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
-
Is there a benefit to changing .com domain to .edu?
Hey All! I'm wondering if there is any benefit (or if benefit could possibly outweigh the cost) to changing a domain from .com to a new .edu domain. The current .com domain has decent credibility already, and the .edu will have never been used before.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | frankandmaven1 -
Domain Name
Hello everyone Please advice what to do in a situation when searching for a domain: www.domain.com google is recommending domain.org ? when these are completely 2 different sites? Does it has to do with trust rank? Please advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FusionMediaLimited0 -
Should I serve images from the same Top level domain as the current domain?
We run a multidomain e-commerce website that targets each country respectively: .be -> Belgium .co.uk -> United Kingdom etc... .com for all other countries We also serve our product images via a media subdomain eg. "media.ourdomain.be/image.jpg"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jef2220
This means that all TLD's contain the images of the .be media subdomain. Which is acually seen as an outbound link. We are considering to change this setup so that it serves the images from the same domain as the current TLD, which would make more sense: .be will serve images from media.ourdomain.be .co.uk -> media.ourdomain.co.uk etc.. My question is: Does google image search take the extension of the TLD into consideration? So that for example German users will be more likely to see an image that is served on a .de domain?0 -
Is it worth buying a GREAT domain with rank?
Hey Guys, I am in communication with the owner of a domain with very good domain rank - that ranks well for keywords important to me. Strangely enough the website it terrible?! (I though Google valued "content" these days?!). Anyhow, it's link profile is tidy including sites such as DMOZ. His asking price for the domain is SUBSTANTIAL, however where it ranks for some keywords would be valuable for our organisation if we could leverage its authority. My questions are: 1) Is it worth buys a GREAT domain with a crappy website that ranks for keywords that are important to us? 2) (if the answer to 1 is YES) How should one go about leveraging the rank to benefit our site/business? 3) What would be the best way to utilise the site - redirects? Build out some kind of content and link to main site? Anyhow, hopefully some of you have great experience in this domain in the current Google Panda/Penguin white hat world? Would REALLY appreciate your thoughts!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | love-seo-goodness1 -
Multiple domain level redirects to unique sub-folder on one domain...
Hi, I have a restaurant menu directory listing website (for example www.menus.com). Restaurant can have there menu listed on this site along with other details such as opening hours, photos ect. An example of a restaurant url might be www.menus.com/london/bobs-pizza. A feature i would like to offer is the ability for Bob's pizza to use the menus.com website listing as his own website (let assume he has no website currently). I would like to purchase www.bobspizza.com and 301 redirect to www.menus.com/london/bobs-pizza Why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blackrails
So bob can then list bobspizza.com on his advertising material (business cards etc, rather than www.menus.com/london/bobs-pizza). I was considering using a 301 redirect for this though have been told that too many domain level redirects to one single domain can be flagged as spam by Google. Is there any other way to achieve this outcome without being penalised? Rel canonical url, url masking? Other things to note: It is fine if www.bobspizza.com is NOT listed in search results. I would ideally like any link juice pointing to www.bobspizza.com to pass onto www.menus.com though this is a nice to have. If it comes at the cost of being penalised i can live without the link juice from this. Thanks0 -
How to set up something that might let visitors the possibility to shift from one domain to the other?
hi experts of seo,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidoboem
could you help me to set up my multilanguage site? WHAT'S HAPPENED
we are translating our site and we have to DECIDE the best technical solution for us SEO target:
we haven't decided yet, anyway we are going to try to be ranked in other countries, especially in emergent countries FINALLY we select the different domain strategy ( .it domain for the italian and .com for the english ) so what are my questions?
how to make them linking without having seo problem, maybe with a intro page ?
and how to set up something that might let visitors the possibility to shift from one to the other? thank you very much Guido0 -
Is my other domain making me not rank?
Hi there, We have a .co.uk website which was ranking well for a number of highly competitive keywords, however in February 2012 those rankings for those keywords suddenly dropped off Google all together and have never came back. A few possibilties to why this has happened: We launched a .ie website which has exactly the same content, could this be the reason for the drop? I have put in all the necessary steps in making sure Google ranks these geographically correct by using hreflang and making sure everything is setup properly in webmaster tools. Why I think it could be this: If I copy and paste the first few paragraphs of text from the pages in the .co.uk website that were ranked highly in Google.co.uk it's the .ie version that appears not the .co.uk version. Here is the webpages in question: http://www.avogel.co.uk/health/menopause/ http://www.avogel.ie/health/menopause/ Forgot to mention, the reason we have these two websites is due to different currency and legalities. Hope someone can help me out with this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
7 years old domain sandboxed for 8 months, wait or make a domain change?
Hello folks The questions is, if a domain, 7 years old being sandboxed due to "notice of unnatural links to website" does it make sense to make a domain change (301 permanent redirect and make a "domain change" under google webmaster tools) to another, aged(!) domain name?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ferray
Website being sandboxed for over 8 months already and there is no chance to do anything with those "unnatural" links to website... Any suggestions?0