Maintaining Rank During a Domain Change
-
Looking to the community for any insights on our situation. We moved a decently ranked domain name that was ranking between 3rd-6th in organic search results to a new domain that we thought would serve us higher position in the long term. We went through Google's change of address tool and over a period of 2 to 3 weeks we went from being off the map with our new domain to showing up again around page 2 - 14-18th position. It seemed that our climb back corresponded to Google indexing our new urls. Each time a large batch was indexed we seemed to jump back up. But, in our last report we noticed that we didn't budge any higher and some of our non-branded keywords actually dropped a little. The old domain was "citychurchfamily.org" and the new domain is "citychurchbloomington.org". We were thinking that the latter would be a stronger domain in the long term. Any insights on why we haven't fully retained our former ranking value at this point or anything I should be focusing on? We are trying to rank for this phrase "churches in bloomington, in". Thanks!
-
Hi John,
Thank-you for your insight. Question, what tools did you use to do the quick check on our site? Was it the screaming from app or something else? Just want to learn how you did that.
I've went ahead and fixed the chained 301 redirect and fixed a number of the 301 redirects that were formerly not working as I initially thought they were.
What tools would you recommend to me for creating the static xml sitemap and do I need to do this for all the old pages on the site or just the ones with more traffic?
Also, once the static xml sitemap is created do I submit it on the new domain or the old domain? Probably a beginner type question here but just wanted to make sure
Finally, the change of address via google webmaster console happened for these domains: http://www.citychurchfamily.org/ and this: https://www.citychurchfamily.org/
Should I do the change of address for both the non-www versions as well?
Your help/insight is greatly appreciated.
-
Hey Andrew, thanks for putting this question to the community! Definitely a good one to dig into and remind a lot of people as to some of the basics.
It sounds like you've done a bunch of the things you should do to migrate your traffic. But, I've found a few things with just a quick glance that are definitely hurting your new domain's ranking ability. Here we go.
-
Your HTTP from your old domain redirects to the HTTPS of the old and then to the HTTPS of the new. Often I have seen that Google will treat chained 301 redirects like this as a 302 redirect, which may mean that some of your important citychurchfamily.org pages are not dropping out of the index. What you want to do is change the logic so that it works like this:
-
http://citychurchfamily.org -> https://citychurchbloomington.org
-
Your www.citychurchfamily.org (non HTTPS) redirects correctly, as does your https://www.citychurchfamily.org.
-
You still have a lot of pages from citychurchfamily.org that are indexed. Check out this site: search for your domain. You need to redirect all of those as I bet there is link equity there.
Another trick you can do to get your old pages that are redirected, but haven't dropped from the index yet out of the index is to create a static XML sitemap with those old URLs and submit that to Google through Search Console. Monitor the indexation (it should drop pretty quick if your 301s are correct) and once they're all out (or very close to it) then remove the sitemap.
Finally, did you do the site migration in Search Console for both http and https version of your old site? That may help as well.
Hope all that helps!
John
-
-
I honestly believe that your visitors must retrain Google about your website and organization.
When you moved away from your old domain you lost its long history of domain queries, navigational queries, branded searches, and visitor engagement. Slowly, these will return as your visitor base begins to engage your site and ask for it by name. These metrics don't flow through a 301.
This is how I believe it works for websites who owe their rankings to the strength of their tribe. Very different from websites who owe their rankings to the linkbuilder.
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
-
HomePage Stopped Ranking For Brand on Aged Site
I've got an odd issue (that I've never encountered in 27 years in SEO). Our home page stopped ranking for our brand "BlowFish SEO" and is no place to be seen when searching our brand. I do get the knowledge panel on the right-hand side of the page. and our about page now comes up number #1. Technically the on-page SEO is correct This page has ranked for many years for our Brand. If I search blowfish SEO west palm beach I get the home page and all the nice site links. And other various variations of branded search. Our company has lots of mentions across the web and branded backlinks. No manual penalty has been placed on us. Im starting to think some type of negative SEO attack but I can't find it. I do know someone is using my name and brand along with many other companies in cloaked doorway redirected pages to gain SEO leads.. Yeah I know I've complained about it to Google they do nothing about it.. Other things I've checked: No one else seems to be using my brand Home page canonical tag points to itself Title tag contains brand name at the front (rest of site it's at the end) No manual penalty XML sitemap contains home page (and accurate for other pages) To make this even more confusing, if you search the brand name the physical location appears on the right rail with an accurate URL. Ive added an image of the search result when I search BlowFish SEO Please note the top result is PPC the about page is 1st organc Any other ideas that I may be missing? BT8F1fD.png
Local Website Optimization | | BlowFish-SEO0 -
I have a USA Shopify store and want to create a UK store. Should I use a domain or a sub-domain for the new store?
I'm currently running 2x Shopify Stores (names changed from actual): "coolpants.com" is our UK store "us.coolpants.com" is our USA store However, Google Analytics has shown that most of the traffic to "coolpants.com" comes from the USA, and this market has our biggest growth potential. So we want to switch our domain setup to the below: Make "coolpants.com" our USA store Stop using "us.coolpants.com" and redirect it to "coolpants.com" Set up our UK store as a new domain ("coolpants.co.uk) or subdomain ("uk.coolpants.com") My question is – should I set up the UK store as a domain or a sub-domain? What are the pros and cons of each? Thank you in advance for any help!
Local Website Optimization | | benkapow0 -
Breaking through strong competition domains
We are trying to rank this domain: https://citychurchbloomington.org/ for this phrase churches in bloomington in. We recently had updated our domain name from citychurchfamily.org to citychurchbloomington.org because 1) it made sense for the organization, the end-user searching, and to help our rankings. Currently we are at position #4 on page 1 but have three sites ahead of us: churchfinder - in the last year this site came out of nowhere and slowly made its way up to the top spot high rock - this church had held spot #1 for many years and we've struggled to challenge it's place on the search results and are somewhat unclear why sherwood oaks - this site had been in spot #2 for many years and at times we've been able to challenge it's position but its held fairly tightly at spot #2 in the past, #3 since churchfinder rose up in the last year We've done competitive research and made some changes to our meta title, description, and h1 tag on our site but we're looking to make our next move to try and break into this top tier of results. I'm asking the community here for any insight/suggestions into what kind of move we should be exploring or making at this stage to move up. Sincerely, Andrew
Local Website Optimization | | a_toohill0 -
Ranking nationally but not locally
Hi everyone, I'm working with a client that has a strange situation. He's ranking for his target keyword on a national level but when searching locally, he's in the 100s (see attached). Any idea what could be going on here? He did have an old domain that got hacked that is redirecting to his current domain. Thanks, Tim lmSSXdT
Local Website Optimization | | TimKelsey0 -
Any idea how to solve sub domain tracking using GTMv2?
my traffic goes to referral if visitors visits in my subdomain page. i have tried adding my subdomain in referral exclusion list and other ways via GTM posted in some articles, nothing seems to be working for me. any suggestions how to solve this issue
Local Website Optimization | | Jenifer300 -
I can't get my page to rank. What am I doing wrong?
I'm new to this forum and this is my first question. So if I'm not supposed to ask this type of question, please forgive me. I'm trying my best to get http://www.westcoastflenterprises.com/#!roofing/bbb1e to rank on the first page in Google for "roofing contractors" in the following SW Florida cities: "Naples, Bonita Springs, and Fort Myers." Our company has a physical address in Fort Myers only so I understand it's going to be harder to get it to rank for Naples and Bonita Springs. But I can't even get this page to rank well for "roofing contractors in Fort Myers." The page authority is 25 and our domain authority is 27. Our home page authority is 39. Our primary category in Google is building restoration & preservation. But we have divisions in our company: Roofing Concrete Ornamental metals I would love it if our roofing page could rank higher than the third page, which is where it currently sits. I worked really hard to get each of our roofing-material manufacturers to link directly to our roofing page, not the home page. My hope is that you can help me because I'm really discouraged. Thanks in advance.
Local Website Optimization | | Jason_Taylor0 -
Problem ranking page with a double name and an "&"
I have a client with a double name and a & like: Jones & Jones. I and using all in one SEO on a Wordpress site. Their home page is not ranking even though I have Jones, Jones & Jones and Jones and Jones listed in the keywords. Interestingly enough other pages where I did not list the home page rank when you do a serach for "Jones & Jones" I have not had this issue with other sites but have never had a name repeated and and & in between... any advice woild be appreciate.. I just signed up for a trial of MOZ...
Local Website Optimization | | ajgar0 -
Site was hacked - do I need to change my phone number?
The site I was leasing was hacked about a year ago. I've bought a new domain and changed everything about the site. It is completely separated from the old domain. However, my current phone number is still visible on the old site and I can't get it down. I really don't want to get a new phone number, but the SEO success of my new site is extremely important. Is there anyway the fact that my old phone number on the hacked site could hurt my new site's standing in Google? Thank you so much!
Local Website Optimization | | OptimizationMegan0