Quick Question Seeking Quick Answer
-
Hi Mozzers,
I have a new client who bought a dental practice from another dentist. The old dentist has a website www.olddentistsite.com (not a real domain, just an example) and the new dentist wants there to be a message on the old dentists website Home page stating how the practice was bought.My idea just came up... most would do a message on that domain. However, would you recommend I actually create a new page in the new dentists website which the old website domain redirects to
ie: www.olddentistsite.com [redirects to >] www.newdentistsite.com/olddentistsite/ and then on this page we display a nice message about the acquisition, scheduling new patients, new logo, meet the new Dr, a video, better office hours, etc... Is this something the visitors will enjoy or get a good feeling from?
Let me know your thoughts on which option is best to implement. Looking for a few quick replies!! Thanks in advance everyone! - Patrick
-
Makes perfect sense, Paul! Thank you for the detailed account and what to be aware of. I was already planning something along these lines. The trick is getting people to see the new page once they are redirected. I'll work on this and a header bar or a pop up window may work best. All URLs will be redirected appropriately as well as it's standard practice in shutting down one site to pass authority to another. Thanks again for your insight! - Patrick
-
You absolutely want to do address this on the new site, not the old one - it's the only way you'll be able to fully transfer the ranking authority form the old site to new.
Since the old home page is almost certainly the strongest on the old site, you may want to consider redirecting it to the new home page, with some referrer-triggered dynamic explanatory text. This could then link to the "about the buyout" page you mentioned for more info. This way, the ranking authority is transferring to a critically important page on the new site, instead of just helping to rank the non-essential about buyout page itself.
Ideally, you're going to want to redirect the pages from the old site to the equivalent URLs on the new one as well. That will provide significantly better authority transfer that just redirecting all pages of the old site to new home page/about buyout page. In which case the same referrer-triggered dynamic content or a header bar can be utilised effectively for those pages as well.
Make sense?
Paul
-
Awesome! I was confident I'd get that reply, but wanted to get a 2nd opinion and really appreciate you confirming my initial thoughts.
Thanks, Kevin!
-
Yes, I would do a 301 redirect to the new site and explain the transition. Should include the content you described complete w/FAQ and answer any questions the patient may ask.
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
-
Anything I can throw money at to get a quick boost?
I run SEO for a multi-location business. Most of our locations are great and others are still ramping. SEO is a long process but we have higher expectations for these stores. While all the normal stuff get going to boost our rankings, is there anything quick I can just throw some money to get a jump start?
Local SEO | | danieldaher0 -
Variation on the subdomain/sub-directory question... Descriptive TLDs
Hi there, We have a variation on the subdomain/sub-directory question... Our business has two monetising areas, a clinic and a shop. To market them, we do recipes, blogs and social media, rather than relying primarily on SEO, but we do want to up our SEO game. Our primary site is www.example.co.uk This is Wordpress and where we market the clinic, host the recipes and blogs, and is our main email domain. Our second site is Woocommerce, at www.example.shop Our shop market is primarily in the UK, but we seem to pick up a fair amount of international business, partly because the clinic does virtual consultations to many countries. The shop is online only. We have physical clinics across the UK. Both sites cross link extensively, eg with blogs advertising products in the shop. The branding is intentionally related yet different, because they have very distinct functions, and eg. I don’t want to clutter the interface or distract people with blog or clinic once we have funnelled them to the shop checkout. I would also like to separate the blog and recipe elements from the clinic, using a slightly different theme with different functions. We use a lot of plugins, and the more we aggregate functions on the same Wordpress instance, the more likely something is to go wrong. I like the new TLDs because they are more “human”, and they identify where you are and what you are doing more clearly. We do email footers with links to example.clinic (redirected to www.example.co.uk) and example.shop. They are simple and explain what is going on. Conversely, shop.example.co.uk is not so easy to write or read out. www.example.co.uk/shop looks like an afterthought, rather than a shop in its own right with its own home page. So there would have to be a really good SEO reason for me to merge the shop into the main site with reverse proxy or multisite. Do you think that there is such a good reason? If not, by the same token, would it make sense to separate out example.blog or even naturedoc.recipes from example.clinic and use .co.uk as a single page portal to the three separate sites? My instinct, for what it is worth is that Google is smart enough to have started thinking that domains linked by topic TLDs can be equivalent to subdomains, and to recognise that we are not trying to build links from spammy unrelated sites. My last area is about human behaviour... Are people are as happy to click on or type in a new TLD like .clinic as a local .co.uk one? ...when (a) it is not a discredited TLD like .biz, and (b) it gives them more insight into what they will get when they arrive. And since we have the .uk domain, should we switch to this shorter version at the same time? I already use it for custom shortcodes (eg. example.uk/fte6 for people to type in from printed material or instagram). I can’t help feeling .uk has been unsuccessful, and its use now looks bad, even if it is shorter. Many thanks in advance.
Local SEO | | MizRabble0 -
Internation SEO question
I have a domain in the UK with ccTLD ending in ac.uk our website is www,metfilmschool.ac.uk and it ranks really well in the UK, we also own metfilmschools.com and we want to improve our SEO in the USA? Should I use the ccTDL domain and create a subdomain or should I use the .com domain? Also. because both sites are in English what are the best practices not to duplicate content and avoid being penalized by Google? Thanks Cassio
Local SEO | | cptrevisani0 -
Is CTR that important? SERP Questions (ADVICES for a case study)
My website is gabseo.ca Lately I have been following keywords my town in Canada from Mexico and I have the impression that the Google updates the SERP almost every hours for my target keyword. It is possible that the CTR on the SERP can be that powerful? Sometimes I am number 1 for "SEO Gatineau" for example and overnight I am #9 or #10, the next day I am #3... Is there another way that I can test the search result? Whn you try this query, what do you see? It started happening this week and coincidentally I didn't publish any blog articles this week... is it related? I am stressing out right now because my agency is a startup. So how can I beat the other agencies if I don't have a good CTR? I know that I will do a casestudy about this! Any comments, ideas?
Local SEO | | Gab-SEO0 -
Ideas on competitors website jumping so quickly?
Aloha Moz community! I've been chipping away on my site and have been happy to see progress on getting to the first page for some searches I'd like to rank for. That being said and during my time doing this I noticed a fellow photographer jump to the first page out of what seems like nowhere! http://emilyhelen.com/ It left me scratching my head trying to figure out where and how they're site jumped up to the front so fast and has been holding strong since then. Do you guys have any ideas or ways I could replicate that? Much appreciated as always guys! Warmest aloha, Jon Gibb
Local SEO | | Trey30 -
Why do SMB owners want more calls as a result of SEO, but don't answer 62% of them?
Working mostly with SMBs for 8 years now, we have gradually developed the notion that small business owners are hard to reach by phone. Our Customer Service agents spend hours unsuccessfully trying to reach business owners. If a potential customer calls the business, they'll have to face the same outcome. This means missed opportunities for both parties. Needless to say, one of the most important KPIs in local SEO is the number of generated phone calls...but no one's there to answer. We wanted to dig deeper into the matter, so we did a small study with 85 businesses. Results show that: 37.8% of calls are answered by a person. 37.8% of calls are answered by an answering machine, where no actual conversation (nor conversion) is possible, so we treat these calls as unanswered. 24.3% of calls are unanswered. We also gathered a list of possible solutions to the problem, but what we really need to know is WHY do business owners neglect such an important part of their business? And what resolutions can you think of?
Local SEO | | 411Locals0 -
Implemented schema.org on our website and it's showing up as being correct but I've been told its wrong- can someone please have a quick look ?
Dear Mozzers, We have implemented schema.org on our website and it's showing up as being correct. However, I've been told by a SEO company that what we have done is incorrect and is therefore giving out wrong signals to google and that it needs fixing but they haven't told me whats wrong with it. Would someone please be able to have to have a quick scan and highlight anything that is not correct. I have enclosed 4 urls belows of the different sections of my website. My website homepage - is -- http://goo.gl/2F80w2 We have a number of branches- An example branch url is - http://goo.gl/8FpcaS example category url - http://goo.gl/gbAaD2 example product url - http://goo.gl/EXI1Sr Any assistance would be greatly appreciated Many thanks
Local SEO | | PeteC12
Peter0 -
Guide me with your best answer!
Hello Guys, I post this thread here since i don't know where else. So the problem i face is this.
Local SEO | | DexSmart
I rank for one of my websites on second page for the tag not meta title for an article i have wrote about someone. "Jerry Billett" is the keyword and my site is on second page ! It's really strange ! Please give me some good answers on this ! Regards ! ZGffdNU1