Switching Url
-
I started working with a Roofer/Contractor about a year ago. His website is http://www.lancasterparoofing.com/. The name of his business is Spicher Home Improvements. He used to have spicherhomeimprovements.com, well he still does.
He was focusing on Roofing and Siding but now would like to branch to other areas like Interior remodeling. So adding interior work under LancasterPaRoofing.com is not applicable. I do not think starting another domain and having two is the best option.
I think he should go back to using SpicherHomeImprovements.com and I assume he would take a small hit but in time he should be better off.
Plus the url is more applicable to the real name of his business.
Thanks for any feedback I receive.
Chad
-
Thanks to Davinia, Moosa and Federico for taking the time to reply.
-
Chad, if I would have been at your place, I would have gone to the same option as you are going.
It’s not search engine only but you have to care about users as well… Although search engine might understand that your domain name is focusing one service but you are offering additional services under the same umbrella but for people you should be clear that you are offering related services as well and not sticking up to roofing only.
My idea is to go with the company names domain and 301 the current website to the new domain page by page so that page level link juice can be transferred. Due to redirection a bit of a link juice will be lost but powerful content marketing and link building can help it regain their positions.
Hope this helps!
-
Hey Chad,
He will definitely loose some value, however, if there's still some juice flowing from the old domain, regaining it will get that "loss" that you were having redirecting to the new domain back.
I agree with your idea, it will be much better if he use the old domain instead and cover all the services he provides.
Remember to follow all the necessary steps when changing the domain, 301 the entire domain to the old one, changing it via GWT, etc. The loss should be minimum, it will be noticeable during the first 1 - 3 month, but in the long run it should be a win.
Hope that helps!
-
Hi Chad,
A domain with 'roofing' in it could be confusing if the business offers additional services, however is not the end of the world if your search engine result page snippets clearly outline what services are provided (i.e. title tag and meta description).
In an ideal world you would never change URLs, especially not the root domain as you can lose SEO goodness of that page. But if you need to then be sure to use a permanent 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one and make the links from relative pages (e.g. use a 301 redirect from www.LancasterPaRoofing.com/waterblastering and point to www.spicherhomeimprovements.com/waterblastering). You will also need to inform Google of the new domain via Google Webmaster Tools. And, you should manually go and update URLs on external websites. You will need to keep the old website live for at least 6 months.
Good luck,
Davinia
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
-
Sanity Check: NoIndexing a Boatload of URLs
Hi, I'm working with a Shopify site that has about 10x more URLs in Google's index than it really ought to. This equals thousands of urls bloating the index. Shopify makes it super easy to make endless new collections of products, where none of the new collections has any new content... just a new mix of products. Over time, this makes for a ton of duplicate content. My response, aside from making other new/unique content, is to select some choice collections with KW/topic opportunities in organic and add unique content to those pages. At the same time, noindexing the other 90% of excess collections pages. The thing is there's evidently no method that I could find of just uploading a list of urls to Shopify to tag noindex. And, it's too time consuming to do this one url at a time, so I wrote a little script to add a noindex tag (not nofollow) to pages that share various identical title tags, since many of them do. This saves some time, but I have to be careful to not inadvertently noindex a page I want to keep. Here are my questions: Is this what you would do? To me it seems a little crazy that I have to do this by title tag, although faster than one at a time. Would you follow it up with a deindex request (one url at a time) with Google or just let Google figure it out over time? Are there any potential negative side effects from noindexing 90% of what Google is already aware of? Any additional ideas? Thanks! Best... Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Internal Links - Different URLs
Hey so, In my product page, I have recommended products at the bottom. The issue is that those recommended products have long parameters such as sitename.com/product-xy-z/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co&srcType=dp_recs The reason why it has that long parameter is due to tracking purposes (internally with the dev and UX team). My question is, should I replace it with the clean URL or as long as it has the canonical tag, it should be okay to have such a long parameter? I would think clean URL would help with internal links and what not...but if it already has a canonical tag would it help? Another issue is that the URL is different and not just the parameter. For instance..the canonical URL is sitename.com/productname-xyz/ and so the internal link used on the product page (same exact page just different URL with parameter) sitename.com/xyz/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co&srcType=dp_recs (missing product name), BUT still has the canonical tag!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
Status Codes - Deleted URLs
Hi I have a dev team 'cleaning' their database and from what I can tell deleting old URL's - which they say are not in use. I don't have much visibility on how our URLs are managed in the back end of the site, but my concern is these URLs should never be deleted, they should have a 301, 404 or 410. This includes product pages no longer available and category pages - my concern is losing authority. Am I worrying over nothing or is this a big issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Search Results not Updating (Title, Description, and URL)
Issue: I recently discovered that my site was accessible by both HTTP and HTTPS. The site has used a rel canonical tag to point to the HTTP version. Google+ was pointing to HTTPS though. The title, description, and URL shown in the results for the homepage is HTTPS, other pages are HTTP, etc... Steps taken to Resolve: This week I did the following... 301'd all non-checkout pages to the HTTP version Switched Google+ URL to HTTP version and added new post with an HTTP link to the homepage. Used webmaster tools to recrawl and reindex the site Resubmitted XML Sitemap No luck... the site is still not updating... any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all! Site is Here
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AhlerManagement0 -
How much is the effect of redirecting an old URL to another URL under a new domain?
Example: http://www.olddomain.com/buy/product-type/region/city/area http://www.newdomain.com/product-type-for-sale/city/area Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | esiow20130 -
Overly-Dynamic URLs & Changing URL Structure w Web Redesign
I have a client that has multiple apartment complexes in different states and metro areas. They get good traffic and pretty good conversions but the site needs a lot of updating, including the architecture, to implement SEO standards. Right now they rank for " <brand_name>apartments" on every place but not " <city_name>apartments".</city_name></brand_name> There current architecture displays their URLs like: http://www.<client_apartments>.com/index.php?mainLevelCurrent=communities&communityID=28&secLevelCurrent=overview</client_apartments> http://www.<client_apartments>.com/index.php?mainLevelCurrent=communities&communityID=28&secLevelCurrent=floorplans&floorPlanID=121</client_apartments> I know it is said to never change the URL structure but what about this site? I see this URL structure being bad for SEO, bad for users, and basically forces us to keep the current architecture. They don't have many links built to their community pages so will creating a new URL structure and doing 301 redirects to the new URLs drastically drop rankings? Is this something that we should bite the bullet on now for future rankings, traffic, and a better architecture?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JaredDetroit0 -
URL for New Product
Hi, We run an established website (mindflash.com) selling online training software. We are getting ready to launch a new section of the site where our users can sell their own online training programs. This will be branded as the 'marketplace'. This section will have a main page, category pages, tag pages, search and individual course pages. In our URL structure, I'd love to target the word 'training courses' but I don't want to neglect the product brand either. Is it better to use /training-courses in the marketplace urls or to use /marketplace? Or is it better to use both like /marketplace-training-courses or /marketplace/training-courses? Option 1: Example main section page: mindflash.com/training-courses Example category page: mindflash.com/training-courses/software-training Option 2: Example main section page: mindflash.com/marketplace Example category page: mindflash.com/marketplace/software-training Option 3: Example main section page: mindflash.com/marketplace-training-courses Example category page: mindflash.com/marketplace-training-courses/software-training Option 4: Example main section page: mindflash.com/marketplace/training-courses Example category page: mindflash.com/marketplace/training-courses/software-training Which option is better and why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mindflash0 -
URL Parking and Frame Forwarding..
I have a few URLs... Is there any benefit for me to frame forward these empty domains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IoanSaid0