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
-
I found that the link from my YouTube channel to my website was do-follow through Moz bar but no one is indexing it. Why?
_ I found that the link from my YouTube channel to my website was do-follow. I checked through Moz bar but no one is indexing it. Why is it so? _
Technical SEO | | knoiwtall0 -
How can you promote a sub-domain ahead of a domain on the SERPs?
I have a new client that wants to promote their subdomain uk.imagemcs.com and have their main domain imagemcs.com fall off the SERPs. Objective? Get uk.imagemcs.com to rank first for UK 'brand' searches. Do a search for 'imagem creative services' and you should see the issue (it looks like rules have been applied to the robots.txt on the main domain to exclude any bots from crawling - but since they've been indexed previously I need to take action as it doesn't look great!). I think I can do this by applying a permanent redirect from the main domain to the subdomain at domain level and then no-indexing the site - and then resubmit the sitemap. My slight concern is that this no-indexing of the main domain may impact on the visibility of the subdomains (I'm dealing with uk.imagemcs.com, but there is us.imagemcs.com and de.imagemcs.com) and was looking for some assurance that this would not be the case. My understanding is that subdomains are completely distinct from domains and as such this action should have no impact on the subdomains. I asked the question on the Webmasters Forum but haven't really got anywhere
Technical SEO | | nathangdavidson2
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/webmasters/1Avupy3Uw_o/hu6oLQntCAAJ Can anyone suggest a course of action? many thanks, Nathan0 -
Is there a way to tell which redirect - from another domain - is driving traffic to your website?
My company acquired another domain/website several year's ago. We want to see - for accounting purposes, how much traffic/revenue that site's REDIRECTS are driving to our website now. Is there any way to pull this information? I thought of comparing when the site was originally redirected to our traffic/revenue changes - but so much has changed from the acquisition that I wouldn't have faith in this value. Thanks for any assistance you can provide.
Technical SEO | | Blenny1 -
Clients domain expired - rankings lost - repurchased domain - what next?
Its only been 10 days and i have repurchased the domain name/ renewed. The who is info, website and contact information is all still the same. However we have lost all rankings and i am hoping that our top rankings come back. Does anyone have experience with such a crappy situation?
Technical SEO | | waqid0 -
Website Pop up
I want to install a pop up on my site for collecting email addresses. I use nopcommerce as my platform. I was quoted a price to custom develop it but thought there might just be a simple plugin. I can find them for wordpress but that is all. Does anybody have experience with this?
Technical SEO | | katazoom0 -
Domain Authority
Hello everyone, My question is: is there any manual way to increase domain authority, rather than link building to domain (homepage) ? Thanks Eugenio
Technical SEO | | socialengaged0 -
URL redirecting domains
Hi Is there anything wrong/dangerous forwarding a clutch of domains to a sub page (landing page) on a different domain ? Say Brand X buys Brand Z and wants to close down Brand Z site but have Brand Z domain fwd to a landing page (explaining the company acquisition) on Brand X site. In addition Brand Z had a few related but unused domains forwarding to Brand Z doman & now also wants those fwd'd to the new landing page on brand X Since the reasons for doing this forwarding are legitimate company reasons relating to an acquisition i would have thought it should be ok but can anyone think of a reason why could be bad since i remember in the old days peeps used to redirect domains for seo reasons so worried fwd'ing a load of domains could cause some sort of negative flag with big G ? Also do domain redirects transfer the authority/juice from the old site/domain to the new destination page (new landing page on brand x site) similar to how a 301 redirect works ? Many Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Tutorial For Moving Blogger Blog From Sub-Domain to Sub-Directory
Does anyone know where I can find a tutorial for moving a blogger.com (blogspot) blog that's currently hosted on a subdomain (i.e. blog.mysite.com) to a subdirectory (i.e. mysite.com/blog) with the current version of blogger? I'm working on transferring my blogger blogs over to wordpress, and to do so without losing link juice or traffic, this is one of the steps I have to take. There's plenty of tutorials that address moving from blogspot.mysite.com to wordpress and I've even found a few that address moving from blog.mysite.com (hosted on blogger) to a root domain mysite.com. However, I need to move from blog.mysite.com (blogger) to mysite.com/blog/ - subdirectory (wordpress). Anyone who knows how to do this or can point me in the right direction?? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | ChaseH0