Moving to new domain - Social and Branding Questions?
-
Hi,
We are moving to a new domain because our rankings drastically dropped and we want to "start over".
For example - If my company is called Joes Computers and the domain was JoesComputers.com and the new domain which will hold our e-commerce website will be completely different for example - BestComputers.com - which do I brand?
Which do I put as suffix in all titles?
COOL TITLE FOR PRODUCTS | Best Computers
or
COOL TITLE FOR PRODUCTS | Joes ComputersWhich name do I take for social profiles? Company or Domain?
(We currently have for the company since it was the same).Please note that our company name is already a little bit known... and therefore inside the website it will be labeled in Logos etc. We would also state "Best Computers by Joes Computers" (as if it is a sub brand or daughter company).
Thanks,
-
Ok I understand now, are you probably under attack? I'm sorry for that. But if this is a negative seo activity by an evil competitor, is it probably that he will do the same for your new domain?
By the way I think Chris tip is good, avoiding any redirect for now. You can restart your e-commerce on the new domain and simultaneously try clean your old web site with new content & gwt as you try until now (never give up).
-
We don't have a manual penalty (we had it revoked).
However, it does not mean that we do not have an algorithmic one.About the disavow tool - New links keep popping up. We have STOPPED working with ANY company for more than a year now. Nevertheless, we run the same tools of link discovery (majestic, OSE, ahrefs and links from the GMWT) and we keep discovering new links. It is an endless cause...
We did not plan to redirect the main pages of which links point too but rather the articles themselves, several hundred good articles. This way, the bad links won't harm us (I assume).
-
I have question:
The exit from a penalty needs probably at least 6 months (it depends), instead a new domain how much time needs to start ranking well? Is it not more suitable to clean the old domain and try a reconsideration request?Bad inbound links? Disavow tool probably can helps. If you are penalized the redirect 301 could be a suicide strategy, no?
My personal point of view
-
Your branded traffic is typically the easiest and fastest to get restarted to your new domain. In addition to revising the domain name in all of your social profiles be sure to revise all of your local co-citations with your new website address.
It's worth going on more than just a "feeling" that your site was penalized when you're considering moving your entire domain because of it. You ought to be close to 100% sure.
Many people feel 301 redirecting will just forward the penalty to your new site.
-
Thanks.
So what do you think would happen in the future with exact searches? (Joes Computers).
Also, will I need to rebuild the social media channels or keep as is and just point them to the new domain?About the old domain's material...
We were thinking of redirecting (301) the deep articles and product pages while neglecting the main landing and category pages.
I fear that the penalty is due to bad links (that un-naturally targeted main landing pages).
This is why redirecting articles shouldn't have bad impact. All of our texts are high quality. -
BeytzNet
I'd say "Joe's Computers" all the way! I think way too many companies confuse their domain name with their brand name. Sure it's nice when they are the same, but if they can't be or if you've already built up equity in another name, it's usually far better to emphasize your brand.
I wouldn't just trash the old domain, though. Move your old site over to the new domain and put a new site on the old one and make it a project to work on trying to pull it out of the penalty. If down the road, you're successful, you could move back to it.
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
-
Domain Transition: Leaving low quality content behind
We're in the initial stages of planning a domain transition / rebrand. We're considering 301'ing our low and high(er) quality content split to two different domains. One for the low quality, one for our high. Best practices normally tell you to not split your content between between multiple domains. However, what if the majority of pages on your site are thin/outdated, and attract low volume/long tail? Does it make sense to bring that low quality/volume content over the new domain, when you know you'll never have the resources (nor would it make sense to) mass improve the quality of these pages? I'm concerned the quality of these pages are affecting our overall domain authority. Some background on our site/business: Current site has 15,000+ pages. 98% of our site is a product directory of professional/enterprise business management software. While a small handful of our product pages have quality original long form content (maybe 50-100), most of the product pages are a combination of: thin, outdated, overly sales-y content provided directly from product developers, and/or catch only very low-volume/long tail organic traffic. 95% of our pages attract fewer than 20 visits/mo, 90% of our pages attract fewer than 10 visits/mo. We have a small business of about 10 employees. Most of which don't maintain our site. It's unrealistic for us to genuinely improve the quality of that many pages. Nor does it make sense to improve most of these pages, as they'll attract only very low volume keywords. Individually these low quality pages don't bring in many customers, but on aggregate they do. 70% of our organic conversions come from pages with less than 20 visits/mo. A few questions: Is this content negatively affecting our domain authority in any way? While I don't believe we've been hit with a penalty, Google knows that on average our pages aren't very helpful to many users, and I'm concerned that affects our ability to rank with pages that matter. None of the content was mass produced in any form of scraping efforts or anything nefarious like that. Would there be any negative/positive affect to offloading these low quality/volume pages to a different domain during the rebrand?
Branding | | dsbud0 -
My question is in regards to possible conflict in creating an additional website under a new domain for our company.
Our companies, Vulcan Information Packaging and ATC both live under the domain “www.binders.com”. This is a great thing as far as us dominating in the binder industry. However, in the next 2-3 years and forward, we want to build our presence as a company who offers packaging products such as boxes, marketing kits, and other forms of packaging. Obviously, the “binders.com” brand/domain does not contribute much to this effort and can be confusing to customers visiting the site. Essentially, we want to build an additional branding for our company in the packaging industry. Keeping this in mind, we own the domain “www.vulcaninformationpackaging.com” and we are considering building a new website using this domain which contains the word “packaging”. This new site would only promote and contain packaging related products. This new website will advertise and direct traffic to our company Vulcan Information Packaging, which is the same company “binders.com” directs traffic to. So my question is to determine whether doing this might be a practice that Google and other search engines might frown upon. I tend to think it will be fine because we will be promoting and driving traffic for non-binder products where as, binders.com is heavily in binder related products. thank you, Dominic Zaidan
Branding | | dzaidan0 -
How to rank #1 for brand name when its 2 competitive keywords?
Hi Mozzers, I have recently began the SEO on a website which is a few years old, with little SEO done beforehand.
Branding | | Silkstream
I really want to get this domain ranking #1 for its brand name, however the brand name also happens to be a combination of two highly competitive keywords - one of them being "hire". I have done everything I can think of as a recommended step to signal Google, but it still sits between position #20 and position #15 (on a good day). So far I have:
Set up G+
Linked the website
Added Rel=publisher
Submitted site to Yell.com and a couple of other business directories
Added branded links from every the bio of each article on the blog pointing to the homepage.
Built a handful of branded links from related niche websites.
Set up social pages. Question:
What else can I do to improve on its position in the SERPS? More info:
The site ranks number 2 in Bing for the brand name. The domain is an exact match of two keywords without a hyphen between them - the site ranks position #1 for that search on Google. Question:
Would a hyphenated domain make any difference at all? Thanks everyone!0 -
Short Custom Domains for using instead of bit.ly etc
Hi Can anyone recommend any good sources/sites for quickly trying to find good shortened custom domain options for using instead of bit.ly etc Any hints and tips at trying to find suitable ones too ? since ive tried a few sites and cant find anything suitable and keeps suggesting options with subfolders Thanks Dan
Branding | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
.re or .com domain
I am thinking about changing the name of my site. The new name is available with .re domain (that spells the name) or a .com. I have registered the .re and the .com is parked and for sale so my question has 2 parts. Is it worth buying the .com or do I really not need it? How much does it matter in terms of losing traffic and other factors? If I do buy it which should I use as the primary domain? Thanks!
Branding | | yojimbo230 -
Is there any downside to have a product name (branded keyword) that has a top keyword in it?
The company I work for recently purchased another company. We are currently re-branding their product into our solution offering and are working on coming up with a new product name, while keeping SEO in mind. The product names that we are thinking of also includes a non-branded keyword that we actively look to rank for. We currently rank relatively high for this keyword. Is there any negative to having a product name that has a non-branded keyword in it. My first thought is that it is great because that non-branded keyword will be used repeatedly on our site when we mention the product. Things that I don't know though are: will it appear we are keyword stuffing does Google recognize that its a branded keyword and doesn't rank us for the non-branded aspect Any feedback or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Vince
Branding | | IFSNA0 -
Drop In Branded Traffic
Hi, We took on a new client in March. Over the last few months I have noticed that their Branded Organic Traffic has dropped off considerably, around 20%. On further investigation I discovered that the drop off occurred between Jan & Feb this year (prior to us taking over). In Jan they launched a new site, the drop off seems to coincide with the launch of their new website. I also found out that their Page Rank had disappeared before the launch of the new website, and is still a PR/na. My first thought was that they have been penalised. How likely is this on a very well known site which gets roughly 170K visits per month? Could the drop in Branded Traffic be due to a decrease in advertising budget elsewhere (to compensate for the cost of the new website, leading to less brand exposure)? Could it be that there are just fewer people searching for their Brand? I guess the questions I am trying to find out are: 1. What are the reasons for massive drops in Branded organic traffic? 2. As an seo I am tasked mainly for optimising for non-branded organic traffic, is there anything I can suggest to the client to help get this traffic back? 3. If it is an algorithmic penalty (Panda, Penguin), how do I know which one? I have started with their links and disavowed known toxic links, fixed crawl errors, optimised their top pages etc etc. If it was a penalty and I mange to fix it, will their branded traffic return? Any help with the above would be greatly appreciated. Jon
Branding | | JonRaubenheimer0 -
What is the impact of the new google+ share button on SERP
Hello mozzers, I'm currently wondering what will be the impact of the new social signal ( Google+ Share ) on SERP an organic traffic. As we all know by now , Facebook share have an higher social signal authority then the Facebook like on SERP @Randfish posted some great info at: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/facebook-twitters-influence-google-search-rankings Since Google rolled out the new Google+ Share social signa at : https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/share/?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=gplusdevelopers&utm_campaign=shareplugin I was wondering if somebody had the chance to do some clear testing on the SERP impact of this new social signal even if its a fresh addition to the social signals. Best regards, Yan Desjardins - Online marketing manager
Branding | | SherWeb0