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
-
301 Old domain with HTTPS to new domain with HTTPS
I am a bit boggled about https to https we redirected olddomain.com to https://www.newdomain.com, but redirecting https://www.olddomain.com or non-www is not possible. because the certificate does not exist on a level where you are redirecting. only if I setup a new host and add a htaccess file will this work. What should I do? just redirect the rest and hope for the best?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | waqid0 -
Migrated Domain, 90% Drop in Organic Traffic, HELP!!!!
One week ago we migrated our old domain www.nyc-officespace-leader.com to https://www.metro-manhattan.com/. Our organic search traffic from Google has dropped about 90%. Is this normal? If so, how long should it take to recover? We filed a submitted a domain change request on Webmaster tools one week ago. We are noticing that many of the www.nyc-officespace-leader.com pages are still indexed which seems strange after a week. To complicate things, we filed a disavow file on April 9th for spammy links that pointed the NYC site. We filed the identical disavow of those links to the new Metro domain to ensure low quality links don't point to the new domain. Prior to making the domain change request, we migrated 30-40 non critical pages from NYC to Metro domains. Webmaster Tools indicated that the traffic was normal on the migrated pages. We then migrated remaining pages and filed the domain change request on April 4th. It is after April 4th that traffic and ranking declined. I would like to mention that there was no change in content; identical content was migrated from Metro to NYC This does not seem normal. Research prior to the migration indicated that if proper steps were taken it should proceed with limited disruption in traffic and ranking. Any ideas on how to remedy this situation? Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Complementary Domain
Hi guys, I have the following situation I would like some help. Because my client is in Brazil, I will make up fictional names so it's easier to understand. My client is a shoe store whose domain is mangabeira.com. That is the brand name and will always be the main domain and reference of the website. We were offered the domain shoes.com. There is no intention of changing the brand name or anything, but there would be a redirect that would send the user who to mangabeira.com. My question is how much impact would that complementary domain do to my SEO performance and how that redirect must be handled. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LucasLopes0 -
Same Branding, Same Followers, New Domain After Penalty... Your Opinion Please
I know I've asked a similar question in the past but I'm still trying to figure out what to do with my website. I've got a website at thewebhostinghero.com that's been penalized by both Panda and Penguin. I cleaned up the link profile and submitted a reconsideration request but it was denied. I finally found a handful of additional bad links and I submitted a new disavow + reconsideration request a few days ago and I am still waiting. That said, after submitting the initial disavow request, the traffic has completely gone and while I expected a drop in traffic, I also expected my penalty to be lifted but it was not the case. Even though the penalty might be lifted this time, I think that making the website profitable again could be harder than creating a new website. So here's my questioning: The website's domain is thewebhostinghero.com but I also happen to own webhostinghero.com which I bought later for $5000 (yes you read that right). The domain "webhostinghero.com" is completely clean as it's only redirecting to thewebhostinghero.com. I would like to use webhostinghero.com as a completely new website and not redirect any traffic from thewebhostinghero.com as to not pass any bad link juice. Pros: Keeping the same branding image (which cost me $$$) Keeping the 17,000+ Facebook followers Keeping the same Google+ and Twitter accounts Keeping and monetizing a domain that cost me $5000 webhostinghero.com is a better domain than thewebhostinghero.com Cons: Will create confusion between the 2 websites Any danger of being flagged as duplicate or something? Do you see any other potential issues with this? What's your opinion/advice? P.S. Sorry for my english...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740 -
Penguin Penalty?
The past 2 days, specific keywords Ive been ranking well for have disappeared. If I google specific with brand it still shows up. So I havent been removed from the index. Is it possible that I was hit by penguin without any type of notice in the webmaster account? Organic traffic dropped substantialy in the past couple days without any warnings. Any help greatly appreciated! Thank You
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TP_Marketing0 -
Domain Name Registration - 3 Options - which one?
Hello SEOZ 🙂 I'm thinking about registering a domain for a project, the Keyword I want to rank for consists of two words. Somethink like this: "joomla training" But the domain I want to register f.e. joomla-training.com ist registered already. I have 3 options that I consider, what's the best? Register another TD: joomla-training**.net** instead of .com Ad a letter : joomla-trainings.net Switch words: training-joomla.com Write the Keywords without a hypen: joomlatraining.com What should I do now? Thanks for your help 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | krseo0 -
New Site: Use Aged Domain Name or Buy New Domain Name?
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peterwhitewebdesign
I have the opportunity to build a new website and use a domain name that is older than 5 years or buy a new domain name. The aged domain name is a .net and includes a keyword.
The new domain would include the same keyword as well as the U.S. state abbreviation. Which one would you use and why? Thanks for your help!0 -
Moving poor content to its own domain may risk being seen as a doorway page?
We have decided to move some thin content from our primary domain to an independent domain in order to lift the panda penalty. Does anyone have suggestions for how to avoid being seen as a doorway page? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0