Possible to Change Domain Name without Negative Rankings
-
Is it possible to migrate to a new domain name without negatively impacting SEO?
Our existing domain name (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) is a bit spammy. It has been used for almost 10 years. We would like to migrate it to www.metro-manhattan.com. The metro-manhattan domain has been registered about 5 years and it redirects to the nyc-officespace-leader.com domain.
The nyc-officespace-leader.com has a domain authority of 23 and a page authority of 32. The metro-manhattan domain has a domain authority of 7 and a page authority of 23.
Is it possible to make this transition without losing domain authority and page rank? I would think that having two domains might loo spammy to Google and this change would be a positive in the long term. We do understand that the redirects for each page would need to be done carefully.
Thanks, Alan
-
Considering that traffic for this site is about 4,000 visitors per month and the domain authority is 23 and a page authority is only 32 would that make it easier and faster to recover traffic and ranking?
The site currently has about 400 pages, what if I prepare re-writes on about 100 pages of text before the domain change and then gradually add this content after the switch. Would that speed recovery?
I intend to re-write the content anyway but perhaps to do so after the new domain gets launched.
On the other hand I may keep the domain as is if this switching is too much trouble. However the URL does not match my company name and I am concerned this discordance could be harming the site long term.
-
Do a full 301 redirect and don't worry so much about DA/PA - they are not google metrics and the numbers themselves don't influence google rankings. But just as Monica said, you will see a drop in rankings but they should be back up in 2 weeks or so.
-
I guess it depends on what kind of links you want to build. You can buy thousands of links all at once but that will only hurt you in the long run. The rule I follow is to stay within 10-15% of your existing links. That is just a metric I use to help explain to clients what "natural" link building should really look like.
You will be passing some link juice to your new domain, but it isn't a fluid transfer, meaning you will not reach the DA of 23 simply by redirecting the old domain. You will get a higher domain authority by building reputable, quality links. I wouldn't do anymore than 20 a month, since there are only 100 links to the metro-manhattan.com domain.
-
Considering the existing domain authority is only 23 do you think that that building new links for the metro-manhattan domain could be accomplished without a huge effort?
There are less than 100 domains linking to the existing URL.
Thanks, Alan
-
DA is mainly influenced by link activity. I don't think that it would be any easier to build DA and PA on your metro-manhattan domain as it would any other domain. It will take time to build links effectively and organically. I also agree with EGOL. I believe you should look into metromanhattan.com instead of having a hyphenated domain.
-
Thanks for your response. I understand that DA and PA will not be transferred seamlessly. However the existing domain authority is 23 and a page authority is 32. Considering these numbers are relatively low, does it make it easier to recover them if I redirect the site to a new domain?
Note the existing domain has been around for several years and has a domain authority of 7 and a page authority of 23.
Thanks, Alan
-
That is a really good point. The - in a domain name is usually not a good thing.
Just to be clear, I wasn't saying it isn't impossible to regain rankings over time. It just won't happen instantaneously. It is possible over time to actually grow more and be better than the old domain, but that will take work.
-
I changed domains a while ago and dropped badly in the rankings. The original domain was popular and getting a lot of type-in traffic and domain query traffic - many thousands of these per month. I believe that these were supporting it in the rankings.
When the new domain went up it was suddenly getting zero domain queries and type-in visitors. But over six or so months those strengthened and now it is back at the top of the SERPs, holding positions 1 and 2 with over 10,000 domain queries per month.
Just an opinion, I would not change my domain to metro-manhattan.com. I would go buy metromanhattan.com. If your domain has any popularity at all then a lot of people are typing in that domain name.
-
No, that is not realistic. You will implement 301 redirects which will help you keep some traffic and link juice, but your DA and PA will not be transferred seamlessly. You will have to build the DA and PA of your metro-manhattan.com site the organic way with quality links and great content.
The 301 redirects might cause a boost in DA, but it will not be equal to what you have now.
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 -
How do I test images in WP migration without Changing URLs?
I'm redesigning example.com on a subdomain of my own site, so at example.mysite.com. As part of the redesign, I am optimizing the site's images. I used Wordpress Importer to get the content to the development site, but I did not import the images. Instead, I added the images to the development site by copying and moving over the contents of example.com's uploads folder. The posts at example.mysite.com are showing the images, but they are pulling them from the original location. I tried adding the following code to wp-config.php under the (misunderstood?) impression that the image URLs would use the development site's domain: 1 define('WP_HOME', 'http://example.mysite.com');
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimmiedawn
2 define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://example.mysite.com'); I am not seeing any change and the images are still pulling from the original site. How can I test the images on the current site without actually changing the URLs in the database. (If I understand correctly, I could search and replace, but that is not what I am trying to achieve.) The original domain is not changing with the redesign, so there is no need to actually change the URLs. I just need to test the images, as I will be removing those that are not being used as well as optimizing the remaining images before moving the redesigned site over to the original domain.0 -
Product with two common names: A separate page for each name, or both on one page?
This is a real-life problem on my ecommerce store for the drying rack we manufacture: Some people call it a Clothes Drying Rack, while others call it a Laundry Drying Rack, but it's really the same thing. Search volume is higher for the clothes version, so give it the most attention. I currently have 2 separate pages with the On-Page optimization focused on each name (URL, Title, h1, img alts, etc) Here the two drying rack pages: clothes focused page and laundry focused page But the ranking of both pages is terrible. The fairly generic homepage shows up instead of the individual pages in Google searches for the clothes drying rack and for laundry drying rack. But I can get the individual page to appear in a long-tail search like this: round wooden clothes drying rack So my thought is maybe I should just combine both of these pages into one page that will hopefully be more powerful. We would have to set up the On-Page optimization to cover both "clothes & laundry drying rack" but that seems possible. Please share your thoughts. Is this a good idea or a bad idea? Is there another solution? Thanks for your help! Greg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregB1230 -
Sub Domain
Hi everybody, My competition has started to use the sub-domains vastly. He has created one sub domain for every single city and keyword. Is it something that I should be worried of? Is it a good idea I start doing the same thing? Thanks for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Armin6660 -
Multiple domains?
I do own a domain for my business right now, and would have a few questions, regarding the increase or traffic for my website and getting new business 1. Is it worth to purchase multiple domains, keyword search relevant, to my business? 2. If so how is the best way to use it? : have them redirect to my own website? a specific type of redirect? do I make a separate website for each of them? 3. for ex if the keyword is " tile and grout". I figured would be best to own "tileandgrout.com". How about "tile-and-grout.com"? thank you in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidIRC0 -
Summarize your question.Irrelevant Domain Name, relevant page name
Hello All, My website is a PC Repair website called 'Paulspcrepair.co.uk' (example). And recently I want to start my SEO branch to the website, now, would it be better : A: Use my domain Authority already obtained and create a new page, highly optimized for SEO searches. OR B: Create a whole new website, such as 'PaulsSEOWorkshop.co.uk'. If so, why? I can't decide what to try.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul_Tovey0 -
SERP Drop overnight for one of our domains - could it be the title changes?
Hi Scratching our heads here over SERP drop for some of our product pages, Although they are all uniquely titled with the product name, we have recently added 4 words at the end of our title, like a slogan which are repeated on every one of our product pages. However, we've also seen a drop, but not as far, on related category pages, these have unique titles. When we talk about "unique title" being important for SEO, does that mean 0 reptition between page titles? I see many companies use their site name in the title (even here see | SEOMOZ Q&A - would four words at the end of a title do this? Or am i barking up the wrong tree entirely? Ive seen so much movement over the past few weeks its hard to correlate anything we do with the result, so even after advise I think i'll wait a week
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | xoffie0