Domains and Domain Authority
-
Looking for some advice
I have a domain that has been registered since 1999 and currently hosts my website - the problem is that my business has moved in a different direction and my URL is no longer associated with my main product offering. For example in the past I was xyzgarden.com however now something like xyzhomedecor.com is much more appropriate.
How should I handle this so that I am not at a disadvantage for SEO.
thanks!
-
I think Emily is on the right track here. You'll want to 301 redirect to pages that are similar in content. Your top level page on flowers from the old site should redirect to the top level page for flowers on the new site for example. It's more time consuming to implement one to one redirects this way rather than forwarding the entire domain to the homepage, but it will keep your referral traffic intact and Google is more likely to pass on the equity you've built over the years.
-
Hi Emily,
Thanks for the reply. Basically, we went from being a garden centre to expanding into other areas. Like clothing and home decor. Because the garden market in my city is not like it used to be, we knew we needed to change our product offerings to keep thriving. So while, we still sell flowers and potted plants, we know it's not our "money maker" and not where we want to focus our SEO efforts.
-
Hello,
In most cases I would simply recommend a 301 redirect map to update your domain, if you're sticking with the same host. There are some safety steps here, like doing them gradually, starting with pages that have lower traffic,etc.. (here's a youtube video from Matt Cutts on how to change your domain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wATxftE8ooE)
However, you mentioned that your product offerings are different -- the question here is _how different _? You could do the redirect, but if Google now notices that your main content and site objective are entirely different than it used to be, than it is essentially a new site and you may not have those rankings carried over. If it's simply that your content and products are the same or similar, but you would like your domain name to better represent your site, then go ahead and implement the redirect, just make sure that you have your site claimed and verified in search console first and watch that video from google on the topic.
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
-
SEO issues with masking blog domain?
We have a client who would like to move their Wordpress blog into a different server from their main site's server for security reasons. However, the blog is almost 10 years old with good traffic and rankings and we'd rather not have them change the domain. The developer has come back with a URL "masking" rule in .htaccess that will display the contents of the blog placed in the new server under a subdomain but still show the blog's original URL. If we block the new subdomain from indexing to avoid duplicate content - are there any SEO implications for doing this? Will Google see it as a deceptive practice and tank the blog's rankings? Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roundabout0 -
Realistic expectations to increase domain authority
A) what is a realistic timeline to increase a websites domain authority by 20 points? B) what are the most important factors to increase a websites domain authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebMarkets0 -
Domain Name Migation + HTTPS?
One of our clients is considering migrating their domain name _and _changing protocol (http to https), as well as changing hosting providers, at the same time. Is it fine to make the changes at the same time, or would you recommend 'phasing' the migration?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThreeShips1 -
Should I serve images from the same Top level domain as the current domain?
We run a multidomain e-commerce website that targets each country respectively: .be -> Belgium .co.uk -> United Kingdom etc... .com for all other countries We also serve our product images via a media subdomain eg. "media.ourdomain.be/image.jpg"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jef2220
This means that all TLD's contain the images of the .be media subdomain. Which is acually seen as an outbound link. We are considering to change this setup so that it serves the images from the same domain as the current TLD, which would make more sense: .be will serve images from media.ourdomain.be .co.uk -> media.ourdomain.co.uk etc.. My question is: Does google image search take the extension of the TLD into consideration? So that for example German users will be more likely to see an image that is served on a .de domain?0 -
XML Sitemap on another domain
Hi, We've rebuilt our website and created a better sitemap index structure. There's a good chance that we not be able to append the XML files to existing site for technical reasons (don't get me started). I'm reaching out because I'm wondering if can we place the XML files on another website or subdomain? I know this is not best practice and probably very grey but I'm looking for alternatives. If there answer is DON'T DO IT let me know too. Thx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WMCA0 -
301 redirects within same domain
If I 301 redirects all urls from http://domain.com/folder/keyword to http://domain.com/folder/keyword.htm Are new urls likely to keep most of link juicy from source url and maintain the rankings in SERP?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bull1350 -
How does authorship work for two authors?
How does Google's version of authorship work for 2 authors?: support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1408986 https://plus.google.com/authorship
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
New Site: Use Aged Domain Name or Buy New Domain Name?
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peterwhitewebdesign
I have the opportunity to build a new website and use a domain name that is older than 5 years or buy a new domain name. The aged domain name is a .net and includes a keyword.
The new domain would include the same keyword as well as the U.S. state abbreviation. Which one would you use and why? Thanks for your help!0