Changing domain names... Bad idea?
-
We are re-doing a clients e-commerce website. Before I had entered them on SEO moz we had decided to change their domain name to one with a keyword inside. I had not known that they had an online marketing company previous working for them. They have a domain authority of 42 right now.
It would be a horrible idea to switch their domain right? I looked at some of the links, they all have a variety of good anchor text. But alot of the links are coming from sites or directory categories that are not relative.
We are also planning on doing 301 re-directs for the links. But this will not transfer the domain authority to the new domain right?
Any thoughts?
-
Janice: Curious how your changing the domain name went a few years ago. Did you experience any negatives to doing so? What about positives? -- Thanks. (yes, i know this was over a year ago)
-
Thanks guys. This was helpful, we decided to just go ahead with the original plan and change the domain.
-
Irving, I understand where you are coming from, but I think it is easy for us to get a little too worried about Pandas, Penguins, and the other animals. If you look at GWM Guidelines they are fairly clear on what the link schemes are:
- Links intended to manipulate PageRank (This is the only grey area I see)
- Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
- Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")
- Buying or selling links that pass PageRank
So, unless they are adding to the manipulation or purchase of links I don't see a problem. This site is currently up and I have to believe if it was not hit by Penguin 1.1 on the 25th of May, I don't see a redirect causing it to happen.
Good thought though.
-
"But a lot of the links are coming from sites or directory categories that are not relative."
sounds like a penguin smack down waiting to happen, I would look at what these links are and what pages they are pointing to. If someone has been buying links and pointing them to specific internal pages you might want to exclude them from the list of URLs that get 301'd and let them 404.
-
Anderson,
With a 301 you are redirecting page to page. So www.olddomain.com/page1 to www.newdomain.com/page1. This is done in the .htacess file and it is important as it will transfer the link juice 90 to 99% (my experience is that it is always closer to 99%). We are doing that with a 1,000 page ecommerce site now and do not foresee an issue.
If you follow the protocol, you will not have an immediate increase in domain authority, but will gain it gradually within two to three months based on my experience. MAKE SURE YOU EXPLAIN IT TO THE CLIENT BEFOREHAND. I meant this for emphasis, I am not yelling.
Most of us keep believing at some point the value of an exact match domain will go away and I still see value in them. I also believe having the keyword in the domain is important if you can do that. Here is a link to a handy 301 guide (Courtesy of Sha Menz): http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php
Hope this helps,
-
I think you have the right idea and are on the right track. I believe with 301 redirects to new site you will transfer most if not all link juice and page authority to new domain name. And you should see a boost in rankings having the keyword in there as well. So I think its a win win all the way around for you.
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
-
Backlinks from a secondary domain
Hi i finally figured out why my link profile is out of wack. Apparently we had a second domain registered that for some reason was active and linking to us - somewhat duplicated site. no idea when or how that happened. I wasnt with the company then. anyhow Ive now pointed the domain to a blank folder since I dont know how to disable it in 1&1 Hosting (if anyone knows please let me know!). Im wondering if this is enough? will the links still be there indexed even though the domain points to a blank folder? also how can I get google to profile my backlinks again? so I can see if it worked. Currently waiting for a new Moz crawl so Ill see if at least there my profile is looking healthier. thanks in advance!
Link Building | | ACEmina0 -
If I get multiple links from one domain, will that help my rankings?
Hello, I have developed a relationship with a blogger in my niche. He has published a guest post of mine with a link back to my site. Does it make sense to keep providing him with content to build different links from different pages within the same root domain? Thanks! Ricardo
Link Building | | myriad_ricardo0 -
Followed links bad?
I send press releases through 2 different press release agencies. I noticed in the past year or so that one of the agencies started tagging all of the links in my press release with rel=nofollow while the other did not. I couldn't figure out why, so I actually called the "nofollow" agency...they told me that they do this because it is actually BETTER for SEO and that google would penalize you for creating new press releases that do not contain "nofollow" tag.. and that this was done as a result of some recent change to google's algorithm....now I do not know who to believe. Has anyone else heard of this issue and maybe could this be specific to press releases?
Link Building | | TrueResults1 -
Direct from one website toanother but different domain name
i have two web site same subject but two different name how can i direct ?
Link Building | | fabric-fabric0 -
External Linking for ROOT DOMAIN METRICS
Is there a way, we can find out External Equity-Passing Links for Root Domain Metrics for a particular website. I am unable to find that out and need it for competitive analysis. Please let me know if someone knows the solution.
Link Building | | sidjain4you0 -
Should you ever change your anchor text ?
Hello I have a question about anchors. I have done all my own seo over the last 3 years, with tools from various sites. I had an seo audit done about 1 month ago and was told my link profile was very natural. They had one recommendation. To go back over my link profile and ask some webmasters if they would change the anchor from the name of my site or my url to a more seo friendly phrase. This seemed logical. I never did a lot of anchor text just name or site or url. Anyway, over last 4 weeks I have messaged several webmasters and asked to have anchor text changed to something along the lines of the keywords Im targeting. Tedious task to go through all the links but I changed several anchors to what was recommended. I was also out link building at same time. These last links and I got several of them all natural links after 16 hours work days. Are all will seo friendly anchors, because as Ive gotten more experienced my links have gotten more in lines of what is "seo friendly" or at least I hoped. I asked one webmaster to change my anchor and he warned me I would be slapped with a penguin penalty and wouldn't recommend I do this. I have already done this to several of my links. Then today the new seomoz update came up and I was down on DA and PA by 3-4 points. Do these have anything to do with one another and have I been given bad advice and can I fix it if I have ? Sorry about long post just a little confused. I don't want to step into penalty land and not know I did.
Link Building | | New1000ad0 -
Has anyone changed domain after "unnatural link message" from Google?
We received a "unnatural" email from Google approx 6 months ago and have tried removing all links but it is proving to be near impossible - has anyone undergone a domain change and moved their sites to get rid of the penalty?
Link Building | | jj34340 -
Minimum desired for Domain Authority and Page Authority
I see messages and threads talking about the less importance on PageRank and more importance on Domain Authority and Page Authority. As I work on our link building, do I steer away from low DA and PA websites? If so, whats the minimum threshold I should stay away from? If I see a site that has a Domain Authority as low as 9 - is that the minimum? What is? What do you think?
Link Building | | findachristianjob0