Domains and Domain Authority
-
Looking for some advice
I have a domain that has been registered since 1999 and currently hosts my website - the problem is that my business has moved in a different direction and my URL is no longer associated with my main product offering. For example in the past I was xyzgarden.com however now something like xyzhomedecor.com is much more appropriate.
How should I handle this so that I am not at a disadvantage for SEO.
thanks!
-
I think Emily is on the right track here. You'll want to 301 redirect to pages that are similar in content. Your top level page on flowers from the old site should redirect to the top level page for flowers on the new site for example. It's more time consuming to implement one to one redirects this way rather than forwarding the entire domain to the homepage, but it will keep your referral traffic intact and Google is more likely to pass on the equity you've built over the years.
-
Hi Emily,
Thanks for the reply. Basically, we went from being a garden centre to expanding into other areas. Like clothing and home decor. Because the garden market in my city is not like it used to be, we knew we needed to change our product offerings to keep thriving. So while, we still sell flowers and potted plants, we know it's not our "money maker" and not where we want to focus our SEO efforts.
-
Hello,
In most cases I would simply recommend a 301 redirect map to update your domain, if you're sticking with the same host. There are some safety steps here, like doing them gradually, starting with pages that have lower traffic,etc.. (here's a youtube video from Matt Cutts on how to change your domain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wATxftE8ooE)
However, you mentioned that your product offerings are different -- the question here is _how different _? You could do the redirect, but if Google now notices that your main content and site objective are entirely different than it used to be, than it is essentially a new site and you may not have those rankings carried over. If it's simply that your content and products are the same or similar, but you would like your domain name to better represent your site, then go ahead and implement the redirect, just make sure that you have your site claimed and verified in search console first and watch that video from google on the topic.
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
-
301 Redirecting from domain to subdomain
We're taking on a redesign of our corporate site on our main domain. We also have a number of well established, product based subdomains. There are a number of content pages that currently live on the corporate site that rank well, and bring in a great deal of traffic, though we are considering placing 301 redirects in place to point that traffic to the appropriate pages on the subdomains. If redirected correctly, can we expect the SEO value of the content pages currently living on the corporate site to transfer to the subdomains, or will we be negatively impacting our SEO by transferring this content from one domain to multiple subdomains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris81980 -
NEW WEBSITE WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO RECOVERY THE AUTHORITY OF OLD DOMAIN NAME?
HOW TO DO RECOVERY AUTHORITY OF OLD DOMAIN NAME? I got some advise on this in another post here on MOZ based on this i need a few answers TO SUMMERIZE**:****.** My client got some REALLY bad advice when they got their new website. So they ended up changing the domain name and just redirecting everything from the old domain and old website to the front page of the new domain and new website. As the new domain not optimized for SEO they of cause now are not ranking on anything in Google anymore. QUESTION 1 According to my client, they use to rank well on keywords for the old domain and get a lot of organic traffic. They don’t have access to their old google analytics account, and don’t have any reports on their rankings. Can anyone suggestions how I can find out what keywords they were ranking on? QUESTION 2 I will change the domain name back to the old domnain name (the client actually prefer the old domain name) But how to get back most possible page authority: For information titles, descriptions, content has all been rewritten. A - Redirect I will try to match the old urls with the new ones. B - Recreate site structure Make the URL structure of the new website look like the old URL structure Etc. the old structure use to be like olddomain.com/our-destinations/cambadia.html (old) newdomain.com/destinations/Cambodia (new) Or olddomain.com/private-tours.html (old) newdomain.com/tailor-made (new) does the html in the old urls need any attention when recreating the permalinks in the new websites. Look forward to hear your thoughts on this, thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nm19770 -
Root Domain v Subdomain
Hi, Just doing some analysis on a domain, and the (external) linking root domains show as:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
21 to Root Domain
4 to Subdomain The site is hosted under the www. subdomain version and there is no 301 from domain to www.domain Should the site be: Hosted on the root domain instead of subdomain 301 all incoming requests on domain to point to www.domain (subdomain) Any comments and experience on this type of situation appreciated!0 -
Unique domains vs. single domain for UGC sites?
Working on a client project - a UGC community that has a DTC model as well as a white label model. Is it categorically better to have them all under the same domain? Trying to figure which is better: XXX,XXX pages on one site vs. A smaller XXX,XXX pages on one site and XX,XXX pages on 10-20 other sites all pointing to the primary site. The thinking on the second was that those domains would likely achieve high DA as well as the primary, and would passing their value to the primary. Thoughts? Any other considerations we should be thinking about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | intentionally0 -
Changing the G+ Author
Hello, We have a website we are linking using schema / google places to a G+ profile. however, this is a person in the company and may change in the future. Is there any issue (e.g. TOS issue) with Google to have one author of a website and then change to another (e.g. change from author being one G+ account ot another with a new image/profile/person)? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinemktg10 -
Is my other domain making me not rank?
Hi there, We have a .co.uk website which was ranking well for a number of highly competitive keywords, however in February 2012 those rankings for those keywords suddenly dropped off Google all together and have never came back. A few possibilties to why this has happened: We launched a .ie website which has exactly the same content, could this be the reason for the drop? I have put in all the necessary steps in making sure Google ranks these geographically correct by using hreflang and making sure everything is setup properly in webmaster tools. Why I think it could be this: If I copy and paste the first few paragraphs of text from the pages in the .co.uk website that were ranked highly in Google.co.uk it's the .ie version that appears not the .co.uk version. Here is the webpages in question: http://www.avogel.co.uk/health/menopause/ http://www.avogel.ie/health/menopause/ Forgot to mention, the reason we have these two websites is due to different currency and legalities. Hope someone can help me out with this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Hyphen domain effect SEO?
Hi Guys, I am looking to buy some domain that have the keyword I want in - but my question is; Does using hypehns in a domain effect your SEO? Thanks Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GAZ090 -
Setting up a Blog - Guest Authors
I am planning on setting up a blog in the next couple months. We would like to have 10 different categories that professionals can write about and submit articles. Any suggestions on which blogging software to put on the site. So far I have heard of WordPress and Joomla. (Not sure which is the best version) We want it to maybe have the bloggers logo or pictures, date, etc. None of us have had any experience with this so we needed some input. I have been reading everywhere that blogging is huge for SEO and so I just wanted to improve ours plus maybe drive more traffic with a high level blog for professionals. Any ideas or even books that I should go purchase to study up. When we do this it would be great to get it set up properly from the get go. 🙂 Boo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0