Considering Moving to New Domain and SEO
-
Hello,
One of our sites has been using a domain since 2005 and is shown below. The domain is terrible for multiple reasons, hyphens and doesn't even reflect our actual company name. Not to mention its embarrassing when telling a customer to email us at support @ pro "dash, yes the hyphen" gift.... I wanted to change it long ago but feared it would hurt my SEO rankings. After taking Bruce Clay's training class back in 2004, we managed to rank top 10 for most targeted keywords. My ranking have slowly dropped over time due to neglect and decaying IBL's. We still rank for a few targeted keywords but it was just August of 2017 we were still top 10 but something happened and we dropped out of the top 100 right before our holiday season. We had to run Adwords and BingAds to supplement traffic this holiday season. So I am wondering before I restart my SEO efforts should I move the domain now before trying to build new content, IBL's, etc?
I was always under the impression Google used domain trust a major factor which wasnt only IBL but also domain age. Our preferred domain I purchased from another owner and it has ZERO links to it. It was basically a parked domain with the "domain for sale" stuff. I am a little nervous about moving it over because Google didnt even have it in its index. I put up a coming soon page and hosted it on my server, same C Block, and requested a crawl from my webmaster console. I added some text to the new domain index page and it appears Google is showing results for our old domain! At first I thought it was duplicate content but its not Google obviously has deciphered current site is my old domain and is displaying the title and meta data from the old domain. I have never seen this before. Google cache shows the current domain the new domain url.
A few questions:
Will my site get sandboxed after 301 redirecting and going webmaster console move features etc?
Does this reset the trust factors? I have read examples in my research where some people say it only took a few weeks and everything was back to normal and others that have said it took years.
Any experience or insight is greatly appreciated. I am currently relearning SEO and going over the SEO tutorial articles provided on moz. Thanks again!
New Domain - matches our company name, no hyphens, better branding
http://www.giftbasketpros.com/
Google index
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.giftbasketpros.com
Current Domain, since 2005, has ranked well for years until this summer
-
Isn't done yet. It takes much time to get you back to the old ranking but not sure to be said. It will return 100%. Its same thing I did try on Branches You can check also.
-
I think the miscommunication was from my original post where I posted "Does domain trust reset" I can see how someone would read that as trying to circumvent a penalty. I meant on a new domain with no history and no index. My current domain whether its penalized or not has ranked for years so I am very confident this issue can be resolved.
My first step is learning about the disavow tool. I have never used it but did notice a big quantity of links which according aHrefs was discovered in August. 691 to be exact on August 17th by some spam blog. I did not buy or ask for those links. I am assuming the disavow tool was made for this type of spam. I will review my Google backlinks first and disavow any garbage then update my content and try to build good links to it.
There are many things I need to do, years behind. My site isnt even mobile ready yet. That project is slated to be finished by March.
-
Hi,
I am so sorry that a general advice was offensive for you.
You know best what caused what.
I apologize too, on regard a quote I did not translate properly for you. -
Thanks for the response.
I was not saying I wanted to move the domain to somehow circumvent some penalty. When I asked about trust I was referring to the new domain with zero history not some bad link scheme on my current site.
My drop in rankings has been a slow and gradual drop from #1 to #18ish over the last 8 years. The recent blackhole drop could be anything but I think I would remember some shady link scheme you are insinuating. No, I didnt participate in link schemes in the past nor in the current. I havent kept up to date with the current SEO stuff but I highly doubt sites with such bad link schemes would have survived penguin years ago. This drop is just a couple months ago well beyond the big algo changes so I highly doubt its some bad stuff coming home to roost as you suggest.
Also I am not sure what you are talking about with regards to water under the bridge and the whole flood???
If anything my IBL have decayed over time by the apparent Ahrefs chart. The sudden drop, I will figure out what it is but its not what you are suggesting.
-
Hi,
As you already noticed on regard SEO, it is not water which passed under the bridge, since 2004, it was a whole flood!
Said that, I strongly recommend that you update the SEO of your old domain before consider a migration or a redirect.
Nowadays, Google knows a lot about the owner of any domain. That is a factor too.All succesfull migrations bring almost all the SEO rank, whether is a good or a bad one. If your website is now having a penalization due to old back links, link schemes from the past that you might have forgotten or you do not know about, lack of h1: the best option is to fix up all the SEO issues, accordingly to SEO 2018 best practices, before the migration or redirect.
Sadly, Google has long term excelent memory and great data bank. Good luck and Happy New Year!
Mª Verónica
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
-
Outdated Videos and SEO
I was trying to find some helpful resources online on this topic and haven't really found anything substantial. What do people recommend to do with old, outdated videos on sites like YouTube and Vimeo. They show up in search, but some mention outdated products. However, is it best practice to remove everything older and outdated from Youtube, etc. or is it better to have these in your library (quantity over quality). If you add new ones and they get more views, in the long run people will focus on the newer content and probably not watch something 6 years old, but should we be removing them, too? I''m under pressure to remove them and I wanted to do some research before committing. We also started Google Plus after Youtube, so we now have two YouTubes (one empty one attached to our new G+ and one that's been established with a lot of videos - new and old). Would this be a good time to consolidate to one Youtube, migrating only the new stuff to the new YouTube and then slowly start removing the old YouTube channel? Thanks!
Branding | | QAD_ERP0 -
Wikipedia and Domain Authority?
Hi there, my company is an online publisher of Theater news and reviews. We also sell theater tickets. We presently don't have a Wikipedia page. Would creating one generally help our search rankings?
Branding | | TheaterMania0 -
Is it OK to choose a Domain Name with Brand-name followed by keyword?
My client has a website (brandname.co.in) The website is popular in India (we show up 1st in SERP for our brand name as the search query in Google India) but results are different in Google US, Actually we are not even in the top 10 results in the US version of Google SERP. The Domain name (brandname**.com**) is already taken by another person and he isn't using the domain but expects around $100000 for selling the domain. So we are only left with the option of buying another domain name. My client provides business intelligence consulting services/solutions. What I would like to know is can I recommend buying (brandname-bianalytics.com)? Would this be treated as keyword stuffing? Is there a possibility that my website be penalized by EDM algorithm updates for my primary keyword(bi analytics)? Please advise.
Branding | | PaulineRose0 -
Best way to structure a new company blog with multiple existing individual country sites?
Hi, we have a client who have multiple business websites .co.nz, .com.au, .co.uk, .com which all have unique content intending to rank in each country. These sites are on a CMS that has a blog function capability. Should we set up the blog on one of these country sites then link to other sites when appropriate? OR Is it best to set up a new blog on something like Wordpress (or what?) that takes all blog posts from all countries and then links out to the relevant sites when appropriate. So the new blog becomes the content hub and creates its own Google power to then pass when appropriate to the various country sites? Any suggestions welcome especially from people who are currently doing either of these methods, and have experienced the results both positive and negative of the different approaches. NB: there will be about 20 staff creating a blog post on a topic relevant to them per month each once blog is live.
Branding | | OnlineAssetPartners0 -
Moving Blog from www.topic.domain.com to www.domain.com/blog
Hi Fellow Mozzers, Just started off here on seomoz.org and am super happy to have joined the community! I've recently started a new job as web optimization manager for an education company. There is a lot to do and one of my first tasks is to figure a better strategy for our current blog. I've convinced our management to move our blog from topic.domain.com to domain.com/blog. My research has shown that this is a better strategy so that our blog can receive the DA of our root domain, get more people to click through our site, and even receive more natural searches (PLEASE, someone correct me if I'm wrong on this). Anyway, our blog is currently hosted as a Wordpress blog and we're wondering if it's more worthwhile to build a blog platform ourselves or continue using Wordpress. I am not a technical guy and don't know the backend stuff to make it happen, but my concern is primarily for the optimum search capacity. Also, our bloggers frequently put links to different portions of our website - does this hold any negative SEO value in terms of too much internal linking? I personally wouldn't assume so, but then again I could be wrong. Finally, we also track our main website using Google Analytics- currently, the only tracking we have installed on our blogs is the default provided by Wordpress (yes yes I know, but that's why i'm here -- to fix these weaknesses). I'm assuming we will be able to better track using GA when the switch is made. So, I guess my questions are: (1) Is my research correct in that it's better to have our blog hosted as domain.com/blog over topic.domain.com (2) Are there any best practices in making this switch and/or any negative implications with continuing to use Wordpress or should we build our own platform (we have the internal resources to do so, but would prefer to take the easiest and best route in terms of SEO and community building). (3) Will it still be just as easy to track using GA. Thank you!! Pedram
Branding | | CSawatzky0 -
Register a Domain: Brand Name VS Product Name
Hi All, Since Google give more priority to brand names and most of the penalized websites by Google's Penguin update are websites which had links with promoted keywords, is it a good idea to register a new domain by the product name (ex: www.leatherbags.com) ?. Or is it good to register the domain by the company or brand name and then build a reputable brand first before targeting product based keywords (ex: leather bags) ?.
Branding | | Iresh.Dilan1 -
Microformats/ Snippets and local SEO
Hello, In several post and also in the webinar "all about google places" it is recomended to use Microformats to format the things like "Business Name", Adress, Phone , etc Apart from using ths microformats on the product/corporate page footer and contact form, would you recomend to also use microformats on blog and 3rd party website when mentioning the corporate contact details in order to increase the citation value ?
Branding | | stereo690 -
Is it a bad idea to have a catchy brand name url redirect to an exact match domain
A friend wanted to setup a website where people would share and vote on "widget" ideas where the winning idea got build for free. They bought cute the domain name widg.et and branded their site as widg.et. However, for SEO, they are having widg.et forward to www.sharewidgets.com. Then, to complicate things further, they changed their business model to remove the voting feature and now the site is just set to show off the widgets they've made and let people order new custom widgets. They might add the voting feature back later. "Widget" and "widgets" in this case has an SEOmoz difficulty of 72% and 71%, so quite high and none of the two word or long tail phrases have much traffic. What do you think they should do: Remove all domain forwarding and use widg.et as their only domain as it's less confusing and better for branding Get another domain that includes their keyword widget for the SEO exact match benefit Keep it as is, even though "sharewidgets" is no longer quite as applicable Many Thanks!
Branding | | skincareseo0