Migration to a new domain
-
Hi everyone,
So i have one project where I'm planning to move current content on new domain, two reasons:
1. It seems current domain has some google penalty (backlink related, not manual)
2. Client wants rebranding and already has domain with new brand name.
So as content is high quality and there is no content related penalty from google, what would be the best way to migrate existing content without passing any penalty AND without Google treating it as duplicate content. If i do 301 i suspect any penalty there is might follow, if i just copy existing content it won't be original content, what is the best solution here?
Thanks
-
Lil help here..
-
Hi, yes it's definitely penalty, website doesn't even rank first on domain name. About traffic it's already down to 1/3 of what it was so i don't think it would be a problem.
Sorry but i still don't get your answer fully: move how exactly? with redirects, just deindex on old domain and then move & index on new one or what? This is my main question here..
-
Let's understand your case
- It seems the current domain has some google penalty - Are you sure about it? Are you sure that is not a case of a backlink devaluation or site devaluation? or even an algorithm update? this point is very important because the steps to follow are completely different. So the first thing that you need to do is make an in deep research of your backlink profile and I'm not talking about a simple audit quick and bullshit audit. I'm talking to research your backlinks and the backlinks pointing to your backlinks ( Using every tool that you have available in my case I use Moz, Aherfs Majestic and Search Console)
- The client wants to rebrand and already has a domain with a new brand name. You need to make it clear to the client all the risks involved, the first one and most important is time involved to recover the traffic. You will see a lot of articles out there about it of how to do it in the right way. But most of them are complete bulls...t. At the end of the day is just a simple database (a huge database of course). So you need to keep in mind when you migrate a website from the Google perspective is a new thread on its database so at the beginning you will notice a low level of indexations (that is a completely normal process no matter what you saw or read on any post or article) and of course a low-level traffic
The best way to deal with the new domain is this one at least base on my experience,
- Make it gradually that means to divide the content into small pieces and start to move it.
- Build some new backlinks (even before the migration) to this new domain and also backlinks to your backlinks
- Also, add new content or update the old one
- Invest I on social signal to the new domain / new content
Hope these comments help you with your project
Regards
-
P.S. I thought deindexing current domain and then publishing content to new domain, but if parts of content was shared on different social media or just copied by someone, wouldn't it become the original after deindexing current domain?
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
-
Domain migration nightmare - what is wrong?
Domain migration nightmare - what is wrong? Domain migration nightmare - what is wrong?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PSOM1010 -
Migration developer question
Hi Guys, We are in the process of migrating our website and are moving to: AWS/Elastic Beanstalk hosting and the only way to do a custom domain with a third-party (not Amazon) DNS Service is by setting up a CNAME that points to the EBS Instance. Do you think this will impact SEO performance in any way? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cerednicenko0 -
How to build Domain Authority?
My site: https://www.fishingspots.com.au/ has started to drop Domain Authority in the past weeks, however less quality sites like http://silverstories.com.au/ are rising... I am not sure why? Is there someway I can understand why my site would suddenly start dropping authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thinkLukeSEO0 -
Preserve domain on 301 redirect?
We have a domain solely used for print advertising that does a 301 redirect to a landing page (a department home page) on our "real" domain that is indexed on Google. Example: www.bmwrepairs.com redirects to www.repairshop.com/bmwrepairs. Is there a way to do a 301 redirect so that when they get redirected, the URL in the browser address bar remains www.bmwrepairs.com?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jazee1 -
Change domain.com to www.domain.com - influence on linkbuilding, seo, etc.
Hello, Do you know what can happen when i change domain.com to www.domain.com? Will it have an influence to my link-building portfolio (external links to domain.com), position on google search, etc. Thank you for help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Reyzer0 -
Domain Authority
Hi I wanted to find out if anyone knew how to discover why DA may have dropped? Ours has gone from 26 to 25 - I know it's not much, but I wanted to find the reason. One thing which happened was our developer company wiped redirects, which did impact rankings - would this also have affected domain authority or do I need to review our backlinks again? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Why domain authority increase
Hi all Our domian authority has increased from 39 to 42 last week. We have been improving our metadata and removing bad backlinks recently. Is there any other reason or updates last week that would have resulted in this increase? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gavinr
Gavin0 -
Merging Domains... Sub-domains, Directories or Seperate Sites?
Hello! I am hoping you can help me decide the best path to take here... A little background: I'm moving to a new company that has three old domains (the oldest is 10 years old), which get a lot of traffic from their e-letters. Until recently they have not cared about SEO. So the websites have some structural, coding, URL and other issues. The sites are indexed, but have a problem getting crawled and/or indexed for new content - haven't delved into this yet but am certain I will be able to fix any of these issues. These three domains are PR4, PR4, PR5 and contain hundreds of unique articles. Here's the question... They want to move these three sites **to their main company site (PR4) and create sub domains for each one. ** I am wondering if this is a good idea or not. I have merged sites before (creating categories and/or directories) and the end result is that the ONE big site, is much for effective than TWO smaller, less authoritative sites. But the sub domain idea is something I am unsure about from an SEO perspective. Should we do this with sub domains? Or do you think we should keep the sites separate? How do Panda and Penguin play into this? Thanks in advance for the help! SD P.S. I'm not a huge advocate in using PR as a measurement tool, but since I can't reveal the actual domains, I figured I would list it as a reference point.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | essdee0