Legal Client Wants to Change Domain Name... What's the best way to pass authority from old domain?
-
Hey Mozzers,
I received a call on Friday from a 6 attorney law office who have been my client for a long time. They have an established brand/domain in their market which isn't very big, but has a lot of competition.2 of the attorneys are leaving to start their own firm and they want to remove a letter from their name abbreviation, thus their domain name as well. So, the other partners want to change the domain to reflect this.
They want to buy a EMD [city]lawyers.com for about $1,600 along with some others to protect their new brand and name.
I have a good idea as to what I need to do, BUT would love to hear advice from the community for this type of drastic change. 301 redirects? New Google Analytics code or same just different profile? Webmasters verifications? Content from old site? Old domain forwarding or keep active for a little bit? Is not the time to get them an SSL?
Also, what should I prepare them for in terms of website traffic expectations and Google authority drops or remains the same? I know their Moz DA/PA will drop to 1/1, but anything else to look out for?
Thank you in advance!
Fellow Pro Member - Patrick -
Thank you, Patrick! I'll check all of these out and share all aspects with the clients so they know what potentially lies ahead in terms of rebranding and using a new, different domain name.
Really appreciate the article references too. - Patrick McCoy
-
Hi there
I gave an answer to a similar question recently in another Q+A thread with a bunch of resources. It's linked to in the answer, but Moz has a great migration guide that can help you properly prepare and migrate a website - you can read that resource here.
Let me know if this helps you - good luck!
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
-
What will SEO be like in the 2020's?
Hey guys, I would love to hear your thoughts on how you think SEO will change in the 2020's. The 2010's saw some pretty cool stuff like Panda, Penguin, penalties for non-mobile-friendly, non-secure and slow loading sites. What will be more or less important for SEO's in the 2020's than today? How will machine learning and AI change SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GreenHatWeb0 -
Domain Change Before or After Site Revamp?
In the last year traffic to our site has dropped in half and ranking has dropped significantly. Very little no content has been added in that time. We would now like to improve ranking by adding new content. 2 domains effectively exist for the site. The existing domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. But www.metro-manhattan.com redirects to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Our company is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc.. We registered www.metro-manhattan.com and created the redirect to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com in 2012. www.nyc-officespace-leader.com was registered in 2006. Many links to the site show www.metro-manhattan.com and I believe this may be a source of confusion for Google. Would it be best to make the domain consistent at this time by redirecting it once and for all and to do so before adding new content? If this is done correctly can we avoid taking a hit on ranking? Note: -www.nyc-officespace-leader.com is the old domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
-www.metro-manhattan is the new domain but has existed since 2012 and has been redirecting to the old domain since then
-The company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space (similar in branding to the new domain) Am I correct in assuming that having the 2 domains may be causing issues with Google involving domain authority? Change the domain before adding content or add content before?0 -
What is the best way to find related forums in your industry?
Hi Guys, Just wondering what is the best way to find forums in your industry?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may2 -
Domain.com/old-url to domain.com/new-url
HI, I have to change old url`s to new one, for the same domain and all landing pages will be the same: domain.com/old-url I have to change to: domain.com/new-url All together more than 70.000 url. What is best way to do that? should I use 301st redirect? is it possible to do in code or how? what could you please suggest? Thank you, Edgars
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Edzjus3330 -
Site's disappearnce in web rankings
I'm currently doing some work on a website: http://www.abetterdriveway.com.au. Upon starting, I detected a lot of spammy links going to this website and sort to remove them before submitting a disavow report. A few months later, this site completely disappeared in the rankings, with all keywords suddenly not ranked. I realised that the test website (which was put up to view before the new site went live) was still up on another URL and Google was suddenly ranking that site instead. Hence, I ensured that test site was completely removed. 3 weeks later however, the site (www.abetterdriveway.com.au) still remains unranked for its keywords. Upon checking Web Master Tools, I cannot see anything that stands out. There is no manual action or crawling issues that I can detect. Would anyone know the reason for this persistent disappearance? Is it something I will just have to wait out until ranking results come back, or is there something I am missing? Help here would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavo0 -
We are moving one website to a different domain and would like to know what is the best way to do it without hurting SEO
The website we want to move, let's say www.olddomain.com has a low quality back links profile, in fact it received a manual notification from google of unnatural links detected; but the home page has a PR 3. We want to move it to a different domain let's say www.newdomain.com. We would like to know if it's better to do a 301 redirect to the new domain, in order to transfer the link juice or if it would be better to do a 302, taking into account that this redirect won't pass any link juice, so it would be like start from scratch with this new domain. Thanks for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DoitWiser0 -
Best way to remove duplicate content with categories?
I have duplicate content for all of the products I sell on my website due to categories and subcategories. Ex: http://www.shopgearinc.com/products/product/stockfeeder-af38.php http://www.shopgearinc.com/products/co-matic-power-feeders/stockfeeder-af38.php http://www.shopgearinc.com/products/co-matic-power-feeders/heavy-duty-feeders/stockfeeder-af38.php Above are 3 urls to the same title and content. I use a third party developer backend system so doing canonicalization seems difficult as I don't have full access. What is the best to get rid of this duplicate content. Can I do it through webmaster tools or should I pay the developer to do the canonicalization or a 301 redirect? Any suggestions? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kysizzle60 -
Changing my url name? Should I do it?
Hi, I am targeting a brand called Creative Recreation, who are a trainers brand. We currently rank ok-ish for certain terms for Creative Recreation Trainers, Footwear and Creative Recreation [INSERT STYLE NAME HERE]. Our main search term I think we would like to improve on is "creative recreation trainers" as we are 6th for this. Our domain name points to the brands page as designerboutique-online.com/all-clothing/creative-recreation/ Now what I want to know is, would it be worthwhile or would it affect my current rank/index if I changed the end of that url to read /creative-recreation-trainers/ thus getting the keyword phrase in the url? Creative-Recreation is a hard one to crack as you have a lot of competition from the brands site etc.. Any ideas on this? Cheers Will
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YNWA0