BIG CHANGE - 301 Main site to new domain
-
Hi Guys,
Were wondering what to do about our main domain name, we were ranking quite high for our main keyword and before Christmas our site dropped to 10th and we have been there for a while - last week our site dropped again onto the second page.
The worrying thing is now our main domain name is now ranking 1 place above another domain name that we don't really use but its an exact match domain name for our target keyword. This exact match domain has hardly any links pointing to it and it currently has a 22 domain authority.
We are wondering if we 301 our main site to this exact match domain would it rank higher than the top of the 2nd page where we are now for our main domain.
Cheers.
-
hey no problem. Sounds like it's just gonna be a matter of beating those guys then.
They may have lots of rubbish links, but, chances are, these links are not the reason they are beating you. Even blog comment-spammers will occasionally stumble across a gold mine. Under all the messy links they probably have a handful of good ones that are doing all the work. 80/20 and all that.
-
Hey man, thanks for the response.
I'd say its quite competitive and yes there are some new people that have suddenly popped up on the first page.
The annoying thing is a lot of the websites that are ranking on the first page have very bad links a lot of them are blog comments and other rubbish.
We have changed some of the content but only to make it more SEO friendly...
-
It depends on how competitive your SERP is. If it isn't very competitive then a 301 from an exact match domain might be enough to skootch you up a few places.
If you're gonna do the 301, you'd probably be better off 301'ing the site you don't use onto your main one.
Something else to think about is why your rankings may have been dropping. Have you been making any changes to your site? Have your competitors made changes? Have any new competitors arisen? If you made any changes yourself then correcting that should be your first priority. If it's competitors, then it's back to linkbuilding with you!
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
-
Change domain.com to www.domain.com - influence on linkbuilding, seo, etc.
Hello, Do you know what can happen when i change domain.com to www.domain.com? Will it have an influence to my link-building portfolio (external links to domain.com), position on google search, etc. Thank you for help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Reyzer0 -
Redirecting main www. subdomain to new domain. Can you then create a new subdomain on the old domain?
Hi there, The scenario is this: We have been working on a rebrand and have changed the company name So, we want to redirect www.old-name.com to www.new-name.com However, the parent company is retaining the old brand name for corporate purposes So, in an ideal world, we'd be able to keep www.old-name.com active - but clearly that would sacrifice all of the authority built up over the years, so we do have to redirect the main www. subdomain in it's entirity. However - one suggested solution is to redirect www.old-domain.com to www.new-domain.com... but then create a new corporate subdomain: for example, business.old-domain.com business.old-domain.com will not be competing with the new site on any service/product related terms; it will only need to appear in SERPs for the company name I'd appreciate some thoughts on this, as I've not done this before or found any examples of anyone that has. Is that a massive risk in terms of sending a confusing message to Google? Thanks for your help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edlondon0 -
What happens to 301 redirect if the site taken down?
I understand 301 redirect carries over the page value to the page its being redirected to. However what happens if for example, I do a 301 redirect from example.com to example.co.uk, 2 months later I take down hosting and cancel domain for example.com, would I lose the page value that was being carried over to example.co.uk? Do I need to keep both domains active?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marvellous0 -
Launching a new website. Old inherited site cannot be saved after lifted penalty. When should we kill the old site and how?
Background Information A website that we inherited was severely penalized and after the penalty was revoked the site still never resurfaced in rankings or traffic. Although a dramatic action, we have decided to launch a completely new version of the website. Everything will be new including the imagery, branding, content, domain name, hosting company, registrar account, google analytics account, etc. Our question is when do we pull the plug on the old site and how do we go about doing it? We had heard advice that we should make sure we run both sites at the same time for 3 months, then deindex the old site using a noindex meta robots tag.We are cautious because we don't want the old website to be associated in any way, shape or form with the new website. We will purposely not be 301 redirecting any URLs from the old website to the new. What would you do if you were in this situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peteboyd0 -
What has a better chance of ranking alongside my main site for my company name, a subdomain or new domain?
Hi Moz, Do search engines really treat subdomains as separate domains in this regard? Or are we more likely to get more real estate on the first page with a new domain? Our goal is to have our main site and this new subdomain or domain ranking in positions 1 and 2 for our company name. This is going to be a careers site/portal. Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
301 many smaller domains to a new, large domain
Hi all, I have a question regarding permanently redirecting many small websites into one, large new one. During the past 9 years I have created many small websites, all focusing on hotel reservations in one specific city. This has served me beautifully in the past, but I have come to the conclusion that it is no longer a sustainable model and therefore I am in the process of creating one large, worldwide hotel reservations website. To not loose any benefit of my hard work the past 9 years, I want to permanently redirect the smaller websites to the correct section of my new website. I know that if it is only a few websites, that this strategy is perfectly acceptable, but since I am talking about 50 to 100 websites, I am not so sure and would like to have your input. Here is what I would like to do: (the domain names are not mine, just an example) Old website: londonhotels.com 301 to newdomain.com/london/ Old website: berlinhotels.com 301 to newdomain.com/berlin/ Old website: amsterdamhotels.com 301 to newdomain.com/amsterdam/ Etc., etc. My plan is to do this for 50 to 100 websites and would like to have your thoughts on if this is an acceptable strategy or not. Just to be clear, I am talking about redirecting only my websites that are in good standing, i.e. none of the websites I am thinking about 301'ing have been penalized. Thanks for your thoughts on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tfbpa0 -
301 redirect a old site that has been "dead" for a while?
Hi guys, A quick question. I have a client who has an old business website that had some great links (Forbes.com, CocaCola.com, etc). The problem is that he knew nothing about SEO and let the hosting expire. He still owns the domain, but the site is no longer listed in Google. He did no SEO, so I am not worried about being hit by any artificial anchor text penalties, since the links are as natural as it gets. So my questions is, would there be any benefit from 301 redirecting that site to his new business? The new business is in almost exactly the same niche as the old site. I am thinking of 301'ing to a sub-page which will refer to his past venture with the old business, not to the homepage of the new site. Thanks in advance for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft0 -
Should we get a new domain that has our main keyword in it.
We have been running our site about 10 years under the domain www.islesurfboards.com and we are referred as "Isle Surfboards" when linked to in the anchor text. Our core product line and keyword focus has always been on "surfboards" and its related long tail keywords. However in the last several years we have began to sell "paddle boards" and now they have become our best selling product accouting for 80% of our business. We really want to rank well for "paddleboards" and related words but noticed we always seem to fall below people who have websites with "paddleboard" or "sup" in the domain and company name. will they always rank better unless we also inlcude it in ours? Should we move to a New Domain that focuses on the new target keyword "paddleboard" or a combo of both "surfboards" and "paddleboards"and would this make any difference or even hurt us since it would be a new domain. Then in addition rebrand our company name to include surfboards and/or paddleboards in the company name or some combo of both so the anchor text when people who refer to us relate to both paddle boards and surfboards?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | isle_surf0