Domain Change: Leave The Old Domain Homepage Up
-
We are going to be redesigning our website and switching to a new domain.
I think we will set up a permanent 301 redirect from each page of the old domain to a page on the new domain. We would like to leave the old domain homepage up with all content removed and have a link pointing to the new domain. Is there any SEO harm to leaving the old domain homepage up?
Thank you!
Jessie
-
In a recent statement (sorry, don't have the link to hand) Google's Matt Cutts indicated that 301-redirects pass the same amount of rank influence as a normal link does. So there'd be no benefit to using links instead of 301s anyway.
Paul
-
You absolutely want to redirect the entire old domain and all of its pages to the new site, Jessie. Under no circumstances is it a good idea to leave the old homepage or resource pages live.
If you were to do that, you would be splitting the authority between the two sites and neither one of them would be strong enough to rank well. (The split sites would also likely confuse your users.)
There's actually quite a bit of technical work to be done to implement this kind of domain change. Here's an extensive SEOMoz post on the steps to implement and monitor a domain migration. And here's a great migration checklist infographic. You're going to want to get as much of this right as possible, as there can be considerable risk when doing this kind of major change. And you'll want to have good monitoring in place so you catch and fix any problems/glitches that sneak through.
Hope that helps?
Paul
P.S. Just to be clear - if you "left the homepage up" but had a 301-redirect on it, nobody would ever see the old homepage anyway. They would be forwarded to the new page as if the old page didn't exist
-
Our thought was since the old domain has a lot of SEO credibility it would be good to keep a few resource pages that direct to the new domain. Is this incorrect thinking? Would it be better to let go of the old domain and permanently 301 redirect the whole website, passing 90%+ of the link juice to the new domain?
I agree that from the usability stand point that it would be better to permanent 301 redirect the old homepage to the new domain.
-
I find that 301s are not just good for SEO, but end users as well. I really find it so much neater when the people who own a website make sure that I get directed to where I was trying to go instead of leaving it up to me to click there. Remember that if you do it the way you mention that you're also giving users an option to click something you don't want them to: the close button!
-
What is your reasoning for wanting to do that?
Your homepage is your highest PR page so you should 301 redirect it to the new homepage and users will get to your site without having to click.
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
-
Log-in page ranking instead of homepage due to high traffic on login page! How to avoid?
Hi all, Our log-in page is ranking in SERP instead of homepage and some times both pages rank for the primary keyword we targeted. We have even dropped. I am looking for a solution for this. Three points here to consider is: Our log-in page is the most visited page and landing page on the website. Even there is the primary keyword in this page or not; same scenario continues Log-in page is the first link bots touch when they crawling any page of our website as log-in page is linked on top navigation menu If we move login page to sub-domain, will it works? I am worrying that we loose so much traffic to our website which will be taken away from log-in page sub domain Please guide with your valuable suggestions. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Is it bad from an SEO perspective that cached AMP pages are hosted on domains other than the original publisher's?
Hello Moz, I am thinking about starting to utilize AMP for some of my website. I've been researching this AMP situation for the better part of a year and I am still unclear on a few things. What I am primarily concerned with in terms of AMP and SEO is whether or not the original publisher gets credit for the traffic to a cached AMP page that is hosted elsewhere. I can see the possible issues with this from an SEO perspective and I am pretty sure I have read about how SEOs are unhappy about this particular aspect of AMP in other places. On the AMP project FAQ page you can find this, but there is very little explanation: "Do publishers receive credit for the traffic from a measurement perspective?
Algorithm Updates | | Brian_Dowd
Yes, an AMP file is the same as the rest of your site – this space is the publisher’s canvas." So, let's say you have an AMP page on your website example.com:
example.com/amp_document.html And a cached copy is served with a URL format similar to this: https://google.com/amp/example.com/amp_document.html Then how does the original publisher get the credit for the traffic? Is it because there is a canonical tag from the AMP version to the original HTML version? Also, while I am at it, how does an AMP page actually get into Google's AMP Cache (or any other cache)? Does Google crawl the original HTML page, find the AMP version and then just decide to cache it from there? Are there any other issues with this that I should be aware of? Thanks0 -
Why is my domain authority (and page authority) plummeting?
In June our domain authority was at a 41. In July we were 38 and ever since then our domain authority is gradually getting worse and worse. We went from a 33 to a 29 in one week! Possible explanations include: Maybe the SEO we hired (for a few months in late 2011) added our domain to some less-than-awesome directories The 301 redirects on our home page are hurting us somehow Duplicate content for URL's with different capitalization (IE: /pages/aboutus and /Pages/AboutUs) Can someone please point me in the right direction? Which of the above possibilities would likely impact domain/page authority? Any other ideas as to why this might be happening? Any suggestions for improving our domain or page authority? Thanks for the help!
Algorithm Updates | | MichaelBrown550 -
301 from multiple domains to one single webshop
First of all i want to introduce myself. My name is Jennifer and i am a webshop owner from the Netherlands (we sell plants/herbs products) I have a very important question (and i can`t find a clear answer on the internet). So i hope someone can help me, At this moment me and 4 other friends own each a seperate webshop. We all started the webshops 5 -7 years ago and work all in the same business. (plants/herbs). We talked last week, and we want to make one big company and combine all 5 company`s. All 5 webshops have a huge pagerank, lots of organic traffic and very good incomming links. We registered new domainnames and want to redirect the 5 "old" domains to one new domain to pass over the Google juice. Our new company is a multilanguage webshop and each language has its own domain. (for example) (www. plantsandherbs example .nl)
Algorithm Updates | | snorkel
(www. plantsandherbs example .de)
(www. plantsandherbs example .de)
(www. plantsandherbs example .es)
(www. plantsandherbs example .fr)
(www. plantsandherbs example .com) Does it harm us if we 301 redirect all the 5 "old" websites to the new webshop? And what is the best way to redirect the "old" webshops to the new one? I am afraid of a Google penalty because it maybe looks like we bought some domains to pass the juice to the new project.0 -
Do search engines penalize for too many domain aliases?
I have a main domain name and 20+ related alias domains pointing to it. Is there a danger, penalty or concern that I should be aware of related to alias domains? I saw something on Google "Apps Administration" under "What is a domain alias" saying "you can add up to 20 domian aliases" but I don't use Google Apps. Please advise... Thank you, Chris
Algorithm Updates | | caliboyz0 -
SEO updates and rank changes
We have been updating page titles and meta descriptions for a client (not changing ANY links and the content we are replacing is "fluff," no major keywords or any relevant information) yet in the past few weeks, rankings have plummeted. I used the SEOMoz grader to check and make sure we have the keywords in there, in the right places for the updated page source info, and we're getting A's yet for those same keywords, the website is nowhere to be found. For example for the phrase "organic t shirts," we get an A for this page: http://greenpromotionalitems.com/organic-t-shirts.htm but when searching organic t shirts, no Green Promotional Items... Ideas?
Algorithm Updates | | laidlawseo0 -
Keyword rich domains sliding fast
I decided not to worry too much about the statements from google indicating that they were going to consider key word rich domains as a negative for ranking since any of the sites I work on that have them are totally relevant to the content on the sites. However, since recent Google algorithm updates I see these domains have suddenly slid from top 3 positions to page 4 or beyond in Google SERP's. Nothing has changed on these sites in the intervening time and no change is evident in Bing or Yahoo SERP's. Is it just my imagination, or are others seeing the same thing for keyword rich domains? and has anyone yet determined the best way to deal with this problem?
Algorithm Updates | | ShaMenz0 -
Changing Wordpress Permalink Structure, 301s, and Possibility of Rank Loss?
I have to change the permalink structure in wordpress, as using /%postname%/ in conjunction with a couple thousand pages triggers verbose rewrite rules, which further triggers about 5,000 requests per page load. The permalink structure must change as wordpress development probably won't change this in the near future. Now, changing the permalink structure worries me quite a bit, as about 25% of my traffic is attributed to my blog posts -- the rest is covered through CMS-like-use of pages (75%). blog posts will change permalink/url structure, pages won't The website is very respected in my niche and has quite a few links going to most of my posts and pages, as well as the homepage I've noticed in the last year that anything I post starts ranking on page 1 of Google for very competitive kws in 1-3 days, often with top 3 rankings PR4 / decent Alexa / Moz ranks not too shabby either / quality content / decent social media linking (mainly Facebook) / no penalties I provided the factors as to not gloat, but rather to get the best answer from those who have fairly established websites and perhaps had to change their URLs and noticed some or no changes to their rankings. How long of a hit am I going to take / how much my posts might drop down in SERPs if I change the permalink structure, properly 301 them, and implement all changes in one swoop? Info for WordPress users Benefits of changing the permalink structure to /%post_id%/%postname%/ -- for example -- include: way faster load times, not having 5,000 requests per page load, avoiding verbose rewrite rules trigger, finally modify the site without worrying about crashing the website and using a local server to make changes on thousands of pages (the database backups, the ritual of changing the settings in the local database, changing the post/page, saving the local database, loading the locally saved db on live server, and crossing fingers and pray it works -- just takes so darn long.) Ahh..yes, huge time saver. ** this issue occurs when using WP as a CMS with several hundred pages + and using the /%postname%/ or /%category%//%postname%/ or /somethingstatic/%postname%/ -- IF USING the date based way /%year%/%postname%/ or /%post_id%/%postname%/ you should be fine.
Algorithm Updates | | pepsimoz0