Hi Andy

No, it is a Webstore site.  We have no access to code or to the site folders, so we cannot do anything at all with the current .co.uk site at all, but repoint it and then 301 the pages we had.

There are few ways to do this and I would like to ask other Mozzers if they have found the best way.

We have a site .co.uk and are moving it back to .com.  However we do not have any access to the site folders for .co.uk.  (We have to move it anyway as our provider is withdrawing their service).

We have built our URL 301 redirect file and it is ready to go, but how to impliment it?

We can repoint .co.uk to another site, and then redirect all traffic for each URL but this is quite messy, or just forget trying to 301 each page and just rediect the whole site.
the .com has more authority already, but we ready do not want to frustrate visitors who are using a link to reach a product, only to find they hit our homepage and not the product.

Your thoughts would be very welcome or other ideas

Bruce

Domain Authority is not really something you can control.  It is a view taken by Moz, Google etc using various algorithms.   So now you cannot influence the rank easily.

I would recommend stepping way way back and take a broad view of your site and look at some of the key Domain ranking factors that Google (might, as we can guess but they don't tell) use.

Dropping a factor of 9 is large, so something must have changed in the bigger picture.

Bear in mind that just because the numbers have gone down, does not mean that your site has had a penalty or other such disaster, it could well be that your Pond just became a Sea for some reasons, which you need to take a view on in your broad overview of your industry.

Please let us know how you get on as this would be very interesting to all Mozers I am sure

Bruce

It is a really tough one to deal with, although Google does recognise ecommerce data for products and recognises that duplication of product titles and descriptions happen and does not from what I understand have a major issue, although you will be competing with the others for the key word and phrasematches with your own site. (edit expand explaination)

Depending how your own site is structured, product popularity etc will give an indication of how well you will rank for your own site versus the big boys.

My view is that whilst you should use your own site to reflect your brand identity, expand the Brand / Category pages with fresh new text to add authority to your site, and look at all the channels collectively and do not worry if your own site is appears to underperform compared to the rest.  This is normal as the volumes of traffic and exposure will drive sales.

Hope that is useful

Bruce

The SEO was right with the 301 with the knowledge that 301 will not pass 100% rank authority as the original URL. The 301 will drop between 1 and 10%.

Sounds a bit complicated the next bit so to save this complication. Have the info on both sites, but put Canonical tags on the pages with the duplicate data.  This is the preference from Googles perspective.  this tells google that this is duplicate content.  If you intend remove the data from these original locations then rel canonical etc will not be needed.

Google does not want duplicate data, therefore you should for good practice use the canonical or delete the other data from sites

Hope that is of use

Bruce

If there is any chanse that both sites will be live & crawlable at the same time, remember to put canonicals in the headers of the old site pages, so Google knows it is duplicated data.

Bruce

Hi Carl

No problem.  Quick tip, try and make the 301s match as close as possible from the old page content to the new page content.  If it is not quite 100% it will still pass the reduced juice to the new page, but if it is way off then any juice will be lost.

Bruce

You can have as many 301s as required, no problem at all.  Google will not mind at all.

You will lose some authority of between 1 to 10% via the redirected to...pages, but this is to be expected.  DA reflects the site and PA the page, so if you need to change the domain, then you will drop a bit, but will with good SEO bring this back up reasonable quickly.

WMT only specifies which version of the site you prefer, so Google knows that www.example.com and example.com are the same site. if you don't make a specification Google will not make the association and will class both as separate domains.

Bruce

h1 tags are useful, but are not needed by Google, as they will crawl the page to see the content.  However if you have h2 h3 etc tags, but don't have an h1 then crawls will not read any tag at all, as they must be present, completed and sequential.

Hope that helps

Bruce

Without know what kind of site you have it is hard to gauge.

Ecommerce Keyword ranking swing wildy as these are often used in conjuction with Adwords and bidding. So whilst you might have a great keyword, if this is a seasonal or on trend product then the competition changes dramatically.

If you have a blog or a company site, not in ecommerce, check what is happening in the industry and see if your keyword has gone on trend.  For example: Blue LED.  a few days ago this was not the hotest topic around, but since the Noble Prize has just been awarded, this phrase will be more volatile, but will drop back once the excitement drops.

So in essence for the above, if you keyword was rankng well, it might be that you where in a niche area and ranked well even with other SEO issues present.  Once competition hots up, others might well outrank you.

If you can give us some more info about your site, that would be a great starting point

Bruce