Disadvantages of Migrating Website to New URL

[MainstreamMktg]

Hi There,

I am currently struggling with the ranking of my website. No matter how many initiatives I try (backlinking, blog commenting, social posting, etc.) I can't seem to make any progression in Google Search. I've done competitive metrics through Open Site Explorer and can't seem to really find the reason why my site is not ranking as well as my competitors. The only one possible glaring element I've thought about is my website URL. This company is in the heating and cooling industry and majority of my competitors have either "heating" or "cooling" or both in their website URL's but mine does not.

Does anyone have any thoughts or recommendations on if changing my URL and then redirecting my current URL would be a step in the right direction help me to climb the rankings in Google Search?

Thanks!

[MainstreamMktg]

Matt Dunlop

• 4 minutes ago
• Edit

Thank you so much for the reply!

I've been working on tracking, analyzing and optimizing this particular website for about a year now. I've optimized my homepage for the best and most specific keyword I can and I've got a 94% optimization score on the page (I can't put the keyword in the URL as it's the homepage). I've added in my competitors into OSE and reviewed their backlinks and besides some local advertising backlinks they have received, my Moz stats are much better than the competition. There is one competitor in particular that is mult-national company and I know that as a small business I don't stand a change in ranking higher than them, however, the other top competitor I have in my local market - does not optimize and still ranks higher than my site. One of the largest frustrations I have with this particular competitor is that the page that results higher than mine has little to no content on it and in other searches (because we are in the same industry) - their homepage will rank higher than my optimized interior pages. We use facebook and link back to our service pages which contain our keywords as often as possible and my crawl from Moz shows 1 missing meta description tag (on a category) and that's it.

I did read up on the Moz Blog today and it seems like everything is on-track but there's no progress. I should also mention that the website is built on Wordpress and as far as I know from the stats I am pulling from Moz - I've covered my bases.

I'm not sure what other specifics I can offer that might assist me with this challenge.

I guess at this point - maybe a second set of eyes on an audit (outside of Moz - because I look at that all the time) is what I need????

If you have any recommendations on a comprehensive site audit, I'd be very interested.

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to this.

[MainstreamMktg]

Thank you so much for the reply!

I've been working on tracking, analyzing and optimizing this particular website for about a year now. I've optimized my homepage for the best and most specific keyword I can and I've got a 94% optimization score on the page (I can't put the keyword in the URL as it's the homepage). I've added in my competitors into OSE and reviewed their backlinks and besides some local advertising backlinks they have received, my Moz stats are much better than the competition. There is one competitor in particular that is mult-national company and I know that as a small business I don't stand a change in ranking higher than them, however, the other top competitor I have in my local market - does not optimize and still ranks higher than my site. One of the largest frustrations I have with this particular competitor is that the page that results higher than mine has little to no content on it and in other searches (because we are in the same industry) - their homepage will rank higher than my optimized interior pages. We use facebook and link back to our service pages which contain our keywords as often as possible and my crawl from Moz shows 1 missing meta description tag (on a category) and that's it.

I did read up on the Moz Blog today and it seems like everything is on-track but there's no progress. I should also mention that the website is built on Wordpress and as far as I know from the stats I am pulling from Moz - I've covered my bases.

I'm not sure what other specifics I can offer that might assist me with this challenge.

I guess at this point - maybe a second set of eyes on an audit (outside of Moz - because I look at that all the time) is what I need????

If you have any recommendations on a comprehensive site audit, I'd be very interested.

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to this.

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Matt - As Bernadette said, there are many, many reasons why your site could not be gaining on your competitors in the  SERPs. And without specifics, it's tough to say why... but unlikely to be the URL. It's actually probably due to not just one, but several reasons. As you are at the point where you are considering something as drastic as moving your site to a new domain, it sounds like now would be a good time to invest in a comprehensive site audit.

Oh, and did you happen to read today's post on The Moz Blog? I've Optimized My Site, But I'm Still Not Ranking—Help!

 

[becole]

Matt, there are really a lot of reasons why a site won't seem to gain any ground when it comes to ranking in Google. It could be links, it could be content, it could be lack of social media, it could be a lack of local links and citations, or it could be something else. It could be just that you're in a competitive market and that the competition is doing more (or has been around longer).

Regardless, it's most likely NOT the URL. Every domain name has an equal chance of ranking in the search results. So whether or not your keyword is in the URL really doesn't make any difference. It could still be a URL issue or domain name issue, such as if you have other domain names redirecting to your site or if you have used another domain name in the past that has the same content on it.

Without specifics, it's tough to pinpoint a specific reason why the site's not ranking well.