Why does old "Free" site ranks better than new "Optimized" site?
-
My client has a "free" site he set-up years ago - www.montclairbariatricsurgery.com (We'll call this the old site) that consistently outranks his current "optimized" (new) website - http://www.njbariatricsurgery.com/
The client doesn't want to get rid of his old site, which is now a competitor, because it ranks so much better. But he's invested so much in the new site with no results.
A bit of background: We recently discovered the content on the new site was a direct copy of content on the old site. We had all copy on new site rewritten. This was back in April. The domain of the new site was changed on July 8th from www.Bariatrx.com to what you see now - www.njbariatricsurgery.com.
Any insight you can provide would be greatly appreciated!!!
-
Hi Kingof5 - I know, it is bizarre. We inherited the new site and are now tasked with the challenge of cleaning everything up.
I don't know the background on why redirects weren't put in place but that's what I'm working toward now. Wish me luck.
-
This doesn't even really make sense. Your client had you build a new site, then left his old site up to compete with it? Bizarre.
Content on old vs. new site - I'd think the new site's content should be a copy of the old site's content, given that it's the same site.
Why weren't all pages on the old site 301d to the new site?
-
Thanks for responding Andy and taking the time to share those links - I really appreciate it.
I've asked my client for access to the old site so I can take a look at GWT and see who's linking in. Then maybe I can convince him to do a 301 redirect if it has some strong backlinks. We've suggested this but he's afraid he will disappear from serp's completely.
Thanks again
-
There are many factors which could influence it, but someone actually asked Matt Cutts the same question, so while I am good at SEO I might as well let him answer your question
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STpCM-3K3KY
Some of the key things are:
- Domain age, does influence rankings, you basically have to start again when you start a new domain
There are also some very good answers on these similar questions:
http://moz.com/community/q/seo-s-done-301s-in-place-old-site-still-outranks-new-site-what-to-do
http://moz.com/community/q/outranking-a-crappy-outdated-site-with-domain-age-keywords-in-url
Would the business owner be willing to do a 301 from the old site to the new site - this is the best thing I can suggest, but it will take time for the new site to rank and appearing the SERPs where the old site currently ranks.
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
-
Ranking issue for new website
Hi all, I have got a specific SEO challenge. 6 months ago, we started to build an eCommerce site (located in the UK). In order to speed up the site launch, we copied the entire site over from an existing site based in Ireland. Now, the new UK site has been running for 5 months. Google has indexed many pages, which is good, but we can't rank high (position: between 20-30 for most pages). We thought it was because of content duplication in spite of different regions. So we tried to optimize the pages for the UK site to make them more UK-related and avoid content duplication. I've also used schema to tell google it's a UK-based site and set up Google my business and got more local citations. Besides, If you could give me any suggestions, it'd be perfect.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Insightful_Media
Thank you so much for your time and advice.1 -
Could another site copying my content hurt my ranking?
Earlier this week I asked why a page of mine might not be ranking locally. (https://moz.com/community/q/what-could-be-stopping-us-from-ranking-locally). Maybe this might be part of the answer – another firm has copied huge chunks of my website copy: **My company: **https://idearocketanimation.com/video-production-company/ The other company: http://studio3dm.com/studio3dm-com/video/ Could this be causing my page to not rank? And is there anything I can do about it, other than huff and puff to the other firm? (Which I am already doing.)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wagster0 -
Best wordpress plugin for redirects, Old to new pages
What is the best wordpress plugin for redirects, Old to new pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael.Leonard1 -
95% of organic traffic lands in my homepage, despite having a 250 page website with a "seo optimized" hierarchical structure. Any suggestion as to what might be happening?
Challenging issue All the "usual suspects" have been discarded: all pages included in google index, no google penalties, metas optimized, kw's segregated by pages/cluster of pages to avoid cannibalization... BUT, we know we are missing something website is www.e-florex.com and is an e-commerce site based on magento Any ideas you might think are worth exploring? Thanks in advance for your help Juan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | juanmarn0 -
Differences between "casas rusticas" and "casas rústicas"
Hi All, I've a client with this website: http://www.e-rustica.com/casas-rusticas It's a spanish realtor for special houses (rustic). We wanto it to be good posited as "casas rústicas" that it's the correct keyword and asl "casas rusticas" that it's like lot of people write it. Do you know if google see this two keywords as the same? Even we've done SEO for "casas rústicas" it's much better posited for "casas rusticas". Regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lbenzo_aficiona0 -
Brand new domain with a lot of old links.
So I just bought http://penny-auctions.co/ a couple of days ago, ignore the fact it's not set up yet and generally just a mess, and something kept bugging me about why the domain authority kept showing as 25 in the SEOmoz toolbar. Now initially I'd set it up as www. and with the trailing slash so the PA was 1, however after a bit of exploration it seems that someone has been building links to the non-www version of the domain for at least a year! The site has never been owned before so I've now made the non-www version the default and have a 5 day old site with PA 35 and DA 25! SEOmoz shows PA - 45 links, 20 domains and DA - 341 links, 113 domains. Majestic Historic - 8598 links, 236 domains and Fresh - 160 links, 62 domains. Brilliant! Except they're all spamtastic. What do you think this will do for my future attempts at ranking? Should I create pages that have links to them or just 301 them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StalkerB0 -
What metrics is Google looking for to classify a websites as a "Store" or "Brand"
Our company is both a store and brand as we sell manufacture direct. We are not included in Google's "Related Searches for widgets:" Picture attached as reference (we are not selling computers ... just an example) What is Google looking for to pull these brands and stores? hXSLn.gif
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tatermarketing0 -
How long for new pages to rank
Hi Guys, Our website has some really good serps for our established keyword phrases some of which are quite competitive. We recently acquired and have begun selling some new brands through our online shop and launched new pages for these brands around 2 months ago. They are quite competitive ("merrell shoes" and "timberland boots" for example in google.co.uk) terms. Do you think we should get some keyword rich links built into these new pages from external sites such as blogs - or is there chances of ranking well driven more off our overall site authority/link profile? In other peoples experience, what is a typical realistic timeframe to start getting meaningful serps on new pages/keyword phrases (I know that is hard to answer - but ball parks figures appreciated). Thank you everyone in advance. Kind Regards (and happy thanksgiving to our US friends)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ConradC
Conrad Cranfield0