Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
How To Increase Blog DA to 50+
Hey, I am wondering to know the key metrics which MOZ considers before giving a blog of DA 50+. I have tried to search but couldn't find the best answers so was wondering how it's achieved. For example a site named "SportsALA" have a DA of 20 but i see they have links from many sites. I have checked other sites as well for example and they have less RDs but still had higher DA. Can anyone help me to explain Moz DA 2.0 factors a bit more. Thanks
Link Building | | Hamzayounas11 -
Exact Domain Match does it help or distract?
Does owning / buying an exact domain match help or not necessary? For example our main website ranks for nearly 14,800 Keywords but one KW we are trying to get in the top spot for we are currently at the bottom of page #1. We do see an exact domain match available so we purchased it but i don't know if it would actually help us or distract us. I was thinking we could create an article about the keyword on that exact domain then do some on page seo and back linking. But would that be more of a distraction VS. just focusing on getting more high quality back links to the main website we have ranked on Page 1 at the bottom? Any ideas or benefits to use an exact domain match to help boost also?
Link Building | | Cfarcher0 -
What is the difference between anchor text and external links?
I understand you 'Pro's' may fins this a silly question. But I'm a visual learner and I can't seem to grasp this. I've read the pages MOZ has provided on anchor text and external links and my question is, how are they different? And which one is more important to seo? Can someone who has a great ability to simplify things, please help me understand this. They seem very similar to me but, I know there has to be more to it. External links: External Links are hyperlinks that point at (target) any domain other than the domain the link exists on (source) **Anchor Text: **Anchor text is the visible characters and words that hyperlinks display when linking to another document or location on the web. Thanks is advance, Lauren.
Link Building | | MissThumann0 -
Would you consider these domains spammy or at risk for penguin penalty?
I'm doing a bit of competitor backlink auditing and am curious how you view these domains? I also am doing this for others as a comparison and growing reference maybe of domains that they can crosscheck with their own backlink profile and make sure these aren't on there, in preparation for penguin algo release to core. Either chime in with known domains to be spam, and I will create a live list based on answers here. Domain Domain Rating directoryworld.net 64
Link Building | | Deacyde
prlog.ru 60
torchbrowser.com 60
jzip.com 58
localbiznetwork.com 58
gimpsy.com 54
pageonepower.com 52
nashvillelife.com 49
2thetopdesign.com 49
seocounsel.com 48
healthywealthyaffiliate.com 48
hollinslegal.com 48 On a working Disavow list either in root domain or extended url form seocourt.com
wldirectory.com
onpaco.com
lostdirectory.com
ligginit.comligginit.com
alivedir.net
tiptopdirectory.com
onemilliondirectory.com
submittolinkdirectory.com I've read that sitewide footer links even from parent company sites will only count as one, regardless of how many links they have, I was wondering if that was true as well?0 -
Reposting my articles on other blogs - good or bad?
Hi there! Our blog is full of really good articles on consumer finance topics. Recently we established contact with some local media and even government agencies who said they will be happy to repost our articles on their sites. Question: is it ok to repost our articles as they are and link back to us, or shall we rewrite them to make them 100% original? The media doesn't insist on original content, but I'd like to get SEO benefit from it (the sites are really good). If original content gives us more SEO value, we're happy to do it Please advise. P.S. Using rel=canonicals is not an option (it's government websites and some old school media - they are very not tech savvy).
Link Building | | imoney0 -
Does blocking domains help remove bad links?
I have affiliate websites that are harming for one of 2 reasons: 1. They are on adult websites (and I don't want to be in a bad neighborhood) or 2. They are using a Frameset (so their content appears identical to mine and I am getting "credit" for all their junk links) I cannot get these websites to remove our links so I have blocked their IPs on our production firewall. Is this an effective method or should I do something else with these links?
Link Building | | theLotter0 -
Blog. vs /Blog
I need to be able to explain to a client the difference from an SEO perspective between Blog. vs /Blog. www.website.com/Blog vs Blog.website.com The client wants to know which one will help there website with SEO. I belive both will but /Blog will more. I'm looking for a tangible answer only centered around this subject. Thanks,
Link Building | | cfield_splashmedia.com0 -
Dofollow Blog Comments
I wanna buy dofollow comments, can be there any negative effects? I understand that is a kind of a black hat seo, but i saw many sites who used this type of service and get boosted in the search engine ranking.
Link Building | | Alexsmenaru0