Transferring website onto a new domain and it has disappeared in the rankings
-
Hi,
First time posting!
Our website was page 1 for just about all local searches (legal related). Due to a rebrand we took the site over onto a new domain name and it has totally dropped - on average pages 8-9, even for local searches.
The transfer was done back in May, I did expect a hit but I assumed it would recover fairly quickly but it doesn't seem to be the case.
Any ideas/advice/tips would be greatly appreciated
Jamie
-
Thank you everyone. I've followed all the good practice suggestions etc. It's still WAY back in the rankings but is making progress!
-
Unfortunately, sometimes a drop like this is to be expected. Think about it - now you have a brand new domain age. Before, your older domain was helping your rankings. While that is not the only this negatively hurting you, it is one that is a big deal for the authority of your website.
I would work on building our your new website (both service pages and blogs) to indicate that you are THE authority in your local service area. Like Jordan said, definitely ensure that all your local citations are correct and updated with the new domain. If there are any inconsistencies this could be negatively impacting your rankings.
Rebuilding your rankings on a new domain can take time, so although this is not ideal, be patient and hopefully you will see an increase in rankings shortly.
-
Hi Jamie,
It sounds like you may not have implemented 301 redirects from the old site to the new site.
If that's the case, go and add these for each page asap! This could be all you need to get your rankings back.
Was it just a straight rebrand? Did the website template and content remain the same when the rebrand took place?
Feel free to send me a PM with the domain names and I can take a quick look for you to see if there are any other issues from the changeover.
Cheers,
David
-
Also what steps did you take during your site migration?
-
That is to be expected when you move a website to a new domain. What you can do is blog, link build and claim your local citations if you haven't already.
It will take time to build up your new domain just be patient.
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
-
Website ranking declined after connecting to CDN
Hi! We are trying to rank https://windowmart.ca for various local search terms. Our head office is in Edmonton where we try to rank https://windowmart.ca/edmonton-windows-doors/ for such terms as "windows Edmonton", "replacement windows Edmonton", "windows and doors Edmonton" as well as others. The website was the leader in its niche for around 2 years. Then we've got some server related issues, moved to a new server and connected CDN Nitropack that really improved our google speed test results. Recently we noticed that our rankings started to drop. Do you know if Nitropack can negatively effect local SEO rankings? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | vaskrupp0 -
Moving Shopify from a Sub Domain to the Full Domain
Apologies if this has been asked before. Currently we have a Shopify shop on a subdomain shop.lucybee.com a blog on subdomain blog.lucybee.com and the full domain of course. We'd now like to move everything onto Shopify on the full domain. Therefore the blog rolls into Shopify. We'll manually move pages into Shopify. Any advice or links to resources on how to manage would be gratefully received. Thank you , Jim
Technical SEO | | LucyBee0 -
Links disappeared
Hi, I am a wedding photographer based in Liverpool. I have been trying to do my own SEO for the last 6 months. I have been hovering around the top of page two for the main search terms for the past few years. I used an SEO company before christmas who got a lot of spammy links which resulted in my site dropping to page 4 of the SERPS. With the help of this forum I managed to locate them and disavow those links, and have tried to do it myself. I have managed to gain a few "featured weddings" on national wedding blogs and wrote a few articles for another wedding blog and also some forum comments. I have also got a few links for example from a wedding band in exchange for some photographs. I have got onto page 1 about 4 times, the best result was at position 6 on page 1 but every time I have slowly dropped out again. I have methodically (once a month) checked for any of the spammy links and updated the disavow list. My competitors have at best old forum comments and the like and on checking their websites with open site explorer are not actively link building at all. I have just checked my Webmaster tools and google is only recognising 51 links. (none of my good wedding blog links are there) I have an external links csv from the 28th June with 602 links on it. I changed my website around May of this year but it is still on the same domain name www.dwliverpoolphotography.co.uk. Can anybody help? Best wishes. David.
Technical SEO | | WallerD0 -
New site: More pages for usability, or fewer more detailed pages for greater domain authority flow?
Ladies and gents! We're building a new site. We have a list of 28 professions, and we're wondering whether or not to include them all on one long and detailed page, or to keep them on their own separate pages. Thinking about the flow of domain authority - I could see 28 pages diluting it quite heavily - but at the same time, I think having the separate pages would be better for the user. What do you think?
Technical SEO | | Muhammad-Isap1 -
Migration to New Domain - 301 Redirect Questions
My client is migrating their site to a new domain. I just did a big redesign, including URL structure change, and 301s from old URLs to new URLs. Now they want a new name, so we're moving forward with a new domain name. However, we're going to keep the site on the current domain while we ease customers into the new name. During that time, I'm going to be building links to the new domain name and 301 Redirecting that new one to the current domain name. Then, once we migrate the site to the new domain name, I'm then going to redirect the current domain name to the new domain name. So, my question(s) is/are: Is the above process the best way to use 301 redirects to to build links to the new domain while we transition everything? Should I (or can I) do 3 redirects from the oldest URLs, to the current URLs then to the new URLs? General question... I can't seem to find this anywhere online, but what is the best practice for what order URLs should be in in the htaccess file? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Kenny-King0 -
Eligible To Rank For Few Queries
I can't figure out why this site (www.liveathomeseniors.com) is eligible for so few search queries on Google Webmaster Tools. I know there is a lot of work to be done, but this is my biggest puzzle right now. What am I not seeing? 379 pages are indexed and yet the site is has only been deemed eligible to rank for 3 queries over the past 3 months. Is it all the repetition in the way the content has been structured? I'd appreciate people's thoughts on this. I can't see the forest for the trees. Donna
Technical SEO | | DonnaDuncan0 -
Domain Forwarding / Multiple Domain Names / or Rebuild Blogs on them
I am considering forwarding 3 very aged and valuable domain names to my main site. There were once over 100 blog posts on each blog and each one has a page authority of 45 and domain authority of 37. My question is should i put up three blogs on the domains and link them to my site or should i just forward the domains to my main site? Which will provide me with more value. I have the capability to have some one blog on them every day. However, i do not have access to any of the old blog posts. I guess i could scrape it of archive.org. Any advice would be appreciated. Scott
Technical SEO | | WindshieldGuy-2762210 -
New project old domain should I 301 redirect while new sites built
I just took on a larger scale e-commerce project and came across a tricky road block that I need some advise on. Ok I'm building the site from scratch and due to it's complexity it may take 3-4 months before I have it designed and coded. The client has a domain name that has some decent page/domain authority and I would hate to loose that while the sites being built. Currently I have nothing to display as his previous site got hacked and it was deleted by the previous web admin. Being that a blog has already been approved as part of the project I already installed wordpress to keep the domain fresh however here's the issue, I installed wordpress in a folder called blog and debating if I should 301 redirect or 302 redirect his index here? The blog will always reside in the blog folder even after launch. Will performing a 301 redirect pull all the juice away from my index page? I'm assuming yes. IF so what would occur once the project is complete and I make the ecommerce site live in the index page? Thanks in Advance! Mike
Technical SEO | | MikeDelaCruz770