How hard would it be to take a well-linked site, completely change the subject matter & still retain link authority?
-
So, this would be taking a domain with a domain authority of 50 (200 root domains, 3500 total links) and, for fictitious example, going from a subject matter like "Online Deals" to "The History Of Dentistry"... just totally unrelated new subject for the old/re-purposed domain. The old content goes away entirely.
The domain name itself is a super vague .com name and has no exact match to anything either way. I'm wondering, if the DNS changed to different servers, it went from 1000 pages to a blog, ownership/contacts stayed the same, the missing pages were 301'd to the homepage, how would that fare in Google for the new homepage focus and over what time frame? Assume the new terms are a reasonable match to the old domain authority and compete U.S.-wide... not local or international.
Bonus points for answers from folks who have actually done this.
Thanks... Darcy
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
-
Changing URL's During a Site Redesign
What are the effects of changing URL's during a site redesign following all of the important processes (ie: 301 redirects, reindexing in google, submitting a new sitemap) ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jennifer-garcia0 -
Links to external site (hotels link)
Hello, I am currently designing the webpages of my website and I am wondering if I should link externally or if it going to hurt me ? I am in the travel industry and for example in the France in the Loire valley, I want to list hotels that people can stay at in pre and pods trip. Is it ok to link to maybe 10 of those hotels websites or can it hurt me ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
"Unnatural links to your site" manual action by Google
Hi, My site has been hit by a "Unnatural links to your site" manual action penalty and I've just received a decline on my 2nd reconsideration request, after disavowing even more links than I did in the first request. I went over all the links in WMT to my site with an SEO specialist and we both thought things have been resolved but apparently they weren't. I'd appreciate any help on this so as to lift the penalty and get my site back to its former rankings, it has ranked well before and the timing couldn't have been worse. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ishais
Yael0 -
Flash site ranking well for a competitive keyword
Hello Mozzers, Thought we'd get the group's opinion on this: This site (power lead generation) is ranking for the keyword "lead generation" on Google.ca at the 5th position organically . It's performing even better than some of the better optimized sites with more content related to this keyword. Any input would be appreciated. Cheers, SEO5..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO5Team0 -
Links from new sites with no link juice
Hi Guys, Do backlinks from a bunch of new sites pass any value to our site? I've heard a lot from some "SEO experts" say that it is an effective link building strategy to build a bunch of new sites and link them to our main site. I highly doubt that... To me, a new site is a new site, which means it won't have any backlinks in the beginning (most likely), so a backlink from this site won't pass too much link juice. Right? In my humble opinion this is not a good strategy any more...if you build new sites for the sake of getting links. This is just wrong. But, if you do have some unique content and you want to share with others on that particular topic, then you can definitely create a blog and write content and start getting links. And over time, the domain authority will increase, then a backlink from this site will become more valuable? I am not a SEO expert myself, so I am eager to hear your thoughts. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | witmartmarketing0 -
On site links triggering anchor text algorithmic penatly?
I'm trying to figure out why a drop in ranking occurred and think it may be related to an increase in on site links. I've attached images of the SEO moz report showing a jump in links from a few hundred to around 15,000 within the space of a week. I think this may be due to some on site work I did when I created categories (I use wordpress) for a large number of cities and towns in the UK. I soon realised I'd run into duplicate content issues and removed all these categories within a few days. As I added categories I also ran into 'too many on page links' warnings as each category I added created a new link and I ended up with hundreds on each page. If you look at the analytics reports I suffered a huge drop in rankings on the 10th March and think this could be due to an on site anchor text problem that was caused by adding the categories and in turn creating many on site links. SEO moz found these links on the 11th and 25th Feb but my guess is that Google found them around at the same time but if these links are the problem then why didn't my rankings drop until the 10th March? Surely they would have dropped sooner? Would this cause a drop in rankings? I've recieved an email from google saying that no manual penalty was applied to the site after I submitted a reconsideration request. Therefore it must be some kind of algorithmic penalty. Could this be the problem and if not what else should I look at. My baclink profile appears to be okay and I've been careful to vary my anchor text with inbound link building. I'm at a loss as to what to do next. Any help will be much appreciated! UXsMLYS.png Ov9AOs8.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Why is Google Still Penalizing My Site?
We got hit pretty hard by Penguin. There were some bad link issues which we've cleared up and we also had a pretty unique situation stemming from about a year ago when we changed the name of the company and created a whole new site with similar content under a different URL. We used the same phone number and address, and left the old site up as it was still performing well. Google didn't care for that so we eventually used 301 redirects to push the link juice from the old site to the new site. That's the background, here's the problem...... We've partially recovered, but there are several keywords that haven't come back anywhere near where they were in Google. We have higher page rank and more links than our competition and are performing in the top 5 for some of our keywords. Other, similar keywords, where we used to be in the top 5, we are now down on page 4 or 5. Our website is www.hudsoncabinetrydesign.com. We build custom cabinetry and furniture in Westchester County, NY just north of NYC. Examples - For "custom built-ins new york" we are number 3 on Google, number 1 on Bing/Yahoo. For "custom kitchen cabinetry ny" we are number 3 on Bing/Yahoo, not in the top 50 on Google. For "custom radiator covers ny" we used to be #1 on Google, are currently #48, currently #2 on Bing/Yahoo. Obviously, we've done something to upset the Google, but we've run out of ideas as to what it could be. Any ideas as to what is going on? Thanks so much for your feedback, Doug B.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | doug_b0 -
Steps you can take to ensure your content is indexed and registered to your site before a scraper gets to it?
Hi, A clients site has significant amounts of original content that has blatantly been copied and pasted in various other competitor and article sites. I'm working with the client to rejig lots of this content and to publish new content. What steps would you recommend to undertake when the new, updated site is launched to ensure Google clearly attributes the content to the clients site first? One thing I will be doing is submitting a new xml + html sitemap. Thankyou
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Qasim_IMG0