Legal Client Wants to Change Domain Name... What's the best way to pass authority from old domain?
-
Hey Mozzers,
I received a call on Friday from a 6 attorney law office who have been my client for a long time. They have an established brand/domain in their market which isn't very big, but has a lot of competition.2 of the attorneys are leaving to start their own firm and they want to remove a letter from their name abbreviation, thus their domain name as well. So, the other partners want to change the domain to reflect this.
They want to buy a EMD [city]lawyers.com for about $1,600 along with some others to protect their new brand and name.
I have a good idea as to what I need to do, BUT would love to hear advice from the community for this type of drastic change. 301 redirects? New Google Analytics code or same just different profile? Webmasters verifications? Content from old site? Old domain forwarding or keep active for a little bit? Is not the time to get them an SSL?
Also, what should I prepare them for in terms of website traffic expectations and Google authority drops or remains the same? I know their Moz DA/PA will drop to 1/1, but anything else to look out for?
Thank you in advance!
Fellow Pro Member - Patrick -
Thank you, Patrick! I'll check all of these out and share all aspects with the clients so they know what potentially lies ahead in terms of rebranding and using a new, different domain name.
Really appreciate the article references too. - Patrick McCoy
-
Hi there
I gave an answer to a similar question recently in another Q+A thread with a bunch of resources. It's linked to in the answer, but Moz has a great migration guide that can help you properly prepare and migrate a website - you can read that resource here.
Let me know if this helps you - 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
-
Why is my website not ranking for it's brand name in SERPs but has been indexed by Google?
The website https://christchurch.crowneplaza.com has been live for a couple of months but is not being found in Google search results - even when searching for it's own brand name 'crowne plaza christchurch.' Google has indexed the site - but we are still not showing - https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fchristchurch.crowneplaza.com&rlz=1C1NHXL_enNZ735NZ735&oq=site%3A&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j69i58j69i59l2j69i65.896j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Any ideas as to why? I think it may be because their are two versions of the site, http and https, both with their own rel=canonical tags. Could this be the cause? Any help much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Timmy30 -
A client rebranded a few years ago and doesn't want to be associated with it's old brand name. He wishes not to appear when the old brand is searched in Google, is there something we can do?
The problem is there was redirection between the old branded site and the new one, and now when you type in the name of the old brand, the new one comes up. I have desperately tried to convince this client there is nothing we can do about it, dozens of news articles crop up with the two brands together as this was a hot topic a few years ago, but just in case I missed something I thought I'd ask the community of experts here on Moz. An example for this would be Tyco Healthcare that became covidien in 2007. When you type tyco healthcare, covidien crops up here and there. Any ideas? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Netsociety0 -
Nice Domain Authority but Not Ranking
Hi, A client of mine who owns a website reached out to me. He got penalized a while ago and has long since recovered (not sure exactly, but for sure a year). His domain authority is in the upper 30s but is still not ranking for many of his keywords that he ranked on the first page. I am not so familiar with the technical aspects of penalties and such, but is this a common scenario? Why is his domain authority great but his ranking downright awful? Does he have a chance if he builds great links, or is something else wrong that we can't figure out?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rachel_J0 -
What would be best way to transition from mobile website to responsive
We have a mobile website (mobile.website.com) that mirror our desktop site (www.website.com) with +100 000 pages. We have an alternate tag on our desktop to our mobile site and a user agent detect that redirect mobile traffic to our mobile site Our mobile site is no index and has a canonical to our desktop. Everything works pretty well, the mobile website is not index and only show up in SERP when a user make a search from a mobile. Our main website is now responsive and we would like to kill our mobile site without compromising our traffic. We know that a slight speed change or content change can affect our traffic, what would be the best way to do that? Big bang: redirect all mobile URL to desktop, remove user agent detect and remove alternate tag on desktop Semi Big bang: remove user agent detect and remove alternate tag on desktop and see how the traffic react before redirecting Progressive: remove the user agent detect and the alternate tag on some section of the website to see how the traffic react Other ? Anyone has any experience with that? Thanks and let me know if anything is not clear.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Digitics0 -
When migrating website platforms but keeping the domain name how best do we add the new site to google webmaster tools? Best redirect practices?
We are moving from BigCommerce to Shopify but maintaining our domain name and need to make sure that all links redirect to their corresponding links. We understand the nature of 301s and are fine with that, but when it comes to adding the site to google webmaster tools, not losing link juice and the change of address tool we are kind of lost. Any advice would be most welcome. Thank you so much in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WNL0 -
Best way to move a page without 301
I have a page that currently ranks high for its term. That page is going away for the main website users, meaning all internal site links pointing to that page are going away and point to a new page. Normally you would just do a 301 redirect to the new URL however the old URL will still need to remain as a landing page since we send paid media traffic to that URL. My question is what is the best way to deal with that? One thought was set up a canonical tag, however my understanding is that the pages need to be identical or very close to the same and the landing page will be light on content and different from the new main page. Not topically different but not identical copy or design, etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
Include Cross Domain Canonical URL's in Sitemap - Yes or No?
I have several sites that have cross domain canonical tags setup on similar pages. I am unsure if these pages that are canonicalized to a different domain should be included in the sitemap. My first thought is no, because I should only include pages in the sitemap that I want indexed. On the other hand, if I include ALL pages on my site in the sitemap, once Google gets to a page that has a cross domain canonical tag, I'm assuming it will just note that and determine if the canonicalized page is the better version. I have yet to see any errors in GWT about this. I have seen errors where I included a 301 redirect in my sitemap file. I suspect its ok, but to me, it seems that Google would rather not find these URL's in a sitemap, have to crawl them time and time again to determine if they are the best page, even though I'm indicating that this page has a similar page that I'd rather have indexed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WEB-IRS0 -
Understanding Google's keyword tool...
When I type in Google a keyword like : boot camp I get results that show Bootcamp (one word) traffic in the tens of thousands. I see many words combined. Does this mean that tens of thousands of people every month are misspelling that keyword? How should I interpret this in terms of anchor texting? I would hate to deliberately misspell it on my website just to get traffic. For those interested, my website is: http://ultimatebasictraining.com/admin/ (currently revaming my http://ultimatebasictraining.com website)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StreetwiseReports0