Losing Rank As A Result Of Domain Change
-
I have a client who is wishing to switch from an established, but unattractive domain, to a domain he just purchased that is more attractive. For example purposes, his existing site is "His-Company-Website.com" and the site he just purchased and wants to transfer to is "HisCompanyWebsite.com." The only difference is the old site has hyphens in between the words and the new one does not.
He is not making this choice from an SEO perspective, but more of a "I don't want to keep saying all those hyphens when telling people about my website." But he said he doesn't want to lose his search engine rankings as a result. So he knows this won't necessarily increase his ranks, but doesn't want them to drop as a result.
When speaking with him, I thought we could simply toss in a 301 redirect at the root level and pipe them over to the other site, but he wanted some actual proof. I went back to look at what I thought would be a similar case that I did earlier in the year (transferring from a .net to a .com) and noticed that we did see some rather substantial drops in at least traffic, so I am not so sure about this plan any longer.
So my questions for my far more insightful colleagues...
-
What would be your suggestion on this problem? Transition to the more user friendly domain or stick with the unfriendly domain?
-
If he does elect to transition to the new domain, what all can I do to preserve his search engine rankings?
-
Should a rankings and/or traffic drop be predicting when completing this?
Thank you all in advance. Any other tidbits anyone has to offer would be great. Looking forward to your replies.
-
-
301 redirects do not pass all the link juice, so you will lose a bit of link value if you use a 301 redirect. If you don't want to lose any juice, you can try contacting the sites with the highest authority links, and asking them to link to your new site.
However, even if you are able to get all the new links pointed to the new site, I would expect to see a rankings drop, at least in the short term as Google tries to figure things out.
So expect to see a rankings drop if you redirect, and weigh the loss in SEO traffic versus having a better, more brandable domain name. You'll probably end up losing some link juice in the transition, but you can always redouble your link building efforts afterwards to rebuild your link profile.
-
1. I would suggest moving the domain to the non-hyphenated version.
2. 301 redirect the old domain to the new domain. Submit the new domain to GWT and change the preferred domain in GWT from the the old domain to the new domain.
3. You will probably see a temporary drop in organic traffic when you do the switch since it takes some time for Google to update the site's pages in its index. But in the long run, the new domain should return to the rankings the old domain had and any drop in organic traffic should be minimal. And the fact that the client specifically said he is tired of telling people about going to his domain name with hyphens in it is causing him a problem, then that's all the more reason to move to the non-hyphenated domain.
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
-
301 Old domain with HTTPS to new domain with HTTPS
I am a bit boggled about https to https we redirected olddomain.com to https://www.newdomain.com, but redirecting https://www.olddomain.com or non-www is not possible. because the certificate does not exist on a level where you are redirecting. only if I setup a new host and add a htaccess file will this work. What should I do? just redirect the rest and hope for the best?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | waqid0 -
Would changing the file name of an image (not the alt attribute) have an effect of on seo / ranking of that image and thus the site?
Would changing the file name of image, not the alt attribute nor the image itself (so it would be exactly the same but just a name change) have any effect on : a) A sites seo ranking b) the individual images seo ranking (although i guess if b) would be true it would have an effect on a) although potentially small.) This is the sort of change i would be thinking of making : ![Red ford truck](2554.jpg) changed to ![Red ford truck](6842.jpg)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam-P0 -
Unique domains vs. single domain for UGC sites?
Working on a client project - a UGC community that has a DTC model as well as a white label model. Is it categorically better to have them all under the same domain? Trying to figure which is better: XXX,XXX pages on one site vs. A smaller XXX,XXX pages on one site and XX,XXX pages on 10-20 other sites all pointing to the primary site. The thinking on the second was that those domains would likely achieve high DA as well as the primary, and would passing their value to the primary. Thoughts? Any other considerations we should be thinking about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | intentionally0 -
Changing the spellings of titles and URl changes
Hi, Changing the spellings of titles and URl changes We identifies 500+ titles with some issues like spellings and punctuations and short or too long. We want to change them, but the titles are connected with the URL's when we change the titles the URl's change as well. My questions are 1. Is it a good way to change them all in one shot or do few daily 2. As the URl's change will Google index drop the old pages as they would be 404 and index new ones? 3. Will we have chances to have drop in traffic due to this? 4. Any way to redirect? as we have a Drupal website Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Should I Roll Back Domain Change?
A couple years ago I changed domain names and switched platforms for my site. The traffic dropped dramatically (80-90%). I've tried to get inbound links changed, clean up on-page stuff, but nothing is making a big change. I think most of the problem is loss of link juice with the 301 redirects from the old domain to the new one. Would I be risking bigger losses by switching back to the old domain name?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iJeep0 -
Changing website providers
After increasing suffering down time from my current website provider, I am seriously considering finding a new one. My only concern is the effect on SERP. Does anyone have any experience with this and what to do and avoid?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340 -
Top Google News Result = Search Result #11 (first on second page)
Hey all, I've noticed that, in most cases, when we have an article that gets the top spot in Google News results for a given keyword, the search result for that same article will appear in position #11 (the first result on the second page for standard SERP viewing). This is nearly always the case, which suggests its built into Google's algorithm to prevent overlap. Has anyone else experienced this? I haven't seen it discussed previously on Moz or other SEO forums, but it makes sense. Or if you haven't experienced this, I'd love to hear about what you're seeing.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dangaul0 -
Change of domain procedure
Hi Guys, I have been tasked with conducting a change of domain for our company website. The website will be exactly the same, just change from www.jamesburfield.co.uk to www.burfieldcreative.co.uk. This was attempted before but my boss got cold feet and switched back after he saw a drop in rankings. (He put in the redirects and went through the change of domain procedure with google). I have told him that I think its possible with minimal disruption and we have agreed even with some disruption it will better in the long run for the company. Here is the process I intend to follow: 1. Copy and upload site to new domain 2. Redirect all pages with a wildcard or individually - possibly drop the www also 3. Follow the change of domain procedure in webmaster tools 4. Change the href of as many as possible back links to point at the new domain Please let me know your thoughts on my plan and if there is anything else I can do to ensure we maintain our rankings. Any help is appreciated as this is my suggestion and my neck is on the line! Thanks guys! Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SimpsonGareth0