Moving blogs to different domain
-
Hey guys,
We currently have some blogs on one of our pages (fraserisland.com.au) and we are launching a complete rebranding of our sites. We want to move the blogs from fraserisland.com.au to the new parent page of travelfreedom.com.au (but still link it to fraserisland.com.au), however I don't know what affect this will have on the ranking of the blogs.
The biggest thing I'm worried about is that the domain will be completely different, and not a sub domain, but I'm not sure what impact this will have on the effectiveness of SEO on the blog.
Thanks guys
-
I think this way the Ranking fluctuation will be none to minimum.
-
Thanks Dan! I totally agree with you...
-
Thanks Moosa! Just want to clarify a few points to be sure they don't get mis-understood by other readers:
Duplicate content
- just want to make sure they know, although duplicate content is not the best thing, there is no penalty per se
Cross Domain Canonical
- search engines will in fact crawl both versions. They will just not index the one with the canonical tag pointing to the source page.
-
Hi Lehia
Given that your site has relatively low domain authority right now of 17 and to eliminate user (and your) confusion, I would 301 redirect every individual blog URL to the corresponding new URL on the new domain. It's possible you may lose some ranking - but let me ask:
- how much traffic do you get from the blog right now?
- I bet there's a typical 80/20 pattern where maybe a small handful of blog URLs are getting more of the traffic?
Point being, I would really do what's best in the long-term and to consolidate your brands/domains. I've performed and seen many migrations perfectly fine.
One last thing!
- Crawl your old site or somehow gather up the old URLs from the old domain
- Throw them in Screaming Frog in List mode
- Export the "Redirect Chain" report
- And undo any redirect chains
I talk about that a little here.
Also, make sure you continue to allow Google to crawl the old domain (don't block it with robots.txt).
-
Thanks Moosa! That helps heap. I think the best practice is to just keep the blogs on their current URL, and then put in a 301 from the new parent domain to the existing blogs. That way people can find the blogs through the parent domain and be direct to the existing Urls. Would you agree?
-
Thanks Josh!
-
You said but still link it to fraserisland.co.au. From this you mean a same blog post can be access from this and the new URL?
- Two different URL containing the same content will be considered as duplicate content, which is defiantly not a good idea when it comes to rankings!
- If you 301 (let’s say you do it right) the URL from old domain to new domain. This will eliminate the duplicate content issue but redirection does lose some amount of link juice so your rankings will see a dip for few days and weeks if not permanent.
- If you set cross domain canonical, this will allow the user to see the same blog post on two different URLs but search engine will only crawl the preferred version so it will be two pages for user but search engine will only consider the preferred version. Not really a good idea in my opinion as I hope most of your blog traffic is coming from search engines anyways…
I think whatever step you will take the rankings are going to change (temporary or permanent) so you have to keep your strategy designed accordingly.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Backlinks from a secondary domain
Hi i finally figured out why my link profile is out of wack. Apparently we had a second domain registered that for some reason was active and linking to us - somewhat duplicated site. no idea when or how that happened. I wasnt with the company then. anyhow Ive now pointed the domain to a blank folder since I dont know how to disable it in 1&1 Hosting (if anyone knows please let me know!). Im wondering if this is enough? will the links still be there indexed even though the domain points to a blank folder? also how can I get google to profile my backlinks again? so I can see if it worked. Currently waiting for a new Moz crawl so Ill see if at least there my profile is looking healthier. thanks in advance!
Link Building | | ACEmina0 -
Benefit of Guest Blogging with weak relevancy
No - not that awful kind of guest blogging Matt Cutts called time on - but legitimate blogging on quality websites. Just thought I'd get that out of the way first 😉 I work for a legal services provider as a Content Marketing and PR Executive, and I have a regular spot guest posting on Search Engine People which I acquired in my previous role at an SEO agency. As I'm still working in the industry (in-house rather than for an agency) I thought I'd carry it on, not only because it's good for me personally, but because it'd also be a nice link building quick win from a good site with a strong DA. My question is, with next to know relevancy between domain-domain, page-domain, page-page, is there much value in the link? To be clear, I'll be doing it anyway, but the answer might inform whether I do it under the guise of an employee of my company or just as myself. Thanks all!
Link Building | | NAHL-14300 -
Buying a domain from auction
Hi Mozer's There is a domain in auction. I can see it has a PA of 40 and DA of 29 and PR of 2 Is it worth buying for $999? any suggestions?
Link Building | | riyas_heych0 -
Host a wordpress blog as a folder or external site?
I've been speaking to our developers as I want to introduce a blog. My intention is to host the blog as part of our existing site, so the url becomes www.example.com/blog I have a personal wordpress blog and I love it, the amount of plugins, themes and ease of use makes it a fantastic platform. I spoke to my developers and requested if they could install Wordpress within a folder of our existing website. This gives me control to do plugins, custom themes etc. Straight forward I thought, but I didn't get a straight forward reply. They went on that it would require two linux php servers, a load balancer between them, and set up and configuration would take 5 days. Their day rates are high, so 5 days is a lot of money. This got me thinking, what if I hosted it externally and linked from our website, so the blog URL would be www.myblog.com This gives me the power to have a wordpress blog for cheap and use all the fantasic plugins to optimise the site (Yoast, Schema plugins etc). I know for SEO, it's better to host it as part of your existing site, the ranking juice remains in your area and it further helps strengthen the site. But then i'm thinking, if the wordpress stand alone blog works out, it will end up being a great external linker, further boosting my existing site's presense. Have any of you faced any similar problems? Thoughts?
Link Building | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Have sitelinks after 5 days buy domain
Hi all! My name is Tung, i from Vietnam. I new join SEOMoz PRO. Today i have question: My domain: cauvongmedia.com Query: https://www.google.com.vn/search?q=cau+vong+media&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 (keyword: cau vong media) This domain i buy only 5-6 days ago but have sitelinks with this keyword And my question: Does Google have done allows sitelinks with new website?
Link Building | | buithanhtung16419920 -
Domain authority
Will a link from a website with a high domain authority but a low page authority help my site build authority and rank? The reason I ask is I have the opportunity to get a .edu link however its on a sub-page with no page rank or authority.
Link Building | | shiftins0 -
Blogging to add SEO value to site... recommendations
Hi Mozzers! A client has a high authority website in the travel industry, and needs any and all advantages to get ahead in very competitive keywords. The send out a newsletter bimonthly, but have no blog, so I recommended at the very least, they publish online their emailed newsletters to add informational and relevant content. The question is, for max SEO value, should they... create a blog as a subdomain or subfolder of their existing site? should they self host a blog with a separate domain? or should they simply use a blogger/wordpress.com free blog? Consider that just adding on a blog to their existing site isn't easy. It's some old CMS that's apparently a nightmare to deal with. Plus, branding a WP install to match the site isn't something they want to spend a lot of time on. Your insight is welcome and appreciated!
Link Building | | rosstaylor0 -
PR-7 Domain - NoFollow Links
Will the NoFollow link in this article help my rankings in Google? http://www.inc.com/articles/201109/business-intelligence-software-for-small-business_pagen_2.html
Link Building | | b4tv0