Domain redirection and seo implications
-
We have an existing site that is a subdomain but we recently acquired an exact match domain. Will building links to the exact match domain and having the domain point at our existing subdomain work or should we convert the entire site and redirect our existing subdomain to the new domain?
What I'm trying to figure out is how to maximize the benefit here and how the existing mass of links pointing to our existing subdomain (shop.domain.com) can be used.
New domain:
Existing URL:
-
If your existing subdomain is ranking and earning well, it is a risk to move that to a new domain, because not all authority/history/etc. is transferred and you have to be very careful about not changing anything else and still have to hope that all works out as expected.
Building links and authority to the new domain and then linking to the existing subdomain has basically no risk to your current business. Only problem is that you will have to create unique content and get new links, but at least there is no chance of hurting your existing rankings and the real possibility that after the 301 the subdomain is stronger.
But the above is short term thinking, for long term it could very well be wiser to bite the bullet and 301 the old to the new. But that all depends on what you want for the future.
***** Extra info: In the past 8 months I have acquired 10 EMD and 301'd old domains to those new EMD's. 5 websites gained ranking, 3 more or less stayed the same and 2 disappeared to 200+, from top 10. All this was done to websites 4 years old with stable rankings for 2 years and no SEO/link building done for 2 years.
So for me it really was what I felt the luck of the draw what happened with 301's. Later I found that it is not only luck, it also has to do with why the old website was ranking in the first place, content or links was most significant. This of course besides the fact that you should leave everything and I mean everything the same when 301'ing.
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
-
Disavow to all domains?
Hi there, I have several versions of my domain setup in Webmaster tools. Should I upload my disavow file against all of these domains? For example.....
Technical SEO | | niallfred
If I find a link pointing to: http://www.mydomain.com from: http://www.somespammysite.com do I need to add a disavow file in Webmaster tools for all my domain versions or only the version the offending links points towards? So... Only
http://www.mydomain.com
Or
http://www.mydomain.com
http://mydomain.com
https://www.mydomain.com
https://mydomain.com0 -
480,000 Redirects - Is this hurting my SEO? PLEASE HELP!
Hello everyone, I have over 480,000 internal rewrites in my Magento site. The reason I have so many is because I have over 1,500 products on my site and I update inventory every day via Bulk Import Extension. For the first few months I didn't realize that the URL was changing by a single digit every time I imported the .xml with new inventory counts. This of course created thousands and thousands of 404s. I figured out how to avoid the digit change and then I started redirecting the 404s via a Bulk Rewrite Extension. I managed to rewrite over over 50,000 404s but new ones still pop up every day and there is no end to them in sight. My traffic is terrible. Only about 40 organics daily. It's been like that for months. I can't get it off the ground and I think it's because of this excessive rewrite and 404 issue. My question is, does having so many internal rewrites and 404s hurt my SEO efforts? Would it be better just to start from scratch with a new site, new domain, new everything? Please help me. I'm going crazy with this. Thank you. Nico.
Technical SEO | | niconico1010 -
Domain Forwarding / Multiple Domain Names / or Rebuild Blogs on them
I am considering forwarding 3 very aged and valuable domain names to my main site. There were once over 100 blog posts on each blog and each one has a page authority of 45 and domain authority of 37. My question is should i put up three blogs on the domains and link them to my site or should i just forward the domains to my main site? Which will provide me with more value. I have the capability to have some one blog on them every day. However, i do not have access to any of the old blog posts. I guess i could scrape it of archive.org. Any advice would be appreciated. Scott
Technical SEO | | WindshieldGuy-2762210 -
Has any positive or negative effect for the SEO results if the domain contains desired keyword?
Helo! Has any positive or negative effect for the SEO results if the domain contains desired keyword? Thanks for the answer.
Technical SEO | | Brainsum0 -
Apache redirects
Hey all I'm handling some redirects and am fuzzy with Apache server stuff. I'm redirecting dynamic URLs and the only thing that's changing is the new domain. I have implemented this in the server file (thus far unsuccessfully): RewriteEngine on
Technical SEO | | jamesm5i
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.oldsite.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://www.newsite.com/$ [L,R=301] Any ideas on what I can change to make it work? For those who are more familiar I know I'm missing something simple. Thanks as always!0 -
Is buying a domain with a high PR and redirecting it to your site considered black hat?
I want to buy a domain that has clean backlinks and then redirect it to my new domain to bump up my PR. Is this considered a black hat technique? Thanks Carla
Technical SEO | | Carla_Dawson1 -
Redirecting internal pages to another domain
Hi, I recently redirected the domain www.organic7thheaven.com to http://www.7thheavennaturals.com/ However, the internal pages of www.organic7thheaven.com such as http://www.7thheavennaturals.com/products/sensitivesouls/ are now displaying a 404 Not Found Message How can I have it so that pages such as the above automatically also redirect to http://www.7thheavennaturals.com/ Thanks!
Technical SEO | | MJMarketing0 -
301 redirects
Hi Guys, Question,
Technical SEO | | VividLime
Lets say I have a page oldfile.php at position #2 then set-up a redirection in the following way 100 incoming external links--> oldfile.php [301 to] newfile.php Google comes along and updates its index to newfile.php and ranking of newfile.php remains at position #2. Everything is good. Lets say in 5months, I come along and delete oldfile.php so we have
100 incoming external links--> deleted(oldfile.php) or 100 incoming external links-->404 error. |||| newfile.php Do I then loose the rankings on newfile.php. My thinking is that now that all the external links now point to a page not found, newfile.php should loose rankings Am I correct in my assumption?0