What are the repercussions of switching a domain?
-
We have recently switched the calgaryhomepros.com domain, which used to be a point2 site, to our current site, which is hosted by a Real Estate webpage hosting company called Redman. When we replaced the domain for the Redman site, the old point2 site stopped existing, and because the link structure didn’t line up perfectly to the new host, there were a bunch of 404 error pages which rank high-ish in the SERP. My question is, outside of manually redirecting the high ranking 404 pages to our current site, what can I do to improve my SEO in this situation? Is there anything else I should be doing, and is this hurting my SEO drastically?
-
Hi,
Launching a new website on your domain can be challenging, especially from an SEO perspective. There are a lot of things that need to be "ticked off" before you press the launch button. I understand that your new website is already live, so I'll adjust my recommendations below based on that to try and help:
- Ensure that Google Analytics and any other tracking codes from your old website have been copied across to the new site. You can use the wayback machine to check the code of your old website if you have lost any of these.
- Complete technical checks on things like:
a) www and non-www versions - do they redirect correctly?
b) Is there an XML sitemap in place? Has it been resubmitted in Google Search Console?
c) Is the new website mobile friendly?
d) Check page speed
e) Is the site launching on HTTPS? Are redirects setup correctly?
f) Are canonical tags in place?
g) Test web forms and ensure they work correctly
h) Check for any 404 errors in Google Search Console
i) Ensure NOINDEX and robots.txt block is removed on the new website
j) Request a recrawl in Google Search Console
k) Ensure any Goals in GA are reconfigured to work on the new site
l) Add an annotation in GA to mark the launch of the new site - Recreate any high ranking/high traffic pages from your old website. Open Google Analytics and select a date range for 2-3 months BEFORE your new website went live. Have a look at the top landing pages on your website. For pages that were generating a significant amount of organic traffic, ensure they are replicated as closely as possible on your new website (including meta tags).
- For other pages on the new website, ensure content and meta tags have been optimised. If this was done previously on your old website, you can copy across your previous meta tags and look at modifying your content.
- Using the same method in point 3, get a list of URLS from your old website and ensure they all 301 redirect to your new URL structures on a page level.
Hope this helps!
Thanks
Matt -
Hi liamvansteps,
Switching your domain is equivalent to moving your business from one physical location to another. If you don't tell people you've moved, they'll show up at the old address and not find you. Your SEO equity (like your mail) won't be forwarded.
You need to provide human and robotic site visitors with the equivalent of a "change of address" in the form of 301 redirects and updated sitemaps. And just like you'd probably want to tell your friends and best customers directly about the move (and not just rely on a change of address), you will want to update some accounts like social media, Moz (of course), Google My Business, and others.
What are the repercussions of not doing this? You'll lose credit for any accumulated link equity and domain reputation metrics gathered by search engines. You'll effectively be wiping the slate clean and starting over from scratch.
How do you switch domains and maintain the status quo?
Search the Moz site for phrases like "how to switch domains" and you'll find lots of helpful step-by-step information shared by others. I don't want to repeat any of that here.
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
-
Does Google prioritise local domains?
I'm in Australia targeting Australian traffic. I often see US domains in the Google SERPS and wonder if that indicates an opportunity for local (Australian) domains to rank?
Local Listings | | Lazeh0 -
Subdomains or separate domains for dealers?
We are setting up websites for our dealers. We are considering whether it is better to set them up as independent domains (i.e. www.dealer-state-brand.com) or as subdomains (dealer-state.brand.com) Any thoughts?
Local Listings | | bcmull0 -
Can we place a FB business page link instead of direct domain link in a Google My Business listing?
A client of ours asked if we could place link to their local Facebook page instead of a link to the direct domain in their Google My Business listing. Will Google allow this?
Local Listings | | RosemaryB0 -
We lost ranking for our domain what could be reason?
Hello, From last 5 months our domain ranking dropped down a lot, main keywords are also dropped, form 1st page to 6 or 7 .
Local Listings | | Sanjayth
can anyone help to fix this issue ? Any one can help for this query, Then Please reply. Thanx, in Advance, Falguni0 -
Changed domain from .co.uk to .uk and went down from 3->5 organically. Should I go back?
After around 3 days we showed up on Google for our main keyword and we were at 5th and this has not picked up since and on Local listings we went from 2->3. Other keywords are also affected. It's been around 10 days now. I've done all the right things: wildcard 301 redirect Google Webmaster Change of domain notification I've managed to update some of the old backlinks (we don't have that many overall, maybe 10-15) and I've managed to pick up one new moderate quality backlink. There are no indexing or crawling errors at the moment, and my site is well indexed (only about 12 pages) Possible issues: .co.uk domain is years old and .uk being only days old (although I purchased it for 10 years) there are also some slight difference in the WHOIS record Now I'm not invested in this new domain, it was just part of making us look more authoritative long-term. I'm happy to either ditch and switch back or hold for a bit longer based on your advice.
Local Listings | | LondonAli0 -
Local domains vs. subfolders?
I am in the process of rebranding a B2B website for a UK company that has been established on a .net address for ten years. The CMS is Wordpress. The company has previously had localised content on .net/de, .net/au extensions for various regions where they have offices (US, Oz, various Europe.) I am getting varied and at times conflicting feedback from the creative agency, inhouse digital staff, and IT about the best way to proceed with the new website and in particular its future local language versions. Question 1: If we change the .net website to a .com address, will 301 redirects safeguard our SEO real estate? Question 2: we own the .com extension and have been using it for some back office stuff. It was purchased because it was advised that the .net did not carry much credibility in the US, is this correct? Question 3: If we change the .net to the .com which is hosted in the US, will we wipe our search rankings on Google for the UK and non-US locations? I saw this post and wondered:
Local Listings | | LConnect
http://moz.com/community/q/uk-rankings-disappeared-after-us-website-launch Question 4: is hosting the regional site best done on a local domain (we own a bunch) or does that not really matter? Question 5: If we use a WP plug in and just use subfolders for translating and localising content (US, Germany, Australia), what is the best way of serving that content for local PR? Sorry about the many questions 🙂 Guni0 -
A friend has a question about buying and using a domain
My friend is starting a yoga site and needed advice about how to use the domains. BikramYogaSantaClarita.com and BikramSCV.com are the 2 domains. The DBA is Bikram Yoga Santa Clarita. This was her message to me: The person I spoke with at GoDaddy suggested using the DBA name as the website and on advertising and the shorter one for email addresses, as it’s easier to say and write down, and also have the shorter one point to the longer DBA one. What do you think? What are your thoughts?
Local Listings | | webgurucreative0 -
Question about domains with 2 or 3 hyphens
I have a client who has 3 domains in the following format: keywordkeywordkeywordkeyword.co.uk keyword-keyword-keyword.co.uk keyword-keyword-keyword-london.co.uk And needs advice on the best one to use. The client is leaning towards the one with 3 hyphens because it has more keywords but I am a bit worried about using it at the risk of it looking too spammy because of the hyphens. So my question is will 3 hyphens as in the above example cause anything negative in terms of SEO? We will not be doing any black-hat seo tactics but even so will 3 hyphens cause any problems or is it safer to go with just two hyphens? And secondly the client asked if Google can understand different words or is it better to have hyphens so Google can understand that there are different words?
Local Listings | | impliweb0