you in this situation again. Then you'll of course want to migrate the appropriate content add the 301 redirects etc.
Good Luck
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
-
Canonicals from sub-domain to main domain: How much content relevancy matters? Any back-links impact?
Hi Moz community, I have this different scenario of using canonicals to solve the duplicate content issue in our site. Our subdomain and main domain have similar landing pages of same topics with content relevancy about 50% to 70%. Both pages will be in SERP and confusing users; possibly search engine too. We would like solve this by using canonicals on subdomain pointing to main domain pages. Even our intention is to only to show main domain pages in SERP. I wonder how Google handles it? Will the canonicals will be respected with this content relevancy? What happens if they don't respect? Just ignore or penalise for trying to do this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Syndication and canonical tags across domains
Hello, I would love some confirmation on this matter. After all, is it OK to have canonicals across domains when syndicating content? I have found this old google blog article (from 2009) and was wondering if anything has changed since...
Algorithm Updates | | Koki.Mourao
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html Sincerely,0 -
Is it bad from an SEO perspective that cached AMP pages are hosted on domains other than the original publisher's?
Hello Moz, I am thinking about starting to utilize AMP for some of my website. I've been researching this AMP situation for the better part of a year and I am still unclear on a few things. What I am primarily concerned with in terms of AMP and SEO is whether or not the original publisher gets credit for the traffic to a cached AMP page that is hosted elsewhere. I can see the possible issues with this from an SEO perspective and I am pretty sure I have read about how SEOs are unhappy about this particular aspect of AMP in other places. On the AMP project FAQ page you can find this, but there is very little explanation: "Do publishers receive credit for the traffic from a measurement perspective?
Algorithm Updates | | Brian_Dowd
Yes, an AMP file is the same as the rest of your site – this space is the publisher’s canvas." So, let's say you have an AMP page on your website example.com:
example.com/amp_document.html And a cached copy is served with a URL format similar to this: https://google.com/amp/example.com/amp_document.html Then how does the original publisher get the credit for the traffic? Is it because there is a canonical tag from the AMP version to the original HTML version? Also, while I am at it, how does an AMP page actually get into Google's AMP Cache (or any other cache)? Does Google crawl the original HTML page, find the AMP version and then just decide to cache it from there? Are there any other issues with this that I should be aware of? Thanks0 -
Is domain age no longer a factor?
Most of you have already seen the Matt Cutts video saying that domain age is insignificant after a few months. Do people agree with that? I have a friend who has a domain that is over 12 years old, but the name is not great. gaport.com for a business that sells primarily carports and garages. After watching this video, he wants to rebrand his site with a new name and scrap the old domain for something more marketable. Before he does this, I'd like to know if domain age really isn't a factor anymore? Thanks, Ruben
Algorithm Updates | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
SEOMoz advice on only buying domain if .com version is available
RE: "In order to maximize the direct traffic to a domain, it is advised that webmasters should only buy a domain if the .com version is available. " http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/domain I am working for a client who's had a domain live for 5 years or so without a .com version of the domain (just .co.uk) - the domain is also hyphenated (which doesn't look like a great idea). So, just wondering what research has been done into probs caused by lack of .com domain and by using hyphenated domain. I'm trying to figure out whether it would be worth advising client to switch to a new domain. Your thoughts would be welcome 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | McTaggart2 -
Google Panda - large domain benefits
Hi, A bit of a general question, but has anyone noticed a improvement in rankings for large domains - ie well known, large sites such as Tesco, Amazon? From what I've seen, the latest Panda update seems to favour the larger sites, as opposed to smaller, niche sites. Just wondered if anyone else has noticed this too?Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | Digirank0 -
Client question: What should I do?
I have a client who ranks #1 for all her branded keywords. Other than those keywords, she doesn't really have an objective with SEO other than to get her name out there. There are articles in some high end online magazines(think Forbes, Times, etc.) that mention her, and she wants those articles to show up when people do a branded keyword search for those magazines. She also wants those articles to show up when people Google her. Usually when I do SEO for a client, they have a site and they want that site to show up for a variety of targeted keywords. Has anyone run into people wanting to 1) SEO other sites to get them in the top 10 on their branded keywords and 2) get listed under other peoples branded keywords? Is this even possible? My gut says no but I feel obliged to look into it. Do I just build links to the articles with her keywords and hope for the best? I have no idea what to do with this client.
Algorithm Updates | | AdamMetrix0 -
Algorithm Question
Hello, I'm trying to figure out why my site and a competitors site literally trade places in the SERPS every week? My site has a boatload of content with an active blog with a lot of links versus a competitor that has virtually no links, limited content, 404 errors on the site. The links I have are all natural links with the exception of directories like JoeAnt. The only thing their site has is Domain Age where as mines is 4 months old. Any insight?
Algorithm Updates | | bronxpad0