Rebranding and Domain Name Changes
-
Hi All,
One of my clients wants to rebrand http://indiaretailnews.com/ so that it's clear that the site is under the operational umbrella of http://tradebriefs.com/. indiaretailnews.com has a lower domain authority of 20, but because of the domain name it ranks number #2 for the keyword "retail news" for Google India.
The client's question:
Can we change the site names to TradeBriefsRetail.com orTradeBriefsIndiaRetail.com without affecting the SEO on each site? How do we do this – redirect from TradeBriefsIndiaRetail.com to IndiaRetailNews.com and so on or simply put all the content on the new sites and get rid of the old domains or some other way? Do long domain names cause a problem?
Another option is TradeBriefsRetail.in, etc with the domain extension showing the country that the content is for.. In a year or two, we will be expanding to markets outside India.
My opinion:
Keep the old domains and redirect to something like http://tradebriefs.com/india-retail-news
Or perhaps a subdomain:
http://indiaretailnews.tradebriefs.com
In the short term, I'd imagine rankings will drop, but if we wanted to consolidate domain authority, I was thinking that http://tradebriefs.com/india-retail-news would be the best bet.
Thoughts?
Kenji
-
Thanks for the resource. Much appreciated!
-
Yes, it is. I thought you were going to redirect the whole site to a single sub dir.
If you want a really good tutorial, this Best Practice on SEOmoz is really thorough.
I am pretty sure when I looked you were on a LAMP stack with the sites so should not present any probs.
Best -
Thanks Robert! This helps.
If we were going to go the URL to URL route, would there be any reason not to redirect to a subdirectory?
For example: http://indiaretailnews.com/index.php/best-practices/industry
Would be 301'd to
http://tradebriefs.com/india-retail-news/best-practices/industry
Wouldn't this be a good way to consolidate?
-
In the total and in the beginning, you will affect the SEO with the change, but the question becomes how much.
Another consideration is brand equity and whether you would lose any. If, the only reason for changing is to show that one is under the umbrella of the other, I am not sure of that as a good strategy. Why not just put something on the site that makes that clear?If however, you are having dupe content issues, want to consolidate staff, want to try and boost one site, etc. then you can 301 A to B. With the tradebriefs having higher authority, I would do as you suggest doing and go to it. So, indiaretail 301's each url to the appropriate url on tradebriefs. Not 301 indiaretail.com to trade briefs.com.
The last two with subdomain and sub directory is not the way to go IMO. The subdomain is its own domain and does not share linking, etc. With the way you are showing a single sub directory, that would kill a ton on your site and you would waste a lot of your linking.
The 301 url to url is the way to go.
Hope that helps,
Robert
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
-
Need to change permalink structure - need advice on these two options
I have a client with a robust Wordpress blog that ranks well for a number of high-volume terms. We are doing a site rebuild, and they are adamant they don't want to lose any SERP ranking. However, their permalink structure contains the date the post was published, i.e. https://www.company.com/blog/2018/10/28/blog-post-title The date inclusion is not ideal for obvious reasons, but also because it's creating 404 links when pre-scheduling with Hubspot. Option 1: Change the permalink structure for all posts, past and future, and implement 301 redirects The only reason I'm not outright doing this is because there will be some slippage in the rankings, given that redirects only pass on a percentage of juice. The client doesn't want any slippage. Option 2: Create a new instance of Wordpress in a new subdirectory and continue the blog from there This will mandate a new structure for the blog posts; now posts will be children of /industry-blog/ instead of /blog/, but the old posts will remain as they are under /blog/ (and with dates intact). But I don't know if this will cause some hierarchical confusion that will negatively impact both the old blog and the new blog. Any advice given is appreciated. Please feel free to correct me if I've gotten anything wrong, I've only been practicing SEO for a few years now.
On-Page Optimization | | Marce5210 -
Is it OK to include name of your town to the title tag or H1 tag on a blog to enhance local search results
I recently attended a webinar by ETNA Interactive on local search SEO. The presenter recommended including the name of your town in the title of the blog to increase local search SEO. Is this OK? Ive always been concerned that it is such an obvious attempt to rank locally that Google would consider it "spammy" ? black hat, "sketchy" or otherwise manipulative. Have the rules changed? Is it OK to do? Brooke
On-Page Optimization | | wianno1680 -
The company brand name does not show in SERP
Our company is ranking no.1 for brand keyword, however, when you try to find it by two words(with space between) then all those shows up and the website is nowhere to find. Any suggestions on how to solve this without the need to be ranked for something related
On-Page Optimization | | GardenPet0 -
To change or not to change site URL structure?
I am learning my way around SEO, having always used professionals for it in the past on previous businesses i have decided to do it myself and learn more about it. Now the dilemma i am up against is i recently changed some of my permalinks on quite a few main pages throughout the site. The site launched in April this year so we're quite new. The problem is since my last change i have not seen any increase...a decrease which in fact hasn't recovered at all. Having now analysed them in more depth and read up more on the whole subject of SEO, (which is endless) i have put together a complete new strategy; with this increased understanding of what i am doing (but by no means conclusive) i want to complete a full overhaul on all SEO (via Wordpress which i use along with YOAST SEO tools), ensuring i have all my keywords, permalinks and descriptions spot on throughout every page, post and picture. I spent a lot of time mapping these out, ensuring there is no Focus keyword duplication, and that the site is relatively flat in terms of its layout. What i am unsure about now is whether changing my permalinks again is a bad thing to do?
On-Page Optimization | | MrCostello
Could it permanently damage my rep going forward?
Should i just focus on my content and keywords/descriptions? I am at a loss as i don't want to do irreparable damage to our reputation. The site is still reasonable easy to manage so changing now is the best time to do it, but if changing the URLs is a waste of time then i may just forget that and just work on the keywords, descriptions and content. Advice is 'oh so welcome' 🙂0 -
Static content VS Dynamic changing content what is best
We have collected a lot of reviews and we want to use them on our Categories pages. We are going to be updating the top 6 reviews per categories every 4 days. There will be another page to see all of the reviews. Is there any advantage to have the reviews static for 1 or 2 weeks vs. having unique new ones pulled from the data base every time the page is refreshed? We know there is an advantage if we keep them on the page forever with long tail; however, we have created a new page with all of the reviews they can go to.
On-Page Optimization | | DoRM0 -
How do we handle sitemaps in robots.txt when multiple domains point to same physical location?
we have www.mysite.net, www.mysite.se, www.mysite.fi and so on. all of these domains point to the same physical location on our webserver, and we replace texts given back to client depending on which domain he/she requested. My problem is this: How do i configure sitemaps in robots.txt when robots.txt is used by multiple domains? If I for instance put the rows Sitemap: http://www.mysite.net/sitemapNet.xml
On-Page Optimization | | nordicnetproducts
Sitemap: http://www.mysite.net/sitemapSe.xml in robots.txt, would that result in some cross submission error?0 -
Main Page title change.
Hi, For some reason every week or two I am changing the title tag of my main page. Each change takes place because I find new version better than the old one. Does this have any impact on my SEO results (I'm keeping the main keywords each time) ? If it has an impact is it positive or negative ? And should I stick to one title and not change it under any circumstances for long periods of time ? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | lolskizz0 -
Title optimization best practices for clients with insanely long business names
How do others utilize keywords and preserve branding in the title tag for clients with a REALLY long name? Two examples. Example 1: Business name is 38 characters long in the following format: [Firstname] [initial] [Lastname] [Businesstype] Services 38 characters is workable, but the keywords for what he offers and this industry in general are long too. He abbreviates to his initials in the domain name - I don't love doing that as the acronym has a meaning of its own. (We unintentionally acquired at least one very amusing if useless backlink thanks to that.) Leaving off "Services" saves a few characters. Example 2: Business name totals 58 characters and references their two related lines of business. Similar to: Rogers Institute of Robotic Studies and RIRS Robot Repair
On-Page Optimization | | MaryAnneG
or (saves a few characters)
Rogers Institute of Robotic Studies and Robot Repair How would you handle that? Use the appropriate half of the name on pages related to that particular LOB? Only use the brand on some pages? Abbreviate more? I've been using their full name on the more "general" pages of the site and omitting it in favor of keywords on the more specific pages . Suggestions? Other ideas?1