SEO threats of moving from [.com.au] domain to [.com] domain for a 15yr old SAAS company.
-
Hey Guys.
I work for a 15 yr old SAAS company which originally started with a country-specific [.com.au] domain and later got a [.com] domain as the business grew. The AU website has a DA:56 while the [.com] has as DA: 25. Now we are looking to have everything migrated to the [.com] domain.
But, my concern is that we might lose the SEO value of the AU domain. I was wondering if anyone has any experience in this or recommend a case study on this topic.
Thanks!
Allan
-
Very useful answer Mike Tekula
-
Hi Allan,
A lot of this depends on what else will be changing in this process outside of the domain name.
Probably the best and most detailed case study of such a domain migration was featured here at Moz: https://moz.com/blog/domain-migration-lessons
Individual experience varies and is always anecdotal (what happened in one or even 10 examples doesn't necessarily predict what will happen with your site). I've seen both cases where this goes fairly smoothly and cases where Google seems to ignore some portion of the link equity acquired to the old domain resulting in a net loss of traffic.
There is plenty to look out for here, but if your site platform, information architecture, content, etc are all remaining static during the domain change (recommended), primarily you're going to want to ensure you don't lose any link equity in the process by setting a global page-level redirect with 301 response codes and that all of your tracking and configurations in platforms like Google Search Console are set up properly for the new domain. On that note, you'll also want to use the "Change of Address" tool within Search Console when you make this change.
This post from Builtvisible provides some helpful detail on how to approach the redirection process - but as above, if the site is otherwise remaining static, you should be able to handle this with a global patter-matched redirect (vs the painstaking process of setting page-to-page redirects).
Where possible, if you can have links pointing to your site (on other sites) updated to reflect the new TLD, that'd be ideal.
After the migration, I'd recommend you pull a list of your top linked pages from Moz Link Explorer, AHREFS or similar, crawl the full list and ensure that the redirects are firing properly (301 response codes, single-hop redirects and the final destination URL is valid/live on the new site).
Overall, this is one of those gray areas in SEO - it's a sensitive process and I would expect a period of traffic drops as Google crawls and indexes your new pages and attributes PageRank to them properly.
Best of Luck,
Mike -
Based on my experience I can tell you that you minimize the drops in traffic and visibility but you can not avoid it. There are many site migration types. It all depends on the nature of the changes that take place.
- Site location changes
- Platform changes
- Content changes
- Structural changes
- Design changes
Your case is a site location or domain migration. Google’s documentation mostly covers migrations with site location changes, which are categorized as follows:
- Site moves with URL changes
- Site moves without URL changes
First, need to prepare a migration plan. First of all, need to run an audit for your site, in my opinion, Screamingfrog or Raven Tool are the best options to perform this task.
- Site structure
- Content
- Internal Links
- Search Console, Google Analytics and Tag Manager
**_Split your move into smaller steps. _**I recommend initially moving just a piece of the site to test any effects on traffic and search indexing. After that, you can move the rest of your site all at once or in chunks. Also keep in mind that while moving just one section is a great way to test your move, it's not necessarily representative of a whole site move when it comes to search. The more pages that you move, the more likely you'll encounter additional problems to solve. Careful planning can minimize problems.
**Time your move to coincide with lower traffic **If your traffic is seasonal or dips on certain weekdays, it makes sense to move your site during traffic lulls. This lowers the impact of anything that breaks and also dedicates more of your server’s power to helping Googlebot update our index.
Expect temporary fluctuation With any significant change to a site, you may experience ranking fluctuations while Google recrawls and re-indexes your site. As a general rule, a medium-sized website can take a few weeks for most pages to move in our index; larger sites can take longer. The speed at which Googlebot discover and process URLs largely depends on the number of URLs and your server speed. Submitting a sitemap can help make the discovery process quicker, and it's fine to move your site in sections. If it involves a URL change, you might consider an A/B test or trial run.
A quick tip that nobody will mention. Starts to build links to your new domain before the migration.
- Search Console Migration https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en
- Google Analytics Migration https://torpedogroup.com/blog/post/google-analytics-changing-domains
Regards and Good Luck
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
-
Any SEO disadvantages with creating pages under a directory page which doesn't exists?
Hi, Let's say we are going to create pages in the URL path www.website.com/directory/sub-pages/. In case this page www.website.com/directory/ doesn't exists or redirected; will the pages created in this URL path like stated above have any issues in-terms of SEO? We will link these pages from somewhere in the website and planning to redirect the /directory/ to homepage. Suggestions please.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Is it bad from an SEO perspective that cached AMP pages are hosted on domains other than the original publisher's?
Hello Moz, I am thinking about starting to utilize AMP for some of my website. I've been researching this AMP situation for the better part of a year and I am still unclear on a few things. What I am primarily concerned with in terms of AMP and SEO is whether or not the original publisher gets credit for the traffic to a cached AMP page that is hosted elsewhere. I can see the possible issues with this from an SEO perspective and I am pretty sure I have read about how SEOs are unhappy about this particular aspect of AMP in other places. On the AMP project FAQ page you can find this, but there is very little explanation: "Do publishers receive credit for the traffic from a measurement perspective?
Algorithm Updates | | Brian_Dowd
Yes, an AMP file is the same as the rest of your site – this space is the publisher’s canvas." So, let's say you have an AMP page on your website example.com:
example.com/amp_document.html And a cached copy is served with a URL format similar to this: https://google.com/amp/example.com/amp_document.html Then how does the original publisher get the credit for the traffic? Is it because there is a canonical tag from the AMP version to the original HTML version? Also, while I am at it, how does an AMP page actually get into Google's AMP Cache (or any other cache)? Does Google crawl the original HTML page, find the AMP version and then just decide to cache it from there? Are there any other issues with this that I should be aware of? Thanks0 -
Will Russia's New Data Protection Law Impact SEOs and SMBs Outside of Russia?
We've all seen the news recently that Google will be closing its engineering offices in Russia due to new data protection laws coming into place in January 2015. The same law has also led to Adobe pulling out of Russia earlier in the year. I was wondering how you think this will impact SEOers and small/medium businesses that market _to _Russia, but are based outside of the country? Personal data has been defined in the new legislation as: Personal data means any information directly or indirectly related to any identified or potentially identifiable person. It includes, among other things, first name and family name, date and place of birth, address, information about family status, education, profession, income Source For those businesses which don't process personal data (affiliates etc), will there be any foreseeable impact? On the flipside, are there any benefits here for affiliate businesses inside of Russia? I'm using affiliates as an example to get the ball rolling, but I'm sure there's numerous more. Personally, I'd be interested to hear if you think this may impact corporate websites which don't process personal data, but operate outside of Russia.
Algorithm Updates | | ecommercebc0 -
Google sets brand/domain name at the end of SERP titles
Hi all, I am experiencing that Google puts our domain name at the end of the titles in SERPs. So if ia have a title: "See our super cool website", Google would show "See our super cool website - Betxpert.com" in the SERPs Well. This is okay. Apart from the fact that i myself often put the brand name in the title AND the fact that Google mispells the site name. The brand is BetXpert with a upper case X...so when i get a SERP with "See our super cool website - BetXpert - Betxpert.com" I am annoyed 🙂 Any one out the know how to tell Google the EXACT brand name, such that they do not set a value the site owner does not want to have? -Rasmus
Algorithm Updates | | rasmusbang0 -
How to Change Geo Target Location of Country Specific Domain
Hi - I have a country specific domain (www.updater.in), used it for writing blog articles Now when i go to site settings in Webmaster - the Geo target by default is coming for India, and no option of changing geographic target. Is there any way to let Search Engines know (despite .in domain) that site Geo Location is not country specific, but is meant for users from all across !!
Algorithm Updates | | Modi0 -
Will Parked Domain hurt My SEO as Duplicate Content?
Hello, I have one website (Migration Lawyers) and I have an extra 8 domains Parked so they are basically cloning the content of the site. so if the main site is: migrationlawyers.co.za and I have an addon domain migration-lawyers.com is that good or bad? is there a proper way to redirect the sites, will redirecting (301) subdomains be more effective? Thanks for your Input 🙂 0i8VXqr.png
Algorithm Updates | | thealika0 -
Using the canonical tag across multiple domains...
Hi guys I am looking for some help in regards to using canonical tags in other domains that have similar content to our main site. Would this be the right way to go about it? For example www.main.com is the website i would like to achieve best ranking with, but i also have other websites, www.secondary.com and www.somethingelse.com which have similar content and all link back to www.main.com So in order to make sure the google bot knows these other pages are a reference to the main.com page can i put a canonical tag in secondary.com that goes like this: rel="canonical" href="www.main.com" /> and put that same tag in somethingelse.com Would i achieve a better ranking for doing so on main.com or am i on the wrong track and will doing so not change a thing? I hope I'm making sense 😉 Best regards, Manny
Algorithm Updates | | Manny20000 -
301 from multiple domains to one single webshop
First of all i want to introduce myself. My name is Jennifer and i am a webshop owner from the Netherlands (we sell plants/herbs products) I have a very important question (and i can`t find a clear answer on the internet). So i hope someone can help me, At this moment me and 4 other friends own each a seperate webshop. We all started the webshops 5 -7 years ago and work all in the same business. (plants/herbs). We talked last week, and we want to make one big company and combine all 5 company`s. All 5 webshops have a huge pagerank, lots of organic traffic and very good incomming links. We registered new domainnames and want to redirect the 5 "old" domains to one new domain to pass over the Google juice. Our new company is a multilanguage webshop and each language has its own domain. (for example) (www. plantsandherbs example .nl)
Algorithm Updates | | snorkel
(www. plantsandherbs example .de)
(www. plantsandherbs example .de)
(www. plantsandherbs example .es)
(www. plantsandherbs example .fr)
(www. plantsandherbs example .com) Does it harm us if we 301 redirect all the 5 "old" websites to the new webshop? And what is the best way to redirect the "old" webshops to the new one? I am afraid of a Google penalty because it maybe looks like we bought some domains to pass the juice to the new project.0