Moved brand's shop to a new domain. will our organic traffic recuperate?
-
Hello,
We are a healthcare company with a strong domain authority and several thousand pages of service related content at brand.com. We've been operating an ancillary ecommerce store that sells related 3rd party products at brand.com/shop for a little over a year. We recently invested in a platform upgrade and moved our site to a new domain, brandshop.com.
We implemented page-level 301 redirects including all category pages, product detail pages, canonical and non-canonical URLs, etc.. which the understanding that there would not be any loss in page rank. What we're seeing over the last 2 months is an initial dive in organic traffic, followed by a ramp-up period of if impressions (but not position) in the following weeks, another drop and we've steady at this low for the last 2 weeks.
Another area that might have hurt us, the 301 redirects were implemented correctly immediately post launch (on a wednesday), but it was discovered on the following Monday that our .htaccess file had reverted to an old version without the redirect rules. For 3-4 days, all traffic was being redirected from brand.com/shop/url to brandshop.com/badurl.
Can we expect to recover our organic traffic giving the launch screw up with the .htaccess file, or is it more of an issue with us separating from the brand.com domain?
Thanks,
Eugene -
Here we go again. The problems with technicalities...
Ok, here it is - 301 does NOT lose any link equity passed through it. It's known and that's what the linked post and tweets are talking about.
What me and @effectdigital are talking about is "downtime" after 301-redirecting from one domain to another. The value of domain IS affected.
If you would redirect a page from your own domain to another, on your own domain, sure, there wouldn't be any loss in link equity, but there would be loss in page authority for the new page. Think about it like this - google ranks a page, because it "knows and trusts" it. All of the sudden, that page is not there, and just sends google to another page. Google needs time to make sure that it's the same page, about the same stuff, with the same quality. It never takes away the link equity, but the "trust factor" is not there for a bit. When it happens within the same domain, Google understands that it could be simple content move or URL change. When it's cross-domain, the reasons could be much different. From hacking to selling the website etc. So that's why the rankings and usually traffic goes down, but, after Google realizes that it's all the same, and all good, they recover.
Hope this helps, and sorry for the confusion earlier.
-
Thanks for your responses Dmitrii Kustov and effectdigital, to restate the quoted information, our uderstanding was that there would be a downdraft period of at least several weeks, maybe longer, but that we would eventually recuperate our page rank. I had referenced somewhat recent articles stating that 30x redirect no longer dilute pagerank, whereas in the past there could be 10-15% dilution.
https://searchengineland.com/google-no-pagerank-dilution-using-301-302-30x-redirects-anymore-254608
effectdigital, to answer your questions:
- Yes, the full site has moved to brandshop.com as of early last month
- The new site is somewhat of a re-build but 95% the same in terms of pages and content. To clarify, the contents within brand.com/shop and brandshop.com are nearly the same
- We have not shed a lot of content. Just a handful of products were disabled (in a catalog of thousands of products).
- No, we did not benchmark rankings or put any attention into SEO for that matter. I came on board pretty late into the project, and without making excuses, my time was prioritized in other aspects of the business. We did not do a "one-size fits all" redirect, we mapped out all old category to new category URLs and wrote redirect rules, page-to-page redirects in several instances where URLs had changed, and an analysis of top 500 pages to check for outliers.
- I wouldn't call this a hunch migration. From an SEO perspective, I solely focused on getting the redirects in place, and perhaps didn't put enough thought into whether or we should have moved to a new domain from an SEO perspective and whether the cons outweighed the other business decisions behind the move.
-
"the understanding that there would not be any loss in page rank" - the prior response from Dmitrii Kustov hit the nail on the head here. This was terrible information. It's well known that although 301 redirects insulate the most possible equity, it's not a sure-fire thing and there usually is down-turn (sometimes significant). The information upon which you were acting was bad.
Redirects also decay over time, so if they have pumped much of the initial equity-bonus into dead, defunct pages which were never meant to exist, you won't get all of that back (even if you fix the redirects). 3-4 days in this probably won't hit you like a sledgehammer (if you fix things NOW this second) - but you will feel it a bit.
Considering that not all PageRank is transferred through 301 redirects, you probably won't recover to your former strength in terms of rankings on redirects alone. If you have made other positive movements (switching to HTTPS, faster page-loading speeds on the new site, better site design, promotional links work for the new domain) then you may recover quickly and even begin to exceed prior performance. If you have literally just changed domain and done nothing else, expect a bit of a rough ride.
If your old domain is no longer in use and is purely a platform for redirects now, it will begin to lose its authority. Google doesn't rank 'doorway' pages. Google doesn't like to rank URLs which then redirect somewhere else! As such, if you have killed your old domain off then you need to be making movements to boost the new domain's authority, so that when the old domain fully decays (and the 301s along with it), you're not left in a hole.
You say "We are a healthcare company with a strong domain authority" - that's an incorrect statement. Domain authority is attached to a domain, not to a company. You **had **strong domain authority, it may now be decaying with some amount being transferred to your new site.
Where you write:
"is it more of an issue with us separating from the brand.com domain?" - there's a whole barrel of worms there. This implies that the old domain is carrying on in some form without your individual part of the business! As such, that domain authority will belong to 'them' and your new site will **only **receive a maximum of equity relating to the 'part' of the site that moved, not the site in its entirety. You won't perform the same as the main / parent site, if you're just a tiny extract. That's an unreasonable expectation! Authority divides it doesn't multiply
Depending on your situation the outcomes could vary wildly. If the old site is completely shut down and turned into a redirect farm, with the kinds of cited muck-ups I'd expect to maybe see 75-80% performance if everything is handled perfectly from ... well, from right now. If you're just an extract of the parent site and they're retaining the 'bulk' of their SEO ranking power, you can't expect to be on that same level. Otherwise SEOs would just recommend all clients to turn their sites into 10 sites and they would all rank equally well (that demonstrably does not work and is not the case)
The main Questions are, has the full site moved? What is the nature of the new site, is it a re-build or just a tiny extract being separated out? Has the site shed a lot of content? Did you benchmark which URLs held the most, and most lucrative rankings before moving - or did you just do a dev-based one-size fits all redirect catch based on logic (but not data)? Did you do a 'hunch' migration? If so, expect to feel the sting
-
Hi there.
First, "...the understanding that there would not be any loss in page rank" - where did you get that info? 0.o It's well-known fact that there always be a downdraft with a period of recovery.
To answer your question - yes, you'll recover (assuming all 301s were done correctly). But it will take time. The problem is that your shop initially had the power and authority of your main domain (when it was brand.com/shop/blabla). Now, it's a brand new domain, with no history. And yes, even though you have redirects, it's still much closer to starting new domain, rather than redirecting domain completely.
Think of it as instead of building second story on top of existing house, you have to build brand new building with foundation and all, using some materials from your existing house. Who suffers? - both. You are taking away from existing place, and it will take longer and more resources to build up new place. Is it beneficial? - Sure, after both buildings are built - you'll have 2 great places to live in.
Hope this makes sense
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
-
I need help on how best to do a complicated site migration. Replacing certain pages with all new content and tools, and keeping the same URL's. The rest just need to disappear safely. Somehow.
I'm completely rebranding a website but keeping the same domain. All content will be replaced and it will use a different theme and mostly new plugins. I've been building the new site as a different site in Dev mode on WPEngine. This means it currently has a made-up domain that needs to replace the current site. I know I need to somehow redirect the content from the old version of the site. But I'm never going to use that content again. (I could transfer it to be a Dev site for the current domain and automatically replace it with the click of a button - just as another option.) What's the best way to replace blahblah.com with a completely new blahblah.com if I'm not using any of the old content? There are only about 4 URL'st, such as blahblah.com/contact hat will remain the same - with all content replaced. There are about 100 URL's that will no longer be in use or have any part of them ever used again. Can this be done safely?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brickbatmove1 -
Changing Brand and Domain Name - SEO Impacts
Hi everyone I'm hoping a few of you can help me out... We're an online-one retailer and we're currently looking at rebranding.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | piazza
This is for commercial reasons: Our current name is difficult for customers to spell It's not wholly representative of what we now offer We want to push offline and social marketing to help increase or DA In a nutshell, our current name implies 'cheap' and we're moving more upmarket.
Our DA is only 10, and a re-brand will make our brand more marketable.
A stronger brand and DA will help us climb up the rankings quickly - last year we ranked no 1 for a relatively competitive term before dropping a few places. In terms of current traffic: 30% is via SEO (we have a low DA but rank ok for certain phrases) 70% is via adwords We had our website redesigned last year and it performs well.
The idea is to have a new brand logo and colours and move to a new domain.
We will keep all our existing products and content. Please could anyone let me know the implications of this move?
What are potential pitfalls, and what will we need to do to alert Google?
I have read about 301 redirects, would these be required? As always, any help is very much appreciated. Many thanks Abs0 -
Pure Manual Spam v/s New website
My website nowwhatstudio.com hit by google pure spam and google applied manual spam action to the website. Why google applied manual spam action to my website? How Can I recover my website. I create new website (nowwhatmoments.com) with the same content from the old spam action website (nowwhatstudio.com). As google removed my old website content from search indexed. Can I use the same content for a new website? I already spend allot of money on content. If I delete my old website from the server, after that Can I use the old website content for a new website? Or Can make edits the old website content and make it 80% original for a new website? I can use my old website (nowwhatstudio) email id and social accounts for a new website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward0 -
How should I handle URL's created by an internal search engine?
Hi, I'm aware that internal search result URL's (www.example.co.uk/catalogsearch/result/?q=searchterm) should ideally be blocked using the robots.txt file. Unfortunately the damage has already been done and a large number of internal search result URL's have already been created and indexed by Google. I have double checked and these pages only account for approximately 1.5% of traffic per month. Is there a way I can remove the internal search URL's that have already been indexed and then stop this from happening in the future, I presume the last part would be to disallow /catalogsearch/ in the robots.txt file. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GrappleAgency0 -
Search traffic decline after redesign and new URL
Howdy Mozzers I’ve been a Moz fan since 2005, and been doing SEO since. This is my first major question to the community! I just started working for a new company in-house, and we’ve uncovered a serious problem. This is a bit of a long one, so I’m hoping you’ll stick it out with me! ***Since the images aren't working, here's a link to the google doc with images. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I-iLDjBXI4d59Kl3uRMwLvpihWWKF3bQFTTNRb1R3ZM/edit?usp=sharing Background The site has gone through a few changes in the past few years. Drupal 5 and 6 hosted at bcbusinessonline.ca and now on Drupal 7 hosted at bcbusiness.ca. The redesigned responsive design site launched on January 9th, 2013. This includes changing the structure of the URL’s, such as categories, tags, and articles. We submitted a change of address through GWT shortly after the change. Problem Organic site traffic is down 50% over the last three months. Below, Google analytics, and Google Webmaster Tools shows the decline. *They used the same UA number for Google analytics, so that’s why the data is continuous
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Canada_wide_mediaOrganic traffic to the site. January 2011 - Dips in January are because of the business crowd on holidays.
Google Webmaster Tools data exported for bcbusiness.ca starting as far back as I could get. Redirects During the switch, the site went from bcbusinessonline.ca to bcbusiness.ca. They were implemented as 302’s on January 9th, 2013 to test, then on January 15th, they were all made 301’s. Here is how they were set up: Original: http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/bc-blogs/conference/2010/10/07/11-phrases-never-use-your-resume --301-- http://www.bcbusiness.ca/bcb/bc-blogs/conference/2010/10/07/11-phrases-never-use-your-resume --301-- http://www.bcbusiness.ca/careers/11-phrases-never-to-use-on-your-resume Canonical issue On bcbusiness.ca, there are article pages (example) that are paginated. All of the page 2 to page N were set to the first page of the article. We addressed this issue by removing the canonical tag completely from the site on April 16th, 2013. Then, by walking through the Ayima Pagination Guide we decided for immediate and least work choice was to noindex, follow all the pages that simply list articles (example). Google Algorithm Changes (Penguin or Panda) According to SEOmoz Google Algorithm Changes there is no releases that could have impacted our site at the February 20th ballpark. However - Sitemap We have a sitemap submitted to Google Webmaster Tools, and currently have 4,229 pages indexed of 4,312 submitted. But there are a few pages we looked at that there is an inconsistency between what GWT is reporting and what a “site:” search reports. Why would the submit to index button be showing, if it’s in the index?
That page is in the sitemap. Updated: 2012-11-28T22:08Z Change Frequency: Yearly Priority: 0.5
*GWT Index Stats from bcbusiness.ca What we looked at so far The redirects are all currently 301’s GWT is reporting good DNS, Server Connectivity, and Robots.txt Fetch We don’t have noindex or nofollow on pages where we haven’t intended them to be. Robots.txt isn’t blocking GoogleBot, or any pages we want to rank. We have added nofollow to all ‘Promoted Content’ or paid advertising / advertorials We had TextLinkAds on our site at one point but I removed them once I satarted working here (April 1). Sitemaps were linking to the old URL, but now updated (April)
1 -
Two sites, two domains, two brands, 98% same content
There are two affiliated brick & mortar retail stores moving into e-commerce. For non-marketing reasons separate e-commerce websites are desired. The two brands are based in separate (nearby) cities in the same Canadian province. Although the store name and branding will be different, the content on the site will either be near duplicates or exact duplicates. The more I look into this on Google and SEOmoz QA, the more I am concerned about the SEO implications of this. SEOmoz QA: Multiple cities/regions websites - duplicate content? "So, yes, because you are offering the same services at second location, you are thinking correctly about the need to rewrite all content so it's not a duplicate of site #1." Duplicate content - Webmaster Tools Help "However, in some cases, content is deliberately duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic… In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we’ll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results. ... Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results." Unfortunately, I would say there's very little chance that rewritten content will happen in the foreseeable future. With that said, I'd be greatly appreciative of the concerns and remedies that the SEOmoz community has to offer (even if they're for future use). Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GOODSIR0 -
My homepage doesn't rank anymore. It's been replaced by irrelevant subpages which rank around 100-200 instead of top 5.
Hey guys, I think I got some kind of penalty for my homepage. I was in top5 for my keywords. Then a few days ago, my homepage stopped ranking for anything except searching for my domain name in Google. sitename.com/widget-reviews/ previously ranked #3 for "widget reviews"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wearetribe
but now....
sitename.com/widget-training-for-pet-cats/ is ranking #84 for widget reviews instead. Similarly across all my other keywords, irrelevant, wrong pages are ranking. Did I get some kind of penalty?0 -
New Site: Use Aged Domain Name or Buy New Domain Name?
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peterwhitewebdesign
I have the opportunity to build a new website and use a domain name that is older than 5 years or buy a new domain name. The aged domain name is a .net and includes a keyword.
The new domain would include the same keyword as well as the U.S. state abbreviation. Which one would you use and why? Thanks for your help!0