Long term rankings drop after swapping primary domain

[Andy-Twizen]

Hey...this is my first post on Moz so please go easy on me!

I've recently been baffled by the ranking behavior of a domain I do SEO for. In short, the primary domain was "musashispicymayo.com". After several months of SEO efforts and a really solid PR run the site managed to run up to #1 for several target keywords. For the purposes of this question I'd like to focus on the term "spicy mayo".

"Musashispicymayo.com" was steadily climbing for as far back as page 5 until it ultimately reached #1 rank on Google for "spicy mayo". We also had another domain "musashifoods.com" which was originally 301 redirecting to "Musashispicymayo.com". About 3 months ago (shortly after acquiring the top ranking) the client wanted to reverse the domains so we started using "musashifoods.com" as the primary and redirecting "musashispicymayo.com" to that.

In summary:
ORIGINALLY: musashifoods.com 301 redirect -> musashispicymayo.com
NOW: musashispicymayo.com 301 redirect -> musashifoods.com

At the time of the swap I did the following:

• Redirected the domain using a 301 via htaccess (made sure "www" requests are forwarded too)
• Created a new Google analytics account / webmaster account for "musashifoods.com"
• Went into my old webmaster tools account and used the change of address tool
• In the new webmaster tools account i submitted a sitemap and requested a crawl of the new domain
• Ensured the new primary domain was properly configured and all pages had the correct urls in the source code
• Verified that Google has updated their index and "musashifoods.com" now shows in the results.

Now of course musashispicymayo has the keyword in the domain but I find it hard to believe that that is what caused such a dramatic and swift drop in rankings. In fact a good portion of the backlinks actually point to "musashifoods.com"...Did I miss something else here? Does Google penalize you for reversing 301 redirects like that instead of just using a new domain altogether?

Let me know if I can provide any additional info that would help clarify...any advice is greatly appreciated!

[DonnaDuncan]

I think you might have lost a slight advantage now that your domain name does not contain your primary keyword phrase. I'm not saying having your primary keyword phrase in the domain name is the b-all, end-all, but it helps.

Try putting more content on the page. It's pretty thin now, especially compared to the current top ranking sites. You're short on links too, and going up against some pretty big hitters. Try getting some direct links to your Japanese Spicy Mayo page. See if those two things help.

Meantime, I agree with Jim McKaye. Stick with it. The dust hasn't completely settled.

[JMcKaye]

With regards to the drop Andy, that could of been the missing link equity post redirect - that could of had an affect on a drop such as that.

My advice is keep the good quality link acquisition efforts up and the rankings will restore, it's just a matter of time

Thanks

[Andy-Twizen]

Hey Jamie, yeah that's what I was thinking too. I'm just really surprised that it dropped to #10 right away and hasn't moved much since the swap.

I looked back and it seems the 301 was done on May 14, 2014...nearly 3 months to the day

[JMcKaye]

Hi Andy,

I think the main question here is, how long ago was the redirect? Unfortunately, as with many things, sometimes it takes Google a long time to implement and pass the relevant link equity between domains following a 301 redirect. We had a similar situation where the rankings for the new site didn't appear for 3 months post 301 redirect - so it can take time.

Do not undo the redirect, I'd leave it there indefinitely now that you've made the change and be patient with the link equity passing.

Please remember as well that not all of your link equity will pass, so a slight drop would be expected (in most cases we've seen this)

My advice is simply to be patient and let the algorithm settle down with the redirect and cache the link equity properly (unless you did this months ago!)

Hope that helps.

Thanks Andy