Migrating EMD to brand name domain. Risk of Penguin Penalty?
-
We would like to migrate from an EMD to a brand name domain, since our service offer has become much broader than indicated by the current EMD. The current domain name is a money keyword.
Do you believe there is a big risk of suffering a penguin penalty if we go ahead with the domain migration, due to large share of anchor texts containing keyword of old domain name?
Quick facts about our site:
-about 500.000 pages indexed by google- PR6
-
10 years old
- 1200 linking root domains
- 30% of linking root domains contain our domain name with domain ending as anchor text
- 5% of linking root domains have just the domain keyword as anchor text
Any thoughts?
Thanks -
Marie, thanks a lot for clarifying.
-
Hi,
"To clarify, our link profile is very clean, but naturally people used the keyword from the domain name and the domain name to link to us.
It really comes down to the question:
How will google penguin value anchor text to the old domain and will 301 to new domain increase the risk of a penguin penalty."It's not the exact match anchor text that makes the Penguin algorithm affect a site. If you have natural links and those links contain exact match anchor text then that's a good thing.
The reason why the percentage of exact match anchors is stated by many to be a risk factor for Penguin is because sites that have built spammy links generally, in the past, did so with exact match anchors. For most sites that have not had manipulative backlinks made, the most common anchors will be variations of the url and brand name. If you've been building your own links in the past though, the most common anchors are often keywords because that's what used to work. So, many people assume that Google looks at the percentage of keywords as anchors when deciding whether Penguin is going to affect the site. I don't believe that that's what happens though.
Penguin is way more sophisticated than that. The goal of Penguin is to find self made links and devalue them. The reason for this is that Google wants only links that are truly natural citations to count towards rankings. For some sites, if there's the odd self made link then when Penguin rolls around they probably just lose the link equity they once had. But, if there are LOTS of self made links detected then this sends a signal to Google that your links cannot be trusted and your site will not be shown as highly in the SERPS.
So, if the links are natural then don't worry about it, even if they do contain a keyword as anchor.
-
It probably depends on the anchor. If the EMD was bluewidgets.com, then 'http://www.'bluewidgets.com' or 'bluewidgets.com' or 'bluewidgets' type anchor should be ok. If there was a high level of 'blue widgets' I would start to be a little concerned.
-
To clarify, our link profile is very clean, but naturally people used the keyword from the domain name and the domain name to link to us.
It really comes down to the question:
How will google penguin value anchor text to the old domain and will 301 to new domain increase the risk of a penguin penalty.Anybody with experience of migrating an EMD? Anybody experiencing Penguin shortly afterwards?
Certainly would be useful to consult with someone specialized in penguin recoveries who has dealt with a very large volume of penguin cases and learn about their impression of this risk.
-
If you are seriously concerned about a penalty which could result in your business having to close it's doors, you should probably be seeking out help from an agency rather than looking for free advice here. If the situation is that dire, then getting an audit and quote from an agency will probably be your safest bet at this point.
-
Thanks Bradley.
Yes we plan page level 301 redirects from old to new domain and will follow best practices for domain migration.
I am afraid changing anchor text clean up of EMD may have only limited success in our case since many links are very old and some sites may not be maintained anymore. However targeting especially the 5% links with keyword as anchor text may be good idea to try.
Having to disassociate the old domain and losing 10 years effort of clean link building would probably mean that we would need to close down the company as our segment is too competitive to get a new domain quickly up in the rankings. So therefore I really want to understand the associated penguin risk as well as possible.
-
Migrating to a branded domain is probably the best step to avoid a penalty at this point. Get away from the EMD and over-optimized anchor text ASAP.
If your domain is penalized, it won't be your branded domain - it will be your EMD domain. It's hard to say if it could be penalized in the future, but it hasn't been yet, so you might be OK.
I assume that you'll 301 redirect all pages on the EMD to the new branded domain. You should be prepared to put in a lot of effort to clean up the anchor text of the EMD link profile, or completely disassociate the old domain in the event of a penalty.
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
-
Hold Off on SEO Changes After Domain Migration?
We migrated our domain on April 4th. Our domain authority has dropped from 22 to 8. Traffic is down from 90 visits a day to 10. Search console has indexed about 120 out of 600 pages. I have been told it may take several months to recovers some element of domain authority. My SEO consultant has planned on implementing the following changes immediately: 1. Change in URL structure
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
2. Build internal links (my site has very few).
3. Optimize URLs for specific keywords
4. Keyword optimization of URLs using Yoast.
5. Modify Schema Do we risk confusing Google further by making these changes until are domain authority and traffic has recovered? Is it safe to proceed with some "softer" changes such building internal links and keyword optimizing text whicl avoiding more disruptive changes such as re-writing URLs? Are we better off focusing on off site ranking factors such as link building and local SEO until domain authority recovers? How about only adding new content to the site such as blog posts and listings? To complicate matters the site is old and dated and we are working on a new UX design. So perhaps it would be better to launch the new UX at the exact same time as the onsite SEO optimization occurs. This could be less work and less disruptive. At the same time I would very much like to enjoy benefits of optimizing SEO now. Any thoughts????? Also, my domain migration has killed traffic. It is very concerning!! Is a 90% drop in traffic normal in the first ten days!? Thanks everyone!!!
Alan1 -
Domain Authority
Hi Our website Domain Authority isn't as high and was wondering why it's not increasing. Compared to 1 or 2 competitors we're not scoring as high as them. Are rankings are good for all chosen keywords. Just trying to get a better handle where our site is falling short on.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia1 -
Consolidating two separate domains and redirecting towards a new replatformed domain
A client has two different sites selling the same products with the same content, they would like to replatform onto Magento while redirecting those 2 sites to the new URL. The question is, besides monitoring the 301 redirects is there anything else to take into consideration when consolidating two sites into one new site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RocketWeb0 -
SEO connectivity between domains and sub-domains
Hi, My web site georgerossphotography.com and my ecommerce site store.georgerossphotography.com each reside on different servers. georgerossphotography.com has a domain authority of 30 store.georgerossphotography.com has a domain authority of 30 Clearly, they are considered two individual sites but is there any way that I can boost the performance of the primary domain by passing along some for that good SEO juice from the sub-domain? Any input would be gratefully received. Regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sirgeorge0 -
Redirect gateway domain to main domain?
We have following scenario: Our main website - www.esedirect.co.uk which gets a 1800 visits a day with around half of those from organic search. It's been around since 2004. Our original website - www.ese.co.uk which gets around 30 visits a day and really is nothing more than a doorway page with links to the above site and couple of other sites that belong to the same company. This is an old domain that's had content since 1997 and has good domain authority with some good links. We are considering doing a 301 redirect from www.ese.co.co.uk to www.esedirect.co.uk to redirect the link juice. I welcome opinions to any possible negative effects this could give and how beneficial doing this will be. Thanks, Lee
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ese0 -
What would be the best domain choice?
Hello I got a website www.keywordCA.com and I'm ranking #1 spot on "keyword" but what I notice if you have the exact match you get more site links and etc. Like this keyword that match with my domain name "keyword CA" The ideal name will be www.keyword.com but is taken and the owner don't want to sell the domain (at least he is not using it, is just parked) and I also got the domain www.keyword.net Do you think www.keyword.net will be much better than KeywordCA.com in order to get more exposure and google will generate more site links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jpgprinting0 -
Anchor Text Diversification – Branded VS Non Branded – What is the best approach… if any?
Our organization competes in the Drug & Alcohol Treatment Category… very competitively I must say. While we create content for long-tail keywords, we focus on linking (blogging + Press Release + Acquisition, etc…) as the main strategy to increase relevancy for 4 major keywords. (Alcohol Rehab, Drug Rehab, Alcohol Treatment, and Drug Treatment)… all these terms have their respective landing pages, and we try to provide a good flow of new links coming to these pages on a weekly basis… Lately we have been acquiring more links than we anticipated… not a bad thing since they are from reputable websites… however I am a bit concern regarding the Anchor Text distribution of these links. Example Let’s say I get 100 links to my ‘Alcohol Rehab’ page – what is an appropriate percentage for the anchor text distribution? For example: Branded Links 20 - Keyword: St Jude Retreats
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dhidalgo1
Exact Match Links 70 - Keyword: Alcohol Rehab
Broad Links 10 - Keyword: Rehab Is this an ok distribution, or should I change things around? Hope you guys can help! Thanks!!!!0 -
Value in purchasing domain name for targeted search term?
Is there any value in purchasing a domain name for a search term we want to target? If there is, would it be better to have it forward directly to our site, or create a landing page that would then link to our site and our products?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FutureMemoriesInc0