Tips to Merge Two Domains?
-
Hi all, my client assigned me to merge both their two domains.
To cut the long story, at the moment they have, for example, domain1.com and domain2.com. Practically, they sell quite the same products but with different content and layout. This has been happening for several years: domain1.com came first then domain2.com a couple of months after.
They noticed that domain2.com has now more traffic than domain1.com. Another reason is they want to use one placeholder to avoid brand confusion (as expected because the products are actually the same).
So, they are planning to merge the brand into domain2.com.
I think this is just the same as moving domain, isn't it?
I have been preparing all things as per SEOmoz SEO Guide: How to Properly Move Domains and Google's moving your site .
Do you have any other tips to include?
I want to make sure that the domain moving will be successful and the link juice on domain1.com can be transferred to domain2.com .
Many thanks for your help!
-
Ah, thanks about it. Withdrawing a change of address is what I looked for.
Just in case if there is a need to revert.
-
yep, here is a reference source for the change of address.
-
Thanks, Luis. I feel the same way, too. That is one of the reasons my client finally decided to merge the brand.
-
Hi SEO5,
Thanks for your input. Yes, I am working on this, just to make sure that the mapping will be as relevant as possible.
By the way, have you had experience for "change of address" on Google Webmasters to set domain1 back to domain1 again?
This is just in case.
Many thanks,
Christian
-
think the best thing you can do is do a 301 redirect, maintain two websites can be complicated in your case it seems unnecessary.
-
Hi Christian,
You highlighted excellent sources for reference. You can apply the 301 redirect to move the domain. Ideally 301 the specific pages to domain 2 that relate to the same product info as domain 1. This way when someone clicks on a product page for domain 1 that is still ranking , they see a similar page on domain 2 when they are redirected.
-
Hi Exequiel, I am a bit confused now. Your reply seemed to contradict your first one; which I thought you were in support to migrate the domain.
You, however, raised a valid point here. Nevertheless, sometimes it is a risk due to business decision and to avoid brand confusion.
We will be still keeping the domain1 after migration, so we can have mitigation plan if this doesn't work.
I also want to seek everyone's opinion on this matter.
-
Hi Christian, In my opinion I wouldnt do it. I tell you why... Imagine that now you redirect your site to the one that is ranking better, and in a few months you receive a penalization on this site... you are going to loose everything. I think the best option is conserve your second site. Actually you can use it to test new seo strategies
-
Hi Exequiel,
Thanks for your inputs, these are also in the links above.
Just wondering if there is anything else I need to be aware of
-
Hi Christian,
The appropiate way to do it is with a 301 redirection, and you have to put it on Webmaster Tools too.
Good luck!
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 Old domain with HTTPS to new domain with HTTPS
I am a bit boggled about https to https we redirected olddomain.com to https://www.newdomain.com, but redirecting https://www.olddomain.com or non-www is not possible. because the certificate does not exist on a level where you are redirecting. only if I setup a new host and add a htaccess file will this work. What should I do? just redirect the rest and hope for the best?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | waqid0 -
Botched domain migration
tldr: we consolidated several of our domains from longdomain.com to domain.com over a year ago and lost our highest value keywords, roughly 70% of our traffic. All our links were natural google loved our site up until that point. Things started to go sideways then... Oct 2016: 301 redirect everything from http(s)://(www).longdomain.com/* to https://www.domain.com/*, traffic starts to slump Jan 2017: Traffic has slumped 30-40% from normal seasonal levels Apr 2017: We experiment with Rankscience, implementation is botched creating a robots.txt disallow: / which is corrected in a week. traffic slumps even more during this period, but this issue seems to recover over the next month or two (hard to tell since now we have multiple factors and seasonal traffic). Oct 2017: Start an engagement with a seo firm that has experience with migration issues. They find some pages which are not redirecting and claimed that google is confused by that and pages we were redirecting wouldnt pass all the pr value until every page on our old site (including non public ones that google seems to have scraped from emails) was redirected over. Interm: Site audits from the seo form, many minor onsite improvements, link disvow, etc etc, no impact really. Current day: Stumped, and the business is hurting from the lost rankings and cost of seo. Those high value rankings are just gone and I did everything by the book as best I know. Redirects, same content, just punished. Up until the interacting with Rankscience and the seo firm, I handled all the serp related concerns myself. This has left me pretty disillusioned and at my wits end on where to look next.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sonar0 -
Merging Pages and SEO
Hi, We are redesigning our website the following way: Before: Page A with Content A, Page B with Content B, Page C with Content C, etc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading1
e.g. one page for each Customer Returns, Overstocks, Master Case, etc
Now: Page D with content A + B + C etc.
e.g. one long page containing all Product Conditions, one after the other So we are merging multiples pages into one.
What is the best way to do so, so we don't lose traffic? (or we lose the minimum possible) e.g. should we 301 Redirect A/B/C to D...?
Is it likely that we lose significant traffic with this change? Thank you,0 -
301 redirecting staff Domain to Company Domain
My colleague owns a domain (A) for about 10 years that he does not use. The domain's content is the same as my company's website (B) content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi5
Question: Can I 301 redirect domain A to domain B's homepage or is it better he just closes down his website since this would not be SEO best practices? thank you0 -
Help with domain configuration in international markets
We have just taken on a new client who’s core business is based in the UK. They are currently developing a market in Australia and are hoping to develop future markets over the next few years. The website is currently hosted in the UK, under a .co.uk domain, we are redeveloping the website and are wondering if we should move to the .com as the company is now catering to an international market. I was also wondering what the best way of establishing a presence in Australia, using the main website, rather than creating a new one. Thanks Fraser
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fraserhannah0 -
Should we move to a new domain??
Working with a company that is considering moving to a new domain and wanted some advice.They have 2 domains (they own both) and one is a shorter version of the other. The current domain is over 10 years old and has a domain authority score of 80. It is 9 characters long. The new domain (which they also own) has a DA score of 43 and is only 3 characters long. The debate is as much about branding as anything but there is a concern on how it will affect search. I was hoping for so advice and any pitfalls others may have experienced. Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 2comarketing0 -
Is this Domain Change Worthwhile?
Hi- I have a client who has setup a new criminal law firm in the last few months. The URL is like: www.somenamelawyers.com ['somename' is the same # characters as their company name] I have run a successful AdWords a/c for them and many of the big traffic and conversion keywords include 'criminal lawyers'. From a SEO perspective, the long goal is to get traffic for 'criminal lawyers' and keywords that phrase match that. So I am considering migrating them to www.somenamecriminallawyers.com. I have researched this issue and understand the technicalities involved in moving. My question here is 'is this change worthwhile'. I think it is worthwhile because it really is in a sense rebranding them to be more clearly in a specific business domain, ie. criminal law. Also, they are a new outfit so they don't have a lot of backlinks yet. And mainly, they will get a SEO boost to their core keywords 'criminal lawyers'. Thanks in advance for your thoughts- Jules
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Juller0 -
Domain Authority / Page Authority
I manage a site that has home page authority of 69, and overall domain authority of 63. To improve domain authority, would it help to remove some of the pages that have 0 page authority? There are over 1,000 pages to this site, and I always thought that the more pages you have, the better (generally). But, does it actually hurt the site to have pages that Google perceives as having 0 page authority, or does this have no bearing? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DiscoverBoating0