Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Why not just use an alias if the only change is a different domain Name?
-
We are rebranding our store with a new name. We have purchased a NewDomainName. Can I just make the "Old Domain Name" an alias for the "NewDomainName"?
The site will not change in any other way than having a new logo. This is an e-commerce site with over 100 categories of artisan made products. So once we move the site, the old domain will be empty.
Thank you
Stephen
-
Hey Stephen,
It depends how your host treats the folders (or URLs) under the main domain when an alias is put in place.
If your host has a system that's smart enough to switch out your old domain for your new domain domain (i.e. all variations of olddomain.com/category/product-5 redirect cleanly to newdomain.com/category/product-5) then you should be in good shape.
My experience with generic hosting companies been that this often isn't the case.
Since you're running an ecomm site and problems translate directly to lost revenue, I'd suggest registering two dummy domains, setting up a test site, and then testing how your host's alias system actually works. Even if that takes 5-10 hours of work, it's probably worth it.
I like the following tools for testing redirects and site crawls:
https://htaccess.madewithlove.be/ for testing htaccess rules individually.
https://www.telerik.com/fiddler for understanding how redirects are working.
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html for crawling an entire site to check for errors.
Hope this helps!
-
I checked with my hosting support and they confirmed the alias is a 301. So I don't need to do anything. redirect-wise.
After the new site is in place. is it worth it to re-work our old .htaccess file so it points to the new site?
Stephen
-
It depends what you mean by 'alias'. If you means configuring the old domain to properly 301 redirect all URLs from the old site to the new site (so the old site becomes inaccessible, due to serving as a redirect platform) then yes. If you mean doing something else, like pointing the old domain to your new site - other than by 301 redirects, it's probably not a good idea for SEO!
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
-
Changed the trailing slashes - how it effect SEO?
Hi, I'm doing a project called https://www.machinerygate.com/ Due to trailing slashes issues, our developer requests to remove the trailing slashes from the URLs. However, the homepage with and without trailing slashes the same effect right. How about the inner pages affect SEO. Because we just started to do SEO and not even one single link of Inner pages done with the process. However, for example, the URL for https://www.machinerygate.com/machinery/cranes/ is before with trailing slashes and it is on google indexed with trailing slashes. Due to some bug, google inspection tool has been not functioning nowadays and I'm finding hard to index the new URL without trailing slashes https://www.machinerygate.com/machinery/cranes to index on Google. If this gets indexed, how the URL with trailing slashes will be, does it automatically redirect to URL without trailing slashes or not? Please share your thought about this concern.
Branding | | Navya1241 -
When Company names confuse search
I am currently perplexed over a client's search results. They are an established company and well known in their field. (Unfortunately, I am not comfortable providing a link or their name.) The company is a consulting firm and let's assume it is an accounting firm, which it is not. When you search on BSC Accounting the results give them the first result but the next 18 results are around education - BSc Accounting. Consider the DA on the site is 34 and the PA for homepage is 39. Is there a chance that when someone is searching on accounting firms that having the BSC in the name skews what they are able to rank for? Forget about searches for their exact name, I am more interested in thoughts as to how the BSC effects general searches for their specialties.
Branding | | RobertFisher1 -
Rebranding/Url Structure Change
Hi Everyone, First off thanks for taking the time to looking at my question. I was wondering about rebranding and URL structure changes. Right now my company is planning on changing their domain and doing a massive change to their site which includes a url structure change. The idea is in September they will be changing the site to be a combination of wordpress and ruby on rails (currently the site is ruby on rails). The homepage and design on the site will be completely different and parts of the site will be in php and other parts will be in ruby. The URL structure will also be changing completely at the same time. Each page will be completely different in structure, including the homepage (currently now it redirects you to a subfolder page that is your local page [i.e. nyc if you are in new york]). Then, the following month, they will be changing their domain name to a different domain. I have asked them to do this in stages. First the domain, second the rebrand, and third the URL restructuring or we could lose SEO traffic but they asked a freelancer his opinion and the freelancer said that you could do the rebrand change with the URL restructure and then domain later and while you're SEO may disappear, it'll definitely return in 3 to 4 months. Could you tell me who is right and what the correct method is to make this change?
Branding | | MattJD0 -
Wikipedia and Domain Authority?
Hi there, my company is an online publisher of Theater news and reviews. We also sell theater tickets. We presently don't have a Wikipedia page. Would creating one generally help our search rankings?
Branding | | TheaterMania0 -
Big Problems Using &'s in Business Name?
One of my clients is a law firm with a Business name like the following:
Branding | | gbkevin
Rosenberg & Dalgren, LLP They get A TON of organic search traffic on their brand name above, but most people (95%) search "Rosenberg and Dalgren" instead of "Rosenberg & Dalgren". **Notice use of ampersand being used and alternatively, the word "and" being used. ** Currently, their local citations across the Internet (G+, YP, Yelp, etc) use the business name, "Rosenberg & Dalgren, LLP" (with ampersand). Here is the dilemma we are in... When someone searches "Rosenberg and Dalgren" in Google (which the majority of our search traffic does), Google does NOT show our local one-box on the right hand side of the SERPs (see example of a one-box I am referring to here http://blumenthals.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Screen-Shot-2013-09-28-at-9.59.58-AM.png). But when someone searches "Rosenberg & Dalgren" in Google, it does trigger our local one-box with photos, review ratings, links to our Google+ Local page, etc. WHICH IS GREAT! They have AWESOME reviews that command powerful social proof. We want that local one-box to show up! So my question is, what can I do to trigger that local one-box for both brand name searches for "Rosenberg & Dalgren" as well as "Rosenberg and Dalgren"? I am considering changing our NAP citations to have the business name be "Rosenberg and Dalgren" since that is what 95% of people search in Google to find them. I am guessing Google doesn't quite understand that "Rosenberg and Dalgren" is linked to "Rosenberg & Dalgren" via what it sees in the knowledge graph of the Internet (citations, website, etc). So how best should I handle this and get that local one-box triggering for the majority of our branded search traffic? Lastly, what is the best advice for including company/corporate designations in the NAP citations? (ie. LLP, LLC, Inc, etc) Thank you for any help and guidance! We appreciate it!0 -
1 Website, 2 Business Names, 2 Locations
I took on a dentist office as an SEO client. They have 1 website, 2 business names and 2 locations. Each location has it's own business name. They are both within the same city as well. I'm not exactly sure where to start with them since they have 2 different business names. If it were 1 name with multiple locations I would just create a Contact Us page for each one, but is that the best thing to do when the location names are different? Should I create a different website for each location or is that smart because then they are competing against each other? Any help from the community on the direction I should take would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Branding | | SilhouetteBS0 -
Changing My Home Page Focus Keyword
Hello, We recently launched a new home page design on our company website, but we still have the same focus keyword in the title, H1, and in parts of the page copy. However, this focus keyword no longer represents our entire brand. We want to change the focus keyword and have done some research on the keyword difficulty and local searches in Google, but are still uncertain on the potential effects. Let me explain our situation more in depth. Instabill provides business owners with merchant accounts and other services. Our current focus keyword is offshore merchant accounts. However, over the past three months, we have been helping businesses establish US merchant accounts (retail, mobile, and online--but retail and mobile to US only while online to merchants everywhere) and intend to continue to increase our US merchant base. We are also still able to provide offshore merchant accounts. Our fear is that when a US merchant comes to our website (http://www.instabill.com), they will see Offshore Merchant Accounts in big H1 letters and leave our site since they want a local US merchant account. However, we still want to make sure our international merchants know we can still work with them. Thus said, we would like to change our focus keyword to something more broad, but still descriptive of our brand: merchant services. To elaborate, we want our H1 heading to read Merchant Services for Retail and Online Businesses. Merchant services is more descriptive since we provide more than just merchant accounts. We also provide the payment gateway, free shopping cart modules, help registering businesses, help obtaining an SSL certificate, and a discounted PCI Certification Service through McAfee. We have more than one page on our website that ranks for the term online merchant accounts, but none that rank for merchant services. However, we are willing to put in the work to ensure we optimize our website properly and put in the effort to make the change successful. Merchant services is also a keyword we would like to optimize on our website, so making the change on the home page will only help the steps in the process. Statistics:
Branding | | Instabill
Offshore Merchant Accounts has a 35% difficulty level and we consistently rank for SERPs #1 and #2. This term, according to the Google Keyword Tool, only receives 70 monthly searches in the US, 50 in the UK, 10 in Canada, and 10 in Australia. These are the four countries of most importance to our website. Merchant Services has a 57% difficulty level and we do not rank for it in Google at all since we have never tried to optimize for this term in the past. Also according to the Google Keyword Tool, this term receives 14,800 monthly searches in the US, 1,600 in the UK, 590 in Canada, and 260 in Australia. Clearly, merchant services could potentially get us much more traffic than offshore merchant accounts if transitioned correctly. I suppose my bottom line question is this: Would it be a bad idea to change my primary focus keyword on my home page? What type of results should I expect to see if searching Google for my company name? Thank you for all of your help. Meghan
Senior Copywriter of Instabill0 -
Using Alt Text in stock photography good?
Hello, I got a client who told me that he bought his images from a stock photography website. I know it looks awful and all, but the client can't afford a photographer to get some decent pics. So, How positive it is to use Alt Text on images that aren't yours? The purpose of using alt text properly is to get traffic from an imaged based search right? So if the business shows up with some stock photography it looks kinda bad. Is it worth optimizing images in this case? Or just leave em without optimizing? Changing pics isn't an option. Thanks
Branding | | Eblan0