Domain name change
-
Here's the scenario... Client has two domain names:
- domain.com - targeting one country (Australia)
- otherdomain.com - targeting all other countries
Both have identical products, but different currencies (AU$ and US$).
The problem (as most of you will know) is that without using a sub-domain or country-code top-level domains, Google has no idea which domain should be served for which domain. Furthermore, because the root domain is different, Google doesn't see any connection between the two - other than the fact they have identical products!
My recommendation to the client is to change to:
Arguably, we could leave the second one alone. But I think it's better for the brand to use the same root domain for each.
Obviously this means both will need to be redirected. Since NONE of the pages within the sites will change, do we need to redirect every page, or just the root domain?
Any other risks or concerns we should know about?
-
Hi Logan,
I've read the MOZ guide but it doesn't answer one question and I cannot find an answer anywhere else...
Can hreflang tags be used to specify just ONE country (eg. "en-au"), or does it only work as an alternative to another language/region variation?
-
To target:
- Australia
- All other countries
I'm proposing to use a combination of ccTLDs along with hreflang tags.
The developer is also keen to use IP forcing as well - just to be sure!
Anybody spot any potential issues or conflicts here?
-
Thanks Roman.
The site is run on Shopify, so no access to htaccess file.
The devs were looking at forcing one site or the other based on IP address. That sounds fine to me, but how does it stop Google indexing and ranking the two domains (domain.com and otherdomain.com) side by side in the same SERPs?
-
Have you ever try with schema, could help you point "Other countries" by region, define currencies and so on
http://schema.org/regionsAllowed
http://schema.org/docs/search_results.html#q=currenciesIn your case I will check the regions/countries where the user are coming from and I put all my effores on the top 5
Example if we are talking about English
- USA
- CANADA
- UK
Another option is to force the redirect using some condition rule (regular expresions)
You have a webview-1 (Australia/ Australian Dolar)
You have a webview-2 (Rest of the wolrd/ American Dolar)So if the user is from Australia show the webview-1 and if not show the webview-1. I think you should consult with your dev team abut how to set up htaccess file.
-
Thanks Logan.
The 'all other countries' is the problem here. The client wants one domain for Australia, then another for 'all other countries'. The products are the same, the language is the same. the only difference is the currency.
And even though the Australian domain was specified in search console, it still appears alongside the other domain in Google searches for other countries.
-
You don't necessarily need to change domains to ccTLDs. There are a number of ways to help Google differentiate the location targets of 2 different sites. 2 of the simplest ways to do this are by specifying a country in Google Search Console and using hreflang tags. You will likely run into some issues by having a single domain targeting "all other countries".
If you haven't already, I highly recommend checking out Moz's guide to international SEO. This should provide you with all the methods for country targeting and from there you can determine what would work best for your situation.
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
-
How to Evaluate Original Domain Authority vs. Recent 'HTTPS' Duplicate for Potential Domain Migration?
Hello Everyone, So our site has used ‘http’ for the domain since the start. Everything has been set up for this structure and Google is only indexing these pages. Just recently a second version was created on ‘httpS’. We know having both up is the worst case scenario but now that both are up is it worth just switching over or would the original domain authority warrant just keeping it on ‘http’ and redirecting the ‘httpS’ version? Assuming speed and other elements wouldn’t be an issue and it's done correctly. Our thought was if we could do this quickly it would be easier to just redirect the ‘httpS’ version but was not sure if the Pros of ‘httpS’ would be worth the resources. Any help or insight would be appreciated. Please let us know if there are any further details we could provide that might help. Looking forward to hearing from all of you! Thank you in advance for the help. Best,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ben-R1 -
Putting my content under domain.com/content, or under related categories: domain.com/bikes/content ?
Hello This questions plays on what Joe Hall talked about during this years' MozCon: Rethinking Information Architecture for SEO and Content Marketing. My Case:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo
So.. we're working out guidelines and templates for a costumer (sporting goods store) on how to publish content (articles, videos, guides) on their category pages, product pages, and other pages. At this moment I have 2 choices:
1. Use a url-structure/information architecture where all the content is placed in one subfolder, for example domain.com/content. Although it's placed here, there's gonna be extensive internal linking from /content to the related category pages, so the content about bikes (even if it's placed under domain.com/bikes) will be just as visible on the pages related to bikes. 2. Place the content about bikes on a subdirectory under the bike category, **for example domain.com/bikes/content. ** The UX/interface for these two scenarios will be identical, but the directories/folder-hierarchy/url structure will be different. According to Joe Hall, the latter scenario will build up more topical authority and relevance towards the category/topic, and should be the overall most ideal setup. Any thoughts on which of the two solutions is the most ideal? PS: There is one critical caveat her: my costumer uses many url-slugs subdirectories for their categories, for example domain.com/activity/summer/bikes/, which means the content in the first scenario will be 4 steps away from the home page. Is this gonna be a problem? Looking forward to your thoughts 🙂 Sigurd, INEVO0 -
Changing Brand and Domain Name - SEO Impacts
Hi everyone I'm hoping a few of you can help me out... We're an online-one retailer and we're currently looking at rebranding.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | piazza
This is for commercial reasons: Our current name is difficult for customers to spell It's not wholly representative of what we now offer We want to push offline and social marketing to help increase or DA In a nutshell, our current name implies 'cheap' and we're moving more upmarket.
Our DA is only 10, and a re-brand will make our brand more marketable.
A stronger brand and DA will help us climb up the rankings quickly - last year we ranked no 1 for a relatively competitive term before dropping a few places. In terms of current traffic: 30% is via SEO (we have a low DA but rank ok for certain phrases) 70% is via adwords We had our website redesigned last year and it performs well.
The idea is to have a new brand logo and colours and move to a new domain.
We will keep all our existing products and content. Please could anyone let me know the implications of this move?
What are potential pitfalls, and what will we need to do to alert Google?
I have read about 301 redirects, would these be required? As always, any help is very much appreciated. Many thanks Abs0 -
Domain Change behind Drop in DA from 49 to 9?
Hi, We have recently gone through a domain change and thought we had done this by the book. We 301'd the old site extensively and optimized our new site as best we can. All done with the help of a leading agency. However our old site had a DA score of 49 and checking our new site's DA almost 3 months after the changes its scores 9! Furthermore with rankings 2-3wks after the change we saw small drops (1-3 positions), 3-10 weeks saw more gradual slides but remaining page 1 for most terms. Currently some core terms are slipping back to page 2. I have the below question on this and would like you to get your opinions and views. After a well planned domain change would its be expected that the DA score would remain in the same region or is a drop like this normal? Is the domain change the most likely cause of this drop or are there other factors that may cause this? What is the best approach for trouble shooting this situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO-SMB0 -
Should I change my permalink structure?
Hi guys, hope you've had a manageable working week. Just after some advice! What would you think to changing the permalink structure of an already established entertainment website so that the category and postdate also appears in the URL, i.e "2014-01-01/news/this-is-the-post"? I have done it before without thinking about all the crawl errors it would cause and quickly reverted everything. However, I am now eager to get listed in Google News (don't worry, this isn't the only reason to change the URL) and think it might help things overall. Thoughts? Worth the effort or a pointless exercise?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Whittie0 -
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 -
Duplicate Sub-domains Being Indexed
Hi all, I have this site that has a sub-domain that is meant to be a "support" for clients. Some sort of FAQ pages, if you will. A lot of them are dynamic URLs, hence, the title and most of the content are duplicated. Crawl Diagnostics found 52 duplicate content, 138 duplicate title and a lot other errors. My question is, what would be the best practice to fix this issue? Should I noindex and nofollow all of its subdomains? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EdwardDennis0 -
Does using a sub-domain lessen the effectiveness of your main domain?
For example a website without a blog and is a simple html site with no blogging capabilities. We go out to Blogger or Wordpress and set up the blog portion of the website using something like blog.yourdomain.com. Does this make a difference SEO wise? Is is more effective to be sure that you are using the main domain and not a sub-domain? I have heard both sides before but can't seem to find the concrete answer. Thanks for any advise out there.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | d25kart0