New Global Company website launch question
-
Hi Community, a quick question and just some reassurance for me - We have been building a new website for a large company in the UK. Their previous website was badly made and they had franchisee websites all leading off from the main .com website all under separate sub domains on Wordpress multi site.
cityname1.companyname.com
cityname2.companyname.com
cityname3.companyname.comand so on...
My question is this - A few of their franchisee microsites on sub domains are currently ranking very well for their chosen search terms. The new companybrand.com website has a dedicated page for each franchisee city/areas and i'm concerned that there may be a loss in rankings if the subdomain of their old 'microsites' gets pointed to their new page (which has better quality content). ie;
city-location.companyname.com to be pointed to www.companyname.com/city-location
Can anyone see any potential hazards in this?
Thanks for any help
-
Hi SeoSheikh, did Dirk's or Dmitrii's responses help? If so, please mark one or both as a "Good Answer."
-
Several elements here:
1. Migrating from subdomain to main domain - Moz "official" line is that this should be beneficial (check Rand's WBF on this https://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday)
2. If you change your url's - 301's are still your best option. It's possible that it's not transferring all link equity - but it's still the best option you get. Watch out for redirect chains however. You might find this post interesting - also check the comments below: https://moz.com/blog/accidental-seo-tests-how-301-redirects-are-likely-impacting-your-brand. From personal experience - I have migrated several big sites to new platforms - completely changing the url structure and in most case you couldn't even notice the smallest glitch in Google Analytics. So it's not a given thing that your rankings/traffic will drop after redirects.
3. You mention that you also are doing a re-design - improving both design and content. This is the big unknown. Question is always if your carefully designed new pages are going to please your visitors. In the migrations cases where we had a drop of traffic this was very often related to the redesign - lower pageviews/visit, higher bounce rate - lower time on site. Few days after migration - traffic dropped (and it took indeed a few months to regain the original traffic/rankings)
4. Incoming links. I agree with Dmitrii: in an ideal world you should reach out to all the webmasters and they would kindly update the old links to the new ones. Realty is that some of them heard some SEO stories that outgoing links to other sites could get you punished by Google - and that it's always better to put non follow links or remove all the links to commercial parties. I fear that the risk of losing links here is bigger that gain.
Hope this helps.
Dirk
-
Hi there.
There is always some drop in rankings when you redirect anything. Usually this drop is temporary and, if these new pages you are talking about really have better quality content, rankings go up. What I'd look at is backlinks. If those subdomains have somewhat valuable backlink profile - here is where you would suffer the most. Even if you use 301 redirect, backlinks are still gonna be pointing to old subdomain, not new page. In perfect world you'd have to reach out to all linking webmasters and get links changed in their original placements.
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
-
Inputting Schema for Website When Using a Markup Generator
Hi Guys, I think this may be fairly straightforward but couldn't find an answer online. I wish to input Schema on a website and have generated the JSON-LD markups for a local business. 1. Do I just add this into the header and if so should it be at the start or end? 2. Do I just add to the homepage? 3. If I have multiple markups (Local Business, Website, etc.) do I put them all in one header Thanks! Jack
Local Listings | | Jack11660 -
GMB issues for international train company
Hi There I work for an international train company which operates in multiple locations across several European countries.
Local Listings | | coolhandluc
I have been asked to claim our Google my business profiles for each location so we can manage reviews, images etc.. The problem i have is that our physical location (ticket desk, check in area etc..) in each country is in a train station (obviously). We share the same address and postcode with the train stations ( i have personally phone them to make sure that was the case) My question is, can i claim our business in GMB using the same details as the train stations?
If i can, it is literally impossible for me to verify each profile through the use of coupon as I can't travel to each destination. I heard i could do bulk verification if we own more that 10 properties but I am not quite sure how to do all of it Any help on both these questions would be greatly appreciated0 -
How does Google Local Insights report impressions for multiple mappack listings (same company) showing up for one query?
I had a client ask me a difficult question about impression reporting via Google Local Insights. Lets say a client is a popular ice cream chain and somebody does a local brand search for "San Francisco Exotic Tasty Ice" and three locations for the same company all show up in the Google Local Pack. Does each one of these locations receive their own impression via Google Local Insights? Or does Google just count this as one impression for one location altogether? Logically speaking I would think that each location would get its own impression in the insights report. However I'm wondering if there is anything to negate that. Any feedback is appreciated.
Local Listings | | RosemaryB0 -
A question for a real citation building PRO (I am totally lost on this one) Thank you for ANY help!
Quick Q for your (local) SEO gurus. I have a client who has bought a number of local companies. (advertising, printing, graphic design, vehicle wraps) to compliment his screen printing, embroidery, etc business. ALL of these companies run out of the SAME address. What makes it even harder is he wants to continue operating them as separate companies. Fortunately, he is OK with using different phone numbers for each business but on the website (we are building for him) ALL the companies are represented like it is all one big happy company. How the H@#$ do I build citations for this business! 🙂 ??? THANK YOU FOR ANY SUGGESTIONS!! If I use the one 'parent' company building citations is a challenge bcs they do so MANY things in one location. If I try and build citations for 5 companies w the same address - that can't be a good idea either. If the plan is to eventually fold all these companies into the one parent company *(waiting to hear back on that) I would think the BEST advice would be to use the ONE phone number and address and just shoot for a general 'marketing' category. Thanks for any thoughts!! Matthew Saw Web Marketing Quick Q for your (local) SEO gurus smarter than myself. I have a client who has bought a number of local companies. (advertising, printing, graphic design, vehicle wraps) to compliment his screen printing, embroidery, etc business. ALL of these companies run out of the SAME address. What makes it even harder is he wants to continue operating them as separate companies. Fortunately, he is OK with using different phone numbers for each business but on the website (we are building for him) ALL the companies are represented like it is all one big happy company. How the H@#$ do I build citations for this business! 🙂 ??? THANK YOU FOR ANY SUGGESTIONS!! If I use the one 'parent' company building citations is a challenge bcs they do so MANY things in one location. If I try and build citations for 5 companies w the same address - that can't be a good idea either.
Local Listings | | Mrupp440 -
Adding new business location. Google My Businesses vs. Google Map Maker
Hi everybody, Adding new business location. Is it better for local visibility to add it via Google My Businesses dashboard directly or via Google Map Maker first (and then claim it in My Businesses dashboard)? Thanks
Local Listings | | Ryan_V0 -
New knowledge graph box ?
Hi Mozzers, I made a search for "ways to unclog toilet" and found this at the top of the search result page: http://cl.ly/image/2e0N033D0B1j It seems that google is adding a new kind of knowledge graph. What it is this and how can I get my clients doing the same? Is it connected to Google Business? Thanks for letting me know!
Local Listings | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Combining Law websites to boost local results?
So we currently have 2 separate websites for the 2 areas of law we practice, Criminal Defense and Family. Currently our Criminal Defense website is the one affiliated with our google+ page and so it ranks well in local results, where as our Family website does not rank at all locally. Would it be best for our Family practice if we merged it with our Criminal site? We all work out of the same office and share address and phone number, so I don't believe we can associate the Family website with a google+ page, but I am wondering if each site would show up in Local results for their individual keywords if the criminal site and law site were both subdomains of a main Firm website.
Local Listings | | MyOwnSEO1 -
Show Address or Not, this is the question
Our physical address is not manned because we primarily go to the customer site either electronically or in person. So technically, we are not supposed to check the box in Google+ " I also serve customers at my business address." Having the box unchecked hides the address on the Google+ page leaving just City and State. Now that we have submitted our location in Moz Local, we see this causes an inconsistent listing issue. The address shows in other listings but not in Google+. On one hand, we do not want people showing up to our location expecting to find us there when we are not. On the other hand, we want our listings to be consistent so that customers can see that we are local and can deliver our services in person when necessary. So what should we do about this? p8A6ZW5 ReWtbOa
Local Listings | | BoundlessData0