Optimal redirect configuration from a misspelled domain that we own.
-
We have a handful of inbound links to www.t-chek.com (note the hyphen). Our normal site is www.tchek.com (no hyphen).
We own both domains and have some sort of domain-wide redirect set up now. This works fine for traffic, but I suspect it's not optimal for SEO purposes. I came to this conclusion by looking in OSE and noticing that none of the inbound links to www.t-chek.com were also being attributed to www.tchek.com.
2 questions:
Is it immediately evident what type of redirect I have in place now, or do I need to figure that out?
Is the fix as simple as editing the .htaccess file on the hyphenated domain?
I don't have direct control over the hyphenated domain, and I'd like to be able to know exactly what we need to do so I can request help from my IT department.
I'd appreciate hearing your wisdom. Thanks!
-
Thanks for the responses. I'll try to get a hold of the htaccess file and setup a 301 redirect. Thanks again!
-
Strange. I can't tell what you are doing as a redirect. Usually firebug in Firefox gives that information. I would have your tech person make sure that you have a 301 redirect to your main domain if you don't already.
-
You can see what kind of re-direct you have set up by looking at the .htacess file.
A 301 redirect from t-chek.com to thchek.com would be your best bet, it will pass through the link juice from links pointing to t-chek.com
You would need to edit the htaccess file for t-chek.com
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
-
Site redesign - 301 Redirects
I've just overhauled a website, leaving lots of former posts in the dust. I've set up a 404 redirect to the home page so that if anyone goes to one of those old pages they land on the home page instead of a dead 404. But, there's a couple urls from the old site I'd prefer to redirect to similar pages. These urls have forward slashes and I don't know how to get the slashes in when I copy it over to the new site. This is probably something easy, but I'm baffled. This www.lawbarron.com/personal-injury/whip-its-nitrous-oxide/ becomes this when I copy it www.lawbarron.com/personal-injury-whip-its-nitrous-oxide Can someone help me out?
Web Design | | julie-getonthemap0 -
Any second opinions as to why our organic search website traffic hasn't recovered from website rebrand (domain change, website redesign)?
I am hoping to see if anyone in the Moz community would be able to help troubleshoot or lend any advice on a major organic search traffic issue we've been experiencing over the last 8 months. In a nutshell, we decided our ~4.5-year-old business needed to undergo a rebrand in October 2015. After changing domains & redesigning our website (more below), our search-driven sessions have dropped 20% in 2016 v.s. 2015. We made quite a few on-site modifications (with some success) post-redesign but are still deep in a rut and not sure what more we can do to recover. I've listed my theories below as to why we're still suffering this hit. If anyone could weigh in on these and/or share any other troubleshooting ideas, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it (and owe you a lunch/beverage of your choice the next time I'm in your city!). ****Backlinks - despite our efforts to 301 all links, I sense we have lost many backlinks. According to Open Site Explorer, our old domain has 1,172 backlinks (some from some very authoritative pages domains), 1,068 of which are passing link equity. In contrast, our new domain has 367 backlinks, 321 are passing link equity, and very few overlap with our old domain. Domain Age - we may have lost much of our reputation with Google as our new domain is much younger than our old domain (1-year-old v.s. 5.5 years old). Domain Name - although I thought to have common keywords in one's domain was a myth, I am now questioning that belief. Our old domain contained a popular, topical keyword and our new domain is derived from a term that is topical, but very uncommon. New URLs - our developer has insisted all links were moved to the new domain, but I have a hunch they were not. When conducting a "site search" (i.e. "site:websitename.com"), the new domain returns 7,740 results. Prior to our switch, a site search with the old domain yielded 30,000+ results. 404s - we found and fixed 100-200 404'd links after the domain switch. We still see a few pop-up today and I'm wondering if this is a red flag in Google's eyes. For a little more background too, here are the nitty gritty details with a rough timeline: Pre-October 12, 2015 - registered new domain and designed the new website on Wordpress, while researching a range of articles and resources for a successful site migration (e.g. this and this Moz guide). October 12, 2015 - flipped the switch on the website design, domain, minor content reorganization, and social handles. We announced the change to our audience via an article, newsletter, and social; informed Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) of the new address, 301'd all links from the old to the new domain, and submitted new sitemap in GWT. October 12 - 16, 2015 - traffic is normal, everything seems to be okay. October 17, 2015 - search traffic drops by 54% v.s. the same day of week pre-rebrand. October 26, 2015 - search traffic rises, so now only down by 30% v.s. the same day of week pre-rebrand. November/December 2015 - re-added numerous elements from the old website such as category, tag, and page pagination and a few sidebar modules that linked to other important pages and tags. Search traffic rises slightly in November (down 27% year-on-year), dips again in December (down 31% year-on-year). January 2016 - today (June 17, 2016) - we published more content on a daily basis and search traffic fluctuates around the 20% versus the same period in 2015. January 2016 - down 23% year-on-year February 2016 - down 17% year-on-year March 2016 - down 20% year-on-year April 2016 - down 21% year-on-year May 2016 - down 21% year-on-year June 2016 (until the 17th) - down 23% year-on-year Thank you all in advance for your time and help, please let me know if you have any questions!
Web Design | | nick490 -
Multi region stores, one domain
hi all Wondering if I could get some options on the pros and cons of using one domain for two stores targeting different regions. My website is a fashion retailer, targted at the female market. In addition to the stores the site has a number of blogs, articles etc on. At present we have a co.uk domain and a .com which targets the US market. The trouble with this split approach is having seo two sites at once, in addition to adding content to two sites etc. we are considering combining the stores into one domain and the having the U.S. Shop at /us and UK store at /UK - in wmt we will specifiy the directories as targeted to a specific location, the hotel language etc will be showing UK and U.S. English to further help geo targeting. we are thinking that, in theory, managing just one site will mean it's easier to build the authority and brand name. Pretty much all of the blog and article content is non region specific so it is relevant to both markets, it will also reduce the need to generate unique content for two sites at once. Is there any major downside to merging the sites like this. At present the UK site is da 4 and U.S. site da 0 - they are both pretty new and one of the problems we have at the moment is building up two sites at once. i welcome any opinions. thanks. Carl
Web Design | | WonkyDog0 -
Trying to rank on top 3 in Google.co.uk for a moderate competitive keyword by having a .dk domain
Do you think I should switch my domain to a .com and use ccTLDs method for my other international domains ? The problem is that my .dk domain(norwell.dk) has a better SEO ranking that my .com domain (norwelloutdoorfitness.com) and also differs slightly in name. The primary keyword I want to rank is ' outdoor fitness' which is in the name of 'norwelloutdoorfitness.com', thus over the long-term providing better benefits. Let me know what you think. Thanks, Andrei
Web Design | | kkk92330 -
Internal links, new pages & Domain Authority
I have two questions regarding Domain Authority: 1. Is it possible that a drop in Domain Authority may have been caused by adding a blog and blog posts? In other words, would adding pages/posts dilute the site's authority? And will it catch back up with itself or will that require inbound links to those new pages? (oops! that was 3 questions in one) 2. Would it be detrimental to have internal links coming from blog posts without authority to my Home page and could that have contributed to a drop in Domain Authority? Thanks!
Web Design | | gfiedel0 -
Redirect From .aspx to .html if already indexed - Website Redesign
Hi Guys I would like to know if somebody could possibly shed some light on this for me. We are in the process of re-designing our site, but we are keeping all of our content in terms of site structure, internal linking etc. the same. Now we were wondering if it would be a SEO best practice for us to change our pages' extension from .aspx to .html and just put a re-direct from the aspx to the html pages. Or should we keep everything as is, and maybe just revise our on-page seo efforts as well as do some more link-building. I just have to note that we are currently ranking very well for top positions and obviously all these pages are already nicely indexed. And then another question I have is with regards to our mobi site of this same website.Our dev team created it using Responsive Web Design, but they decided to implement techniques that show and hide content based on what device you are viewing it on. So when viewing it on your desktop, it will show content as per normal, but when viewing it on a mobile device it will hide this content and show the content formatted for that specific mobile device. So we are obviously sitting with a case of dup content here.Is this technique acceptable, or is there a workaround/different way of implementing this? Thanks In Advance Dave
Web Design | | DavidZA10 -
Redirecting Images
Hi, I'm wondering how important it is when relaunching a site on a new platform (switching to Drupal) to serve up images from the same file paths in order to ensure consistency during the changeover. I've tried to keep the questions straightforward so that this post can be useful to people in a similar situation in future: How much difference do the file paths make to SEO? Does Google care or even notice if the image file paths change? Is it worth forcing Drupal to mimic our old file paths for the sake of consistency with the old site in order to maintain rankings OR do we take the opportunity to redesign our file paths for better SEO? Any help would be much appreciated 🙂
Web Design | | Tinhat0 -
H1 tag optimization question
Hey folks, I've got a question about h1 coding. Our H1 tags are currently coded like this: [http://www.rapitup.com/mf-doom](<a href=)" class=" current">MF Doom Do you think this would be better? [http://www.rapitup.com/mf-doom](<a href=)" class=" current"> MF Doom My guess is that the second example would be better, and even if not better we know it's not worse. Thoughts? Thanks!
Web Design | | irvingw0