Changing domain and transferring SEO power to new.
-
hi,
i have a website with some pages index in google on first page. i want to change the domain name but also want to keep the old domain. How can i transfer the index pages SEO power to new domains pages? So the new domain page can appear instead of old domain. 301 redirect will permanently redirect the user to new domain but i want to keep the old domain running for users only, not for Search engines. any idea. please share. thanks.
-
Hello!
Interesting question. I'd like to probe a little, but let's tackle the easy stuff first...
You can use a canonical URL tag in the header of each of your pages to reference which version you'd like Google to consider the 'correct' version of a page.
For example, on www.domain1.com/page/, you can set a canonical URL tag of www.domain2.com/page/. This acts as a 'strong hint' to Google that you consider these pages to be equivalent, and that you'd like the www.domain2.com version to inherit all of the signals from the www.domain1.com example.
This isn't a perfect solution, mind you. If you still have lots of links (internal or external), equity, coverage or other forms of attention pointing at the www.domain1.com example, this page might still have some of the authority and signals. You're essentially asking Google nicely to move the value, and hoping that they agree that that's OK / the right decision.
From a technical perspective, I'm assuming that your setup will involve serving a single site from both domains, and in which case, the content/tech/templates/URLs are the same, apart from the domain. Assuming that this is the case, you need to make sure that every page is a one-to-one, like-for-like match. You shouldn't point everything at the homepage, for example, and you should also make sure that things like category pages, listings, and other templated or procedurally generated pages also use canonical tagging.
If your tech setup is more complex than this, you'll need to do some thinking on how you 'map' canonical tags between the various versions of your pages and content - something which might require some planning and further investigation.
As an additional consideration, there's no guarantee that the www.domain1.com won't show up in search results if people search for it directly, or if that version of the page has disproportionately high amounts of authority (as I outlined above). And whilst you could use meta robots noindex tags on the www.domain1.com pages _and _canonical tags, there are mixed schools of thoughts on whether this is safe - it may be that Google interprets this as an instruction to inherit the noindex attribute on the www.domain2.com example.
As for your particular scenario, I'd be interested in understanding why you want to maintain the original/current version of the website 'for users'. If I can understand a bit more about the business requirements and what success looks like, it may be that I can refine your options a bit.
I note that some of the other answers have referenced domain forwarding/masking, and 301 redirects. I'd be hesitant to do anything with either, without a better understanding of your setup. Conditional and user-based 301 redirects can be risky if not implemented very carefully (and don't solve for your canonical / equity challenge), and domain forwarding is rarely an SEO-friendly solution (you're just making your website available from more/other domains).
Hopefully this is helpful; it'd be great to dig deeper.
-
Hi. You stated you did not care about SEO results but instead you want to maintain easy navigation and keeping your existing customers happy and with as little change as possible.I believe this is what you expressed above. If this is exactly what you mean then ,I would suggest not using a normal redirect permanent 301 redirect procedure. Instead you will need to go into your domain account ,If it is GoDaddy etc. When you begin the redirect procedure you will see the word MASKING. What Masking does for a redirect is it allows you to forward your current customer base to the new domain but the new website domain will be Masked with your original domain information including Title and Description of your choice during the Forwarding WITH masking procedure.You will have the option to enter this information.Simply use your original title and description during this . As for SEO issues there will be issues from this procedure. Unless the Page URLS are almost identical along with titles and descriptions as well as content, Then you probably will not recover your rankings ,But if you are not yet getting a ton of traffic then its still early enough to begin your SEO all over again and do your best to recover as much link juice as possible.
-
Hi Green.h,
If you are keeping the old website, what you want to do is tricky. To pass link juice to the new domain you need to 301 redirect the URLS. This is how google knows that the website has changed domains and that it should rank the new urls in place of the old. If you do not do a 301 redirect and keep the old site live, you basically have 2 websites. One website with ranking and a new website that you will now need to begin an SEO campaign.
-
This link i think will help you
https://www.hobo-web.co.uk/how-to-change-domain-names-keep-your-rankings-in-google/
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
-
How to optimize for new subdomain when root domain has all link juice and built up authority?
We recently took control of a root domain for a business that was not doing e-commerce. They just had a single page business card website at the root domain. However, it had been around long enough to have built up some amount of domain authority and link juice. When we took over to enable the site with e-commerce, we redirected the root domain to point to a www subdomain where the store is now located. Now, in my seomoz campaign, i see that all the link juice and authority stats are in the root domain metrics, and the subdomain we are tracking has nothing. What is the best way for me to take advantage of all the built up authority for the root domain to help with the newly enabled ecommerce site at the subdomain? or am I basically starting from scratch since i have been reading that link juice does not flow as well from root domains to subdomains. thank you and happy new year to all!
Technical SEO | | devinjy0 -
Multiple domains on the same hosting
Hello, I have around 80 sites (different domains) which are on the same host. Everytime I look up the IP of these domains, it gives me the same IP. The sites are interlinked, all linking to the main domain. My question is: Does the off site link building have effect on the 80 sites?
Technical SEO | | Arianittt0 -
New website
Hello, How bad is going to be if I change my Joomla website to Wordpress? I can check the 100 best pages and redirect them to the new url with 301 but my website has 424 pages. If is this needs time, how long does it take to be in the same position? Is Google review my new website quickly? What about if I make my services more specific and the main topic is going to be smaller in pages? (Mpre social services pages vs. less pages about the main webdesign topic) I should change my website to WP but I am afraid because now I am in the 2. 🙂 Thanks! Regards,
Technical SEO | | Netkreativ
Misi0 -
Exact match domain
Will buying an exact match domain and redirecting it to our main site a good idea, if such a domain is available ? What are the pros and cons ? Are exact match domains still powerful for ranking purpose ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Pros & Cons of deindexing a site prior to launch of a new site on the same domain.
If you were launching a new website to completely replace an older existing site on the same domain, would there be any value in temporarily deindexing the old site prior to launching the new site? Both have roughly 3000 pages, will launch on the same domain but have a completely new url structure and much better optimized for the web. Many high ranking pages will be redirected with 301 to the corresponding new page. I believe the hypothesis is this would eliminate a mix of old & new pages from sharing space in the serps and the crawlers are more likely to index more of the new site initially. I don't believe this is a great strategy, on the other hand I see some merit to the arguments for it.
Technical SEO | | medtouch0 -
Subfolder to Root Domain, Should i or not?
Dear All, I am kinda of stuck and need your helps, I have major client's site which is located in subdirectory. Instance: http://www.majorclient.com.cn/cn/ and as you can see domain name is already localized and they are not planning to make any english version of the site, So there will be no /eng/ folder but clients whole website is /cn/ subdirectory which is totally unnecessary and i would like to 301 whole site to **http://www.majorclient.com.cn ** But the problem is that this site has been /cn/ folder forever since the beginning and lot of trusted links are pointing to www.majorclient.com.cn/cn/ So should i move it or just configure 301 www.majorclient.com.cn to www.majorclient.com.cn/cn/ leave it there and don't bother. Help?
Technical SEO | | DigitalJungle0 -
Moving domain.com to subdomain.domain.com
Hi, I like to do something, but first like to take some opinions from seomoz. My question is: 1. I have a domain: brandtrends.com and i like to move this from brandtrends.com to trends.brand.com because: brandtrends.com is on the position #15 on the second page of SERP for my "brand" keyword. I like to move it under trends.brand.com but all inbound-links are @brandtrends.com What do you thing, if i move permanently 301 from brandtrends.com to trends.brand.com does it rank under brand.com on the 1st page of SERP..? like to rank trends.brand.com under brand.com on results page...!!! I have the backlinks of brandtrends.com on my hands too, should i leave the inbound links @brandtrends.com and the new ones i build with trends.brand.com or should i change the inbound links from brandtrends.com to trends.brand.com Hope you got it! THanks
Technical SEO | | leadsprofi0 -
How to Redirect only specific pages to new domain
My HTACCESS FILE IS AS FOLLOWS: rewriteengine on
Technical SEO | | askthetrainer
rewritecond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com$
rewriterule ^mydomain/(.*)$ "http://www.mydomain.com/$1" [R=301,L] #4d864805b49b5 I want to move ONLY specific pages from this domain to a new domain How do I edit my HTACCESS (which redirects http:// to www.) to move specific pages from old domain (which I have to delete) to new domain.... I.e. http://mydomaon.com/move.html needs to move to http://mynewdomain.com/move.html Where i can delete the original domains0