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
-
Is there a downside to "closing" a domain and 301'ing to to your main domain?
We have a domain which was optimized for a specific keyword. It does very well for that keyword, but seems like it has in turn caused our primary domain to be penalized (back to page 3) for that same keyword (We think they've figured out the connection). The optimized domain (only one page) has links on it to our primary domain, so I don't want to delete it as that's where our traffic currently comes from. But if I deleted it and 301'ed it to the primary domain is there a downside? Alternatively I could disavow it, but if the search engines know it's the same owner will they hold that against all domains? Or, alternatively again. Should I turn it into a more substantial website? Which could in turn remove it's "spamminess". Any suggestions are welcomed!
Link Building | | absoauto0 -
Is guest blogging still working?
Hi, Anyone still using guest blog tatics (sush as http://myblogguest.com/) as an effort on seo? Is that still a valid option nowadays. Thanks
Link Building | | LauraHT0 -
Where can I go to find the latest links to my domain?
I have checked the link analysis section and looked at link history. I have also checked Open Site Explorer but I can't seem to find a way to just show me the most recent links to my site . . .
Link Building | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Google to devalue guest blog links?
There's a lot of talk at the minute about google possible devaluing guest post links. I wondered what people thought of this and whether it is likely to happen? If it does happen then how will google identify 'spam' guest posts and links? I guess it's fair to assume that if the post is well written, autoriative and adds value to a site with a knoweldgable perspective then it will be counted? It can be very hard to define how google will define a 'quality guest post'? Any ideas? Here's what Matt has to say... http://www.webpronews.com/matt-cutts-weighs-in-on-guest-blogging-for-links-2012-10
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
How to link building 5days domain
i like to start give some backlinks to my brand new domain any advices for new domain ?
Link Building | | cutekid10 -
Why do the results in SEOmoz and OSE for Linking Root Domains differ?
In SEOmoz, in a campaign we set up, it shows 600+ Linking Root Domains, but in OSE it shows 300+ Linking Root Domains- quite a difference. Any help gratefully received. Thanks.
Link Building | | ThinkingJuice0 -
Blog Commenting - Useful?
How useful are you finding blog commenting to be regarding link building? I was having a discussion with someone about this today, and I thought some input from the Moz community may be helpful. How helpful do you find blog commenting to be in link building? Do you have any evidence of effectiveness/ineffectiveness? Is it something you still currently do (for link building)? Any input is appreciated. Thanks guys!
Link Building | | DeliaAssociates0 -
Domain Autorithy drop from 18 to 14!!
Hello, I was surprised today by my domain autorithy drop from 18 to 14 in one single day. A couple of days ago I started to use Hubspot demo and for some strange reoson yesterday I had a huge ammount of visits yesterday. My domain autorithy was 18 yesterday and today is 14 and the links to my site increased almost 1500. Whats is happening? Tks in advance! Pedro Pereira
Link Building | | PedroM0