Changing domain names... Bad idea?
-
We are re-doing a clients e-commerce website. Before I had entered them on SEO moz we had decided to change their domain name to one with a keyword inside. I had not known that they had an online marketing company previous working for them. They have a domain authority of 42 right now.
It would be a horrible idea to switch their domain right? I looked at some of the links, they all have a variety of good anchor text. But alot of the links are coming from sites or directory categories that are not relative.
We are also planning on doing 301 re-directs for the links. But this will not transfer the domain authority to the new domain right?
Any thoughts?
-
Janice: Curious how your changing the domain name went a few years ago. Did you experience any negatives to doing so? What about positives? -- Thanks. (yes, i know this was over a year ago)
-
Thanks guys. This was helpful, we decided to just go ahead with the original plan and change the domain.
-
Irving, I understand where you are coming from, but I think it is easy for us to get a little too worried about Pandas, Penguins, and the other animals. If you look at GWM Guidelines they are fairly clear on what the link schemes are:
- Links intended to manipulate PageRank (This is the only grey area I see)
- Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
- Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")
- Buying or selling links that pass PageRank
So, unless they are adding to the manipulation or purchase of links I don't see a problem. This site is currently up and I have to believe if it was not hit by Penguin 1.1 on the 25th of May, I don't see a redirect causing it to happen.
Good thought though.
-
"But a lot of the links are coming from sites or directory categories that are not relative."
sounds like a penguin smack down waiting to happen, I would look at what these links are and what pages they are pointing to. If someone has been buying links and pointing them to specific internal pages you might want to exclude them from the list of URLs that get 301'd and let them 404.
-
Anderson,
With a 301 you are redirecting page to page. So www.olddomain.com/page1 to www.newdomain.com/page1. This is done in the .htacess file and it is important as it will transfer the link juice 90 to 99% (my experience is that it is always closer to 99%). We are doing that with a 1,000 page ecommerce site now and do not foresee an issue.
If you follow the protocol, you will not have an immediate increase in domain authority, but will gain it gradually within two to three months based on my experience. MAKE SURE YOU EXPLAIN IT TO THE CLIENT BEFOREHAND. I meant this for emphasis, I am not yelling.
Most of us keep believing at some point the value of an exact match domain will go away and I still see value in them. I also believe having the keyword in the domain is important if you can do that. Here is a link to a handy 301 guide (Courtesy of Sha Menz): http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php
Hope this helps,
-
I think you have the right idea and are on the right track. I believe with 301 redirects to new site you will transfer most if not all link juice and page authority to new domain name. And you should see a boost in rankings having the keyword in there as well. So I think its a win win all the way around for 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
-
How to increase my website root domains?
Daily I am creating new root domain back links.. but my website root domains are not increased much.. I will use to check moz open explorer. Moz have any algorithmic for increasing root domains....Any body can answer my question? Please
Link Building | | mzakaria0 -
Backlinks coming from websites we've built - Good or bad?
Hi everyone, I'm just doing a backlink audit of our newly relaunched site and saw that we have about 9,000 backlinks. Unfortunately, we have neglected our own link building. About 8,000+ of these links are from the websites we have built - sitewide footer links. These are also exact match anchor texts i.e. website by Bambrick Media. Because of that, our referring domain is only at 200+. Is this bad practice? Should we keep these backlinks / keep doing this for future sites we build? We feel like our backlink profile, the above in particular, is affecting our rankings and traffic. We're not ranking very well for our keywords. Compared to our competitors who have a quarter or less of the backlinks we have, they're ranking better, have more organic keywords, and are getting more organic traffic. Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | nhhernandez0 -
Optimum level of link building per month for a new domain
looking to launch a new site, how mnay links can we affectively create per month? is 80 links per month ok?
Link Building | | Direct_Ram0 -
Subdomain links vs root domain links? Are the less valuable?
I am determining the value of links we get. Is a link on a subdomain less valuable vs one on the root domain? How less valuable would you consider a subdomain link? For example blog.site.com vs site.com/blog What other metrics would you take into consideration for the value of a subdomain link?
Link Building | | calf0 -
How do i replace bad hits on Google?
When people search for our brand name on Google, the 4th and 5th hits are threads from open forum. The discussions can hurt our image very much and we have to do something to replace it. I need some tips for how i can replace the community and push it down the list.
Link Building | | DialectAB0 -
Fake product ideas
I am going to build a fake product and wanted to get some of your awesome ideas 🙂 This is for fun, laughs and mainly viral/back links. Ultimately my goal is to leave the user scratching their head saying to them self "Is this for real?". I want it almost believable 😉 First: My site is based on everything scrabble so I want it related to that since my fans are going to get a kick out of it. I need some great starting points of something fake I can create and post about.
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
Low page rank directories but high domain authority?
I just paid someone to submit me to a few directories and I saw were I was listed on one of them today. The url page authority of where I was listed was a "1" with zero moz trust and zero moz authority. The root domain authority is a "69". Is page authority or domain authority the most important for links? I believe all the directories I was submitted to have url page authority of "1". ( I watched a video yesterday and I think the head guy said that page authority was most important but I am not sure.
Link Building | | Boodreaux1 -
Exact match domains still work??
I'm sure this has been asked and it also has been answered but I'd like some insight from another SEO as to why this site -> <cite>www dot newhomesglasgow.co.uk/ </cite> is ranking on the first page for the keyword(you guessed it) 'new homes in glasgow' OSE shows about 4 backlinks. Is it just the content on the page(that's jammed with keywords) and the matching URL? Any feedback would be appreciated 🙂
Link Building | | DanHill0