What Domain should I use? - Domain authority question
-
Hi all,
I created a website www.bruadair.com approximately 2 months ago, the website is for a luxury villa. Prior to creating this site the villa website was www.bruadair.co.uk , this website had been live for around 4 years.
Now after developing the site and creating optimised content etc, I started my link building strategy to try and increase both the page and domain authority of the site. I used MOZ's open site explorer tool to examine my site and compared it with the old domain (www.bruadair.co.uk), this is was where my question arose.
The old site has a domain authority of 16/100 and the home page has a page authority of 26/100. The old domain also had 468 inbound links ( the quality of these are most likely questionable, nofollows etc ). The new site in comparison has 1/100 domain authority and 1/100 page authority with no apparent inbound links.
Before I noticed this I had generated a few inbound links to the new site, but Moz had not indexed websites since I had done this therefore it probably wouldn't have shown it in the open site explorer.
Basically I have cloned the new site to the old web address and am thinking of using the .co.uk version just due to its existing domain and page authority. Would it be beneficial to swap over to the old site to benefit from the domain authority??
Thanks for any help given!
-
-
Thank you Thomas, a very thorough and helpful answer!
I have been promoting and focusing on linkinbuilding in the .com site as of the last few weeks, I am aware that these efforts take time to materialise. If it is the case that there is not much difference between the two , then i will just stick with .com. We operate in England but our Villa is in Barbados and is promoted internationally and so I don't believe .co.uk is particularly useful.
The main difference between the two sites was that the co.uk version had been running for 4 years (not by me) and so I thought it may had developed some good ( be it unintentional ) authority. Whereas i have only had .com up and running properly for around a month. I suppose I might as well continue on trying to build quality links to the .com site,
To clarify, when you mention that the site has issues you would be referring the co.uk one?
Thanks again for your respone!!
-
Honestly a domain authority of 16 is not very much at all. So if you're business is located in the UK which from going to be URL ending in co.uk it is I would stick with that.
I also took the liberty of running that domain through majesticSEO as well as SERPS.com which combines every tool but majestic is on the fritz right now however are utilized tools the utilize majesticSEO, Moz & Ahrefs
I can tell you that the .Co.uk domain is a stronger domain however it's very weak and in terms of actual value. You could with a proper SEO campaign bring either domain to a very high level.
There are benefits to using geo-based TLD's if you are basing this business out of the UK I would stick with the UK domain.
Currently this site seems to be having issues but if you go to the tools part of http://serps.com/ you can get all the information I have pasted below for free it's quite convenient.
https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/subdomains/http%253A%252F%252Fwww.bruadair.co.uk
https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/subdomains/www.bruadair.com
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=www.bruadair.co.uk
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=www.bruadair.com
I would build on the better domain and make sure the back links are very relevant to the contents of the website.
If you were to swap it as you say you would need to do a 301 redirect on every inbound link that would be relevant to your new site. You would lose a small amount of link juice or power however you could do that if you wish.
If it's not broken don't fix it is my attitude on this if you do want to use the .com it should not be hard to get it to the same rank as the other domain.
I hope I have been of help,
Thomas
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
-
Which tools/techniques do you use for backlink indexation?
Hello All, I was wondering if you have a list of sites, tools or best practices in order to get your new backlinks indexed sooner by Google. Thanks a lot in advance! Luis
Link Building | | Yeeply.com0 -
Sending Domain Authority from Root www domain to *
Hello all Some advice please. Im working with a friend who has a website (obviously). Its based on wordpress and is accessible by the link http://exampledomain.com. The problem is he has some good links out there which are pointing at http://www.exampledomain.com. As yet Im uncertain how he has setup his DNS, he maybe is doing a forward which would leave the DA back with the www subdomain. What is his best practice to inherit those links into his actual domain? Thanks
Link Building | | DarrenMOB0 -
Linksmanager and managedlinkbuilding any one use these
managedlinkbuilding.com and linksmanager.com has anyone used them? They both seems promising for helping organize links and get them? Or maybe my understanding is wrong.
Link Building | | topclass0 -
A backlinks question
Hi all Could do with a second opinion on this one if anyone has a moment please. Recent Google updates have targeted overally optimised backlink profiles as they are clearly for seo purposes and not natural. The question I have is how does this relate to an ecommerce website? If I sell 'blue 1980 aged cheese' (I know nothing about cheese so perhaps not the best example!!) and I have a url on my shop domain.com/store/blue-1980-aged-cheese with the product name as the page title along with the domain name. If I were to get backlinks pointing to this page using the anchor of 'blue 1980 aged cheese' (and other variations of that, blue cheese, aged blue cheese etc) would this be considered to be too optimised? Given the page is about this item then surely it could be considered natural that people link using the product name, as well as using the site name and the domain url Any thoughts please Thanks, Carl
Link Building | | GrumpyCarl0 -
What value do external broken links give to a domain?
I ask, as I've just used opensite explorer to look at external links a competitor has, and I've found the high value ones at the top of the list go to a page that no longer exists on their site. Are these stiill of value in the SERP's, or have they messed up by not putting a 301 redirect on them?
Link Building | | xposurecreative0 -
Domain/page authority - how long does it take so see results ?
Im new to the SEO and link building world. I have been building on my link building campaign over the last month or two but I am yet to see any changes in my domain/page authority. Is it because of the quality of the links, the directories I have been submitting in, webmasters maybe using "nofollow" tag ect. Or it generally just takes time to see the results? Is this even how domain/page authority is built. lol Any information on the topic would be greatly appreciated. Regards, S&M
Link Building | | Sexandmetal0 -
Do Expired Domain Retain Their Page Rank ?
I am a little bit confused about buying expired Domain Names because i have got mixed advice over the internet. Some Say That They Lose Their Page Rank And Some Say That They Don't. So I would really love to hear what PRO Members have to say about it! Also is it a Good Idea to use Expired Domain names for Link Building ? Rishi
Link Building | | RishiSeo0 -
Domain position on site:domain.com search
Hi, After the last week Google algotithm update, my web site index appears on 4th position when I search for site:www.domain.com If I make a simple search for domain or domain.com it ranks on first position. Is this a sign of a penalty ? What would be the cause ? Thanks
Link Building | | tranquilito0