301 Redirect with an Exact Domain name Match
-
My Client had a site that ranked for a pretty competitive two word phrase, but for a variety of reasons had to transfer the site to a different domain name (with none of the previous keywords). We've 301'd everything just fine to the new site, but our traffic for that two word phrase, as well as related long tail traffic, is beginning to drop.
Could the drop be related to something that we didn't do well in the transfer? Or is it due to the new domain name now not being an exact match?
Sitenote question: Our Google Analytics is still set up for the former domain name and shows data just fine. Is there any reason to switch GA to the new domain? What are the pros/cons?
Much thanks in advance!
-
That helps. So you redirected every url to the matching url on the new domain?
Good! That's all you could've done. Now the problem is: the new domain is new, hasn't built up long time value and probably all the links that are pointing to the old domain, haven't been spidered yet to be redirected to your new domain. That's problem one.
Problem two is a bigger one: all your links are now devalued because they are all being redirected to your new domain.
I'd try to find the low hanging fruit and e-mail them to change the link to the new site and preferrably not to the homepage, but to different pages on you site.
-
Say, if the old domain was xyz.com, and the new one is abc.com, we 301 redirected every url from the old site to the new. So for example, xyz.com/post1 now redirects to abc.com/post1.
Does that help?
-
We look at the old domain's Google Analytic account. All traffic to the new domain is shown there.
-
Leave the old code?
-
Can you explain a bit more about how you did the redirecting? What did you redirect? And how did you do it? So: what url's, based on what assumptions/facts/numbers to what url's did you redirect to.
I don't think there is any reason why you should change the analytics to the new domain.
-
" Our Google Analytics is still set up for the former domain name and shows data just fine"
How do You get your new domain traffic data?
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
-
301 Redirect Review Nodes
I have a client who rents out vacation beach rentals. They currently have thousands of homes under management. Each property has its own internal reviewing platform. Reviews are not really intended to be viewed on their own, as in a stand alone page with just the review on it. The problem is that Drupal makes just about every type of node viewable on its own dedicated URL. I was just thinking about taking request to view stand alone reviews and 301’ing them to their respective property page, the context in which they are intended to be viewed. The website has about 2500 review nodes currently crawlable via Drupal that sit on their own URLs. Would there be a material impact to 301 them to their respective property page when any attempt to view them on their own is made to the site?
Technical SEO | | conversionpipeline20 -
301 redirects delay in picking up
Hi I have been involved in the redesign/development of a website which has up until now had a lot of international traffic. On day of migration I uploaded all the 301 redirects to the website (wordpress) using Simple 301 redirect plugin. I tested a number of them and they appeared to be working. I also submitted the new sitemaps to Search Console. Since migration international traffic - particularly from countries such as india, Phillipines, Sri Lanka etc have significantly dropped off whereas the local traffic and some of the international traffic such as USA has remained fairly consistent. Looking at Analytics and entrances recently it appears as though search results are/were showing a number of pages with 404's (one in particular which received significant traffic and for which I had created a 301 redirection) - I have checked this page using the old url and it re-directs correctly for me and today asked a colleague in India to also check - he is getting the redirection fine. Does Google.in take a significantly longer time to pick these up in search results? Or am I missing something?
Technical SEO | | musthavemarketing0 -
How best to fix 301 redirect problems
Hi all Wondering if anyone could help out with this one. Roger Bot crawler has just performed it's weekly error crawl on my site and I appear to have 18,613 temp redirect problems!! Rather, the same 1 problem 18,613 times. My site is a magento store and the errors it is giving me is due to the wishlist feature on the site. For example, it is trying to crawl links such as index.php/wishlist/index/add/product/29416/form_key/DBDSNAJOfP2YGgfW (which would normally add the item to one's wishlist). However, because Roger isn't logged into the website it means that all these requests are being sent to the login url with the page title of Please Enable Cookies. Would the best way to fix this be to enable wishlists for guests? I would rather not do that but cannot think of another way of fixing it. Any other Magento people come across this issue? Thanks, Carl
Technical SEO | | daedriccarl0 -
301 redirect from sites closing down
Hi We have around 10 supplementary sites that have links to our site which are now closing down but are out of our control. We could have access to their domains so how could we maintain the link juice from these old sites which are going to our new site? However there will be no websites left on these old supplementary just domain names
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
.htaccess Redirect 301 issues
I have completely rewritten my web site, adding structure to the file directories. Subsequently added was Redirect information within the .htaccess file. The following example ...
Technical SEO | | Cyberace
Redirect 301 /armaflex.html http://www.just-insulation.com/002-brands/armaflex.html
Returns this response in the URL bar of ...
http://www.just-insulation.com/002-brands/armaflex.html?file=armaflex
I am at a loss to understand why the suffix "?file=armaflex" is added The following code is inserted at the top of the file ...
RewriteEngine On redirect html pages to the root domain RewriteRule ^index.html$ / [NC,R,L] Force www. prefix in URLs and redirect non-www to www RewriteCond %{http_host} ^just-insulation.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.just-insulation.com/ [R=301,NC] Any advice would be most welcome.0 -
CNAME vs 301 redirect
Hi all, Recently I created a website for a new client and my next job is trying to get them higher in Google. I added them in OSE and noticed some strange backlinks. To my surprise the client has about 20 domain names. All automatically poiting to (showing) the same new mainsite now. www.maindomain.nl www.maindomain.be
Technical SEO | | Houdoe
www.maindomain.eu
www.maindomain.com
www.otherdomain.nl
www.otherdomain.com
... Some of these domains have backlinks too (but not so much). I suggested to 301 redirect them all to the main site. Just to avoid duplicate content. But now the webhoster comes into play: "It's a problem, client has only 1 hosting account, blablabla...". They told me they could CNAME the 20 domains to the main domain. Or A-record them to an IP address. This is too technical stuff for me. So my concrete questions are: Is it smart to do anything at all or am I just harming my client? The main site is ranking pretty well now. And some backlinks are from their copy sites (probably because everywhere the logo links to the full mainsite url). Does the CNAME or A-record solution has the same effect as a 301 redirect, from SEO perspective? Many thanks,
Hans0 -
301-redirect
Hi My website is fairly new and i wasnt aware of the difference btw 'website.com' and 'www.website.com' when i started up. It doesnt matter which one i use as long as i am consistent right ? Most of my ingoing links are to mainpage on 'website.com'. I have som ingoing links to 'www.website.com' but also some to 'www.website.com/brandname'. is it enough to 301-redir 'www.website.com' to 'website.com' or does it need to be done on several levels ? I need to have someone do the redirect for me - how can i check its working when its done ? Dan Lærum
Technical SEO | | danlae0 -
How should 301 redirects affect Page Authority?
We recently setting up 301 redirects from one of our sites so that the site redirects from the www version to the non-www version for all pages. We want to quantify what we expect to see as results. From what the experts say, we'd expect that the Page Authority of the canonical versio (non-www) will be higher than either of the two separate ones were previously. For instance, if this page - www.website.com/information/ - had a PA of 57 and this one - website.com/information/ - had a PA of 53, some time after the 301 redirects from www to non-www have been put into place, we should see the non-www version of that page move up to some PA about 57. It our thinking correct? How long does it normally take to see a PA update take place in a scenario like this? Thanks, Richard
Technical SEO | | LDS-SEO0