Moving a website from one domain to another
-
Hi Guys,
I figured I'd investigate this fully before potentially ruining a client's traffic.
The rundown:Two websites; one is an ecommerce store and the other is just a brochure website which has references to the ecommerce store.
The ecommerce store is hosted on a server we control whereas the brochure one isn't, the URL for the brochure store is nice and simple which is the reason for the switch, as the ecommerce URL is very long and hard to remember.
Now from an SEO point of view will it be a case of 301 redirecting every URL from the old domain name to the new one one or is there an easier option?
Any tips or links to more information would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Dan
-
And don't forget to look into the Change of Address feature in Google Webmasrter Tools:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=83106
-
short answer: yes
-
I have a similar issue and found this thread - if the previous url has identical content to the new url, does the redirect solve problems that might arise with duplicate content?
-
A recent blog post that should help you
http://moz.com/blog/save-your-website-with-redirects.
Your situation should make the move easy enough as the urls will be the same bar the root domain. This can easily be done in htaccess, here is a guide:
http://www.orderofbusiness.net/blog/redirect-old-domain-to-new-domain-via-htaccess/
edit: Andy beat me to the punch
-
Basically a 301 redirect is the best option, if you are literally moving a whole domain and the urls will stay the same (save for the domain name) you can use the below
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain.com$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.olddomain.com$ RewriteRule (.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]</ifmodule>
Thats assuming you are running apache.
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
-
Moving Shopify from a Sub Domain to the Full Domain
Apologies if this has been asked before. Currently we have a Shopify shop on a subdomain shop.lucybee.com a blog on subdomain blog.lucybee.com and the full domain of course. We'd now like to move everything onto Shopify on the full domain. Therefore the blog rolls into Shopify. We'll manually move pages into Shopify. Any advice or links to resources on how to manage would be gratefully received. Thank you , Jim
Technical SEO | | LucyBee0 -
Penalized domain redirected to the non-penalized one...
I've a technical question , For example site A was penalized by google updates, panda and penguin both and site b is in the same niche and it's running good and never been penalized by updates. If I redirect site A to Site B with 301 status code(permanent redirect), will Google penalize the site B too? because penalties travel from old domain to new one as per google's algorithms. And If yes then how can I stop my competitor from removing redirection of penalized domain to mine?
Technical SEO | | hammadrafique0 -
Moving a blog from Blogger
A client just setup word press. They have a ton of content on their blogger account. Today they stated they were moving the content to their blog. My knee jerk response is to leave it where it is. I am posting this question to re affirm my position. Unless there are some pro's to moving this over.
Technical SEO | | waqid0 -
What should I do with 10 Similar Domains pointing to one site?
Hello,
Technical SEO | | thealika
I was recently put in charge of one website with about 15 extra Domains. I previously asked if Domain Parking hurts your SEO as duplicate content - and i learned that the answer seems to be yes. My next logical question is:
What should I do with all those EMD, keyword friendly domains? As I understand, 301 redirecting the domains to the root domain is a safe bet, but that means the extra domains will point to the original root domain no mater what comes after the forward slash. So www.ExtraDomain.com/AboutUS will point to www.OriginalDomain.com - is there a way to keep the forward slashes relavent to the content on the original root domain, if so How? Your Advice, Links, and Comments are greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Nikita0 -
Is Buying Domains Good For SEO? Can I 301 redirect domains to an Original website?
I have a friend that purchased multiple domains related to their website. Each of these domains have the back ground of the original website and irrelevant content on them. Is is possible to redirect the various domains to certain pages on the original website. For example if the website is www.shoes.com and they purchased domains such as www.leathermensshoes.com and a few others related to the website. Is it SEO friendly to link the domains purchased to the original website?
Technical SEO | | TSpike10 -
Domain.com and domain.com/ redirect(error)
When I view my campaign report I'm seeing duplicate content/ meta for mydomain.com and mydomain.com/ (with a slash) I already applied a 301 redirect as follows: redirect 301 /index.php/ /index.php Where am I messing up here?
Technical SEO | | cgman0 -
Using Drupal to Author Websites across 2 Domains
I am new to Drupal and as an organization we are considering using it to author both our corporate site and our blog. In the future we'd like our blog to live at a separate domain and I understand Drupal is capable of publishing across 2 domains. Does anyone know of any SEO implications to this type of infrastructure set up? Are there specific things to be mindful of when setting up the Drupal CMS across 2 domains? thanks for the assistance!
Technical SEO | | Hershel.Miller0 -
Domain Alias
I have a client that picked up a bunch of keyword rich domain names and he wants to point them to his current corporate site as domain aliases. Could this in anyway negatively or positively effect his SEO? or ranking? Thanks - Kyle Chandler
Technical SEO | | kchandler1