When should you turn off redirects to your new domain?
-
Our website moved to a new domain a year ago, and we have our original domain to redirect to our new domain. We're working on contacting people who still link to our old domain to ask them to update, but 7% of our traffic is still coming as a redirect from our old domain.
My question is, when should we just shut the old domain down entirely and stop redirecting people to our new domain? Or should we just keep it up indefinitely? What would be the positive or negative impact on our new domain's SEO if we shut the old domain down?
Thanks!
-
We're working on it!
-
Are there any metrics you can use from the new site to help convince the higher-ups? Maybe your analytics can show that with the site redesign, people stay on the new site longer, that the bounce rate is lower, conversions are higher, or something you can use to show them that it would be better to have the pages on the new site format?
-
Very true!!
-
Yes and no. There are certain pages on the old domain that still exist, but very few, and we're trying to convince the higher-ups that we should move those pages into our new site. The majority of the old website, though, 301 redirects to our new domain.
-
So the old domain with the old content is still displayed, you're not just sending users to the appropriate page of the new domain with a 301?
-
Our old domain was a sprawling behemoth of a website (we completely redid our website when we changed domains), which is a big part of the reason why we're itching to take it down - not so much the cost issue. But you make a good point, thanks!
-
Keep the domain up there and redirected indefinitely, it's not hurting anything and can only help. And don't let the registration lapse, you don't want a competitor to pick up that old domain and do something with it.
-
Or you could just skip 2 latte's at Starbucks, then you don't have to sweat the 9 bucks to maintain it.
-
As the other responses have said, although it will cost you a yearly fee to keep the website up, (minimal), it is in your interest to keep it up to keep that 7% referring traffic. Check out Open Site Explorer to help you identify the websites that have not added your new link, and contact the webmasters to ask them to change it.
Depending on your target audience, if you turn off the redirects, there is a high chance they will be able to find you if they are looking for you. I guess it would depend on the sites content, and whether the traffic was brand related or search driven.
Aaron
-
Your best bet would be to keep it up. That way any link juice coming from websites linking to your old domain will still carry through to your new domain by using the redirect. Also, if you are still receiving visitors to your old domain, it would be a good idea to continue to keep the redirect alive, just to continue receiving those visits and all potential traffic that would come from the old domain.
I would say, if you stop seeing very much, if any, traffic coming from the redirect, you could do without it. However, if it's a concern over spending the money to renew the old domain, depending on how much it costs, it may or may not be worth it to you.
-
NEVER!
The only downside is the $9.95 you pay to keep the registration. The downside to turning it off are many. You lose the PR that is is passing, even if there is no traffic coming from that old domain it still passes PR! Keep it forever!
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
-
My homepage redirects to itself?
Hi there - I'm not a SEO so help would be appreciated! Moz is telling me we have a redirect loop but the URLs are the same. https://www.example.com/ to https://www.example.com/ Why is my homepage creating a redirect loop to itself? We use Wordpress and I do not have any redirects listed for our homepage. Could this have something to do with switching to https in April? Thanks, Katherine
Technical SEO | | kmmartin0 -
New Magento store, is better to place it in a new url or it can work fine in a subdomain?
Hi friends, We are working on a new Magento store for one of our websites. Our strategy is for organic positioning of the products, so we need to understand if the Magento products will position better if the system is hosted in a subdomain of the main company domain or if it is better to host it under its own domain. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | FWC_SEO0 -
Parked Domains
I have a client who has a somewhat odd situation for their domains. They've been really inconsistent with how they've used them over the years, which makes for a slightly sticky situation. The client has two domains: compname.com and fullcompanyname.com. Right now, their website is just HTML (no CMS) and all of the URLs are relative, so both domains work. Since the new website will be in WordPress, they need to commit to one domain as the primary. Right now, it looks like compname.com is the one they've used the most in ads and such, so I'm going to recommend they go with that. However, the client has also used fullcompanyname.com a lot. They don't want to have to setup individual 301 redirects for everything. I think it's ridiculous, but you can lead a horse to water... Our developer has done some research and he may have found a solution that will satisfy the client. I just want to find out if there are any SEO implications. The possible plan is to us compname.com as the primary domain and to park fullcompanyname.com. That way, if someone visits fullcompanyname.com/products/my-favorite-product, it will still work without having to setup 301 redirects. Since the domain is parked, Google won't recognize it as duplicate content, correct? Just to be clear on the whole situation, I'm insisting that all of the website URLs need 301 redirects, regardless of the domain. The primary concern is with a lot of other stuff on the server that isn't related to the site (email campaign landing pages, image files, assets that are pulled in by the client's software, etc.). The client's concern is about redirecting all that other stuff (and there is a lot of it--thousands of files). The parked domain would seem to fix that, but I want to make sure that the client won't get Google slapped.
Technical SEO | | BopDesign0 -
Keywords based domains redirecting to a site.. is it SPAM?
Keywords based domains redirecting to a site is considered spam isn't it ? And if yes, then is it considered spam in all cases whether those domain based sites are related or non related to main site?
Technical SEO | | Personnel_Concept0 -
Blog.domain.co.uk or domain.co.uk/blog
Hi Guys, I'm just wondering which offers more SEO value and which is easier to set up out of: blog.domain.co.uk domain.co.uk/blog Thanks, Dan
Technical SEO | | Sparkstone0 -
Keyword in Domain or not?
My on page optimization grade is an "A" with the following factors; Factor Overview <dl class="scoreboard clearfix"> <dt>Critical Factors</dt> <dd>4 / 4</dd> <dt>High Importance Factors</dt> <dd>7 / 7</dd> <dt>Moderate Importance Factors</dt> <dd>8 / 9</dd> <dt>Low Importance Factors</dt> <dd>11 / 11</dd> <dt>Optional Factors</dt> <dd>5 / 5</dd> </dl> The main thing I appear to be missing is keywords in my URL. How truly important is that in today's SEO world and how much time or ranking would be lost if I do not have control to change the external links to my website if I decided to migrate to a keyword relevant url?
Technical SEO | | classa0 -
Multiple redirects a problem?
When product is sold out I will 301 redirect to a category page if a similar product is not available, but now our web developer has changed all the url's of the category pages so I need to redirect them all to the new category pages but that means there are some products that are first being redirected to the no longer existent category and then being redirected again to the new category page. This seems like it might me be a problem having two 301 redirects so I wanted to find out for sure if it is. Unfortunately our system for redirecting pages is archaic so it will be difficult and time consuming to go back and redo all the redirects that are going to pages that no longer exist so I wanted to get some additional opinions before I do that.
Technical SEO | | KentH0 -
Https redirect
Hi there, a client of mine is asking me if Google would penalize to redirect from all the http urls to https (they want to change the security protocol). I assume it is going to work as a classic 301, right? so they might lose some authority in they way, but I am not 100% sure. Can anyone confirm this? does anyone has a similar experience? thanks a lot!
Technical SEO | | elisainteractive0