Website Domain Redirection- Rebranding Issues
-
I have a website domain redirection query
At the moment because of rebranding and domain changes I havehttp://www.physioinqnepean.com.au redirecting to http://www.nepeanphysiohydro.com.au/.http://www.nepeanphysiohydro.com.au/ is the primary domain because at the time I wanted to appease any SEO ramifications that might’ve occurred if I had the new domain at the time “http://www.physioinqnepean.com.au” as the primary domain.Unfortunately, my client now wants to rebrand AGAIN with the new website domain being “http://www.physioinqpenrith.com.au”.I wanted to gauge what would be the best SEO practice in relation to what domain should be the “Primary domain"?
-
Hello,
Early I have the same issue with this post: https://instamama.net/blog/how-to-change-instagram-name/ - previously I have 4 different versions of this page
https://
https://www.
http://
http://www.and all of this was detected by google as different URLs until I`m using the 301 redirect
So just use 301 redirects if you would like to set the primary website or page.
-
In the event that the customer's webpage/brand is definitely not a notable family/high-road name, at that point I'd expect some reaction from Google regarding how far they will try to go for your customer's site. In the event that they have recently moved space and Google has gulped that, doing it again so rapidly may make Google disregard the new site somewhat regarding slither remittance. The explanation being, the customer ought to have made their psyche up which last area they needed to move to a whole lot sooner. Should Google's crawlers endure the weights of an (assumedly) little customer's uncertainty? I'm wagering that their response to that question, would be no.
-
What do you mean by "primary domain"? Are you talking Google Search Console or something else? I assume you are not using the other domains other than to redirect?
Let me know if the above is true. You can move to yet another domain, but it is advised against as EffectDigital said because everything has to be reindexed again. It's possible to do and they'll be fine in the future, but it is going to hurt for some time.
-
First of all, if this is all happening in very quick succession I'd put across to the client that the consequences of such regular major disruption could be a significant loss of rankings. They obviously have to accept the potential consequences before forging ahead. Some rankings can be lost even with a perfect migration project which has a perfect 301 redirect implementation
301 redirects can translate up to 100% of your SEO authority from one place to another, but they won't always. If there are too many links to redirects that can make them slightly less effective. If redirects begin to chain (redirects to redirects) or if the wrong type of redirect is used, that can drastically affect the transfer and you could see as little as 0% of the prior SEO equity on your new domain
Another thing, if content is relatively different (in machine terms, think Boolean string similarity comparison - NOT "oh yeah as a person it looks similar to me") on the old and new pages, that can directly obstruct 301 redirect SEO authority transfer. Google has chosen to rank X page, if you replace it with Y content then it becomes a risk to Google. If content is mostly new, it mostly has to prove itself again (and redirects become largely nullified). To some extent you can get around this by performing backlink amendments
In your particular situation, it seems likely that left to their own devices, developers would just chain the redirects from the oldest domain, through the more recent domain to the final destination of the new domain. Do not let that happen, do check up on implementation ASAP. Do use the change of address tool in Google Search Console
If the client's site / brand isn't a well-known household / high-street name, then I'd expect some backlash from Google in terms of how far they will bother to go for your client's website. If they have just moved domain and Google has swallowed that, doing it again so quickly might cause Google to neglect the new site slightly in terms of crawl allowance. The reason being, the client should have made their mind up which final domain they wanted to move to much earlier. Should Google's crawlers suffer the burdens of an (assumedly) small client's indecision? I'm betting that their answer to that question, would be no
Be careful how much disruption you cause if you're in the small-fry boat. Google obviously don't like to encourage smaller, less valuable (from Google's perspective) ranking resources to disrupt their crawling schedules in such a disorganized manner. There could be consequences for such rapid movements
In terms of which domain should be the primary domain, I'd say that the domain which holds the highest SEO authority should be the primary domain. The domain with the best links pointing to it. Why? Because with that choice, the best links will be hitting the site directly instead of being pumped through 301 redirects (which may or may not transfer all SEO equity)
Let's look at all 3 domains now for you...
Old Domain: physioinqnepean.com.au
- Moz: https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer/overview?site=physioinqnepean.com.au&target=domain
- Domain Authority: 1
- Linking Domains: 0
- Inbound Links: 0
- Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/v2/subdomains/recent?target=physioinqnepean.com.au
- Domain Rating: 0
- Linking Domains: 0
- Inbound Links: 0
- Majestic SEO: https://majestic.com/reports/site-explorer?IndexDataSource=F&q=physioinqnepean.com.au&oq=physioinqnepean.com.au
- Trust Flow: 1
- Citation Flow: 4
- Linking Domains: 9
- Inbound Links: 2
Current (Newer) Domain: nepeanphysiohydro.com.au
- Moz: https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer/overview?site=nepeanphysiohydro.com.au&target=domain
- Domain Authority: 19
- Linking Domains: 63
- Inbound Links: 116
- Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/v2/subdomains/recent?target=nepeanphysiohydro.com.au
- Domain Rating: 0.7
- Linking Domains: 22
- Inbound Links: 142
- Majestic SEO: https://majestic.com/reports/site-explorer?folder=&q=nepeanphysiohydro.com.au&IndexDataSource=F
- Trust Flow: 8
- Citation Flow: 15
- Linking Domains: 28
- Inbound Links: 266
Future (Proposed)** Domain: physioinqpenrith.com.au**
- Moz: https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer/overview?site=physioinqpenrith.com.au&target=domain
- Domain Authority: 1
- Linking Domains: 0
- Inbound Links: 0
- Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/v2/subdomains/recent?target=physioinqpenrith.com.au
- Domain Rating: 0
- Linking Domains: 0
- Inbound Links: 0
- Majestic SEO: https://majestic.com/reports/site-explorer?folder=&q=physioinqpenrith.com.au&IndexDataSource=F
- Trust Flow: 0
- Citation Flow: 0
- Linking Domains: 0
- Inbound Links: 0
None of the domains are massively strong, but I'd say that the primary (active) domain (which the other domains redirect to) should be the current (Newer)** Domain: nepeanphysiohydro.com.au**
It has some kind of SEO authority. Not much, but a little. It's out of Google's sandbox (unlike the proposed new domain) and it has some rankings. If you could keep this as the main domain and redirect the client's idea for a new one, then you wouldn't actually have to move address - right? That would cut SERP disruption down to a minimum. That would mean you wouldn't have to pester Google again, with yet another migration request which could easily piss them off at this point
Just to be sure, let's check the estimated search traffic for all three domains using Ahrefs and SEMRush
Old Domain: physioinqnepean.com.au
- (Global) Ahrefs search traffic estimate chart (download) - no real performance
- (Global) Ahrefs estimated ranking keywords: 5
- (USA database) SEMRush search traffic estimate chart (download) - no real performance
- (USA database) SEMRush estimated ranking keywords: 2
Current (Newer)** Domain: nepeanphysiohydro.com.au**
- (Global) Ahrefs search traffic estimate chart (download) - some performance, surprisingly good
- (Global) Ahrefs estimated ranking keywords: 411
- (USA database) SEMRush search traffic estimate chart (download) - some performance
- (USA database) SEMRush estimated ranking keywords: 50
Future (Proposed)** Domain: physioinqpenrith.com.au**
- (Global) Ahrefs search traffic estimate chart (download) - no real performance
- (Global) Ahrefs estimated ranking keywords: 0
- (USA database) SEMRush search traffic estimate chart (download) - no real performance
- (USA database) SEMRush estimated ranking keywords: 0
This confirmed exactly what I said through link data. Estimated traffic data shows that, yes - you should stick with your current domain instead of moving anything around (bad idea!)
Hope that helps
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
-
Considering Switching Domain from .ca to .com for Service Area Business - What is the Risk / Reward?
Hello, Thank you to anyone who takes the time to share their thoughts on this. I will preface this by saying that I am very new to the community and have lots to learn, so please forgive any obvious errors on my part. That having been said am very happy to receive positive criticism and feedback 🙂 Quick Background: We are a high end mobile wellness business based in Toronto Canada offering in home/office servicing including: yoga, pilates, nutrition, meditation, chiropractors, etc... As we are expanding we are transitioning form new leads coming from business partners and word of mouth to driving new business online As such we have an new Squarespace site (which is the first site I ever built, so any feedback is welcome) and are venturing into social media, SEO, local citations etc... for the first time We have a significant content catalogue originally for client and instructor education that we are now repurposing for this new digital adventure but have not yet deployed While currently focused in Torotno, we have plans to expand to several other countries in the next two years. As the site is quite new and we have little content or incoming links I was thinking now is the time to switch to .com from .ca before we roll out Website: www.anahana.ca Risk Reward? & Other Issues? Both domains are currently verified with Squarespace, and it seems easy enough to switch. What could blow up by making this switch which I might not be aware of? Our emails and business card use the .ca, but I don't think this would matter too much 6-12 months out... is there something else I might be missing on this? .com and using subfolders or subdomains as opposed to country specific TLDs ? This is something I am still working on understanding, but from what I have learned thus far, if we are going to progressively roll out a large content library, is it not better from an SEO standpoint to have this all in one domain? Local SEO and legal considerations for TLDs when operating local Service Area Businesses. I am sure there are many other angles here that I am missing and am not really looking for any hard answer on much of this, but any general advice, suggested resources, and experienced insights would be extremely helpful. Thanks so much, cj
Local SEO | | CJ7770 -
Which domain extension would benefit my SEO the most? Old vs New .com or .shoes
Having a keyword in a top domain extension like .com could benefit your SEO. Well I think it was like that.
Local SEO | | KnowHowww
So if you would sell cars and you had cars.com it could benefit. But is there something to say about the new extensions like .shoes.
Do they have the same impact or are they just not old enough? A domain like cars.com is probably registered since the beginning of the Internet so it carries more weight. I'm curious to hear your opinion on the matter. Thank you in advance,
kind regards, Eelco0 -
Local SEO Website Structure.
Hi everyone, This might be quite a long post so please bear with me. I am currently rebuilding my website. My previous website was built by a web designer and was very basic. 5 page html site consisting of home, services, gallery, testimonials, contact pages. None of them were great - thin content, not optimised as well as could be - no h1's etc. To be fair I knew nothing about websites and didn't bother much with the site. As a new business I used it simply as a place for people to visit for more information after receiving a leaflet and never bothered much about driving traffic to the site. A few years down the line and I have realised I need the website to be working for me as opposed to alongside me. I am building it myself via wordpress as web designer didn't want to work in wordpress. I have done my keyword research and I'm working on pages as we speak. Previously my homepage - around 80% of visitors landed here for my main keyword (driveway cleaning glasgow) as it was number 6 in the organic listing. With my services page appearing directly underneath in 7 for the same keyword. I have starting building a new page for that keyword which contains (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) in the url. I have 301'd my previous services page to this url. Now for my questions...
Local SEO | | sfrediktru8
My 2nd keyword based on volume is driveway cleaning. How do I optimise for this or will the (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) page rank for this also as the words are contained within this page? I plan on having the same structure for the remaining services - pressure-washing-glasgow, monoblock-cleaning-glasgow etc, etc. As I am building new pages for each service with location built in, where does this leave my homepage? Should I be targeting keywords for this page? It is still my strongest page and apart from the (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) page which will get some help from the 301 these are all new pages so I would expect perhaps initially to lose some traffic. But as I am not ranking well for anything other than the main 2 keywords mentioned above it can only be beneficial long term when google recognises the specific pages for each service. And when I start using Adwords I will have a specific landing page for each service. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks0 -
302 redirection from .com to .in. Google is indexing both urls
Hello Fellow members, I am sharing the problem what I am facing from client which is another division of my company ( taking as a client). Please recommend me a full proof solution. My client runs a fashion e-commerce site by .com domain in India but after 2 years they took decision that in India, only .in domain site would run with INR prices & outside in "$" prices. Now when If someone is searching with .com domain in India site is 302 redirecting into the .in domain. In India only .in site is working & outside .com but Google is indexing pages of both sites. With .com domain 5 lakhs + pages are indexed & from .in domain only 2600 pages. Content of both sites almost 95% same. I already recommended to put rel=canonical tag on both sites but this is not the permanent solution. They have started .in domain to show prices in "$" & "INR" only. Can you recommend me the best possible answer to solve this issue.
Local SEO | | sourabhrana0 -
Should I change my domain/brand name?
Hello everyone, Thanks for stopping by to check out my problem and to help shed light on it for myself and hopefully others in a similar boat! As Ive gotten more into this process of SEO and my online business (with the great help of many community members here, many thanks everyone!) I have begun building a wordpress site in prep of canceling my squarespace site (Im a Kauai based wedding photographer) for more SEO value, faster page load time, and more data and plugins to the site. During this time however Ive noticed that my business www.balihaiphoto.com has a lot of confusion/search results and content I think may be leading potential clients in other directions, or even google down the wrong track of what my business is. The reason I suspect this is a restaurant that hosts a lot of weddings, and in turn, wedding photographers blogging about the location (the venue is called Bali Hai and its not located in Hawaii) as well as a reality group here and that Im getting occasional hits on my site for "Bali Wedding photographer" when I'd like to be known/indexed and ranked for "Kauai wedding photographer" and am working on a lot of long tail content to add to the site once its finished up. I feel like Im answering my own question slightly as I feel that I need to change the domain and name to something new, unique, and not attached to anything other than Kauai and Hawaii, but dont know exactly why that may be the best thing to do, or, if it even is the best thing to do? I greatly appreciate any help or elaboration as to why or why not a domain and brand name change would be helpful or not. Many thanks everyone and Aloha! -Jon Gibb
Local SEO | | Jon_Gibb0 -
How to find best local websites?
For example, I'd like to type in a zipcode and get the highest ranking websites by DA/whatever metric the software uses, within a 25 mile radius? Does that type of service exist? I'm looking to build up our local links, but most of the websites have extremely low authority. I'm trying to find some good ones without having to manually check each one. Thanks, Ruben
Local SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
How many websites in Google Serps
Let say you are an electrician. You have a website in Google Serps After much deliberation you realise that the current domain name is giving the wrong signals to your potential customers. So you decide to rebrand to a new domain name. The new domain will have fresh content (no duplication). Question
Local SEO | | Mark_Ch
Can you have both instances live in Google Serps and eventually retire the current website via a 301 redirect to the new domain. Thanks Mark0