Disadvantages of Migrating Website to New URL
-
Hi There,
I am currently struggling with the ranking of my website. No matter how many initiatives I try (backlinking, blog commenting, social posting, etc.) I can't seem to make any progression in Google Search. I've done competitive metrics through Open Site Explorer and can't seem to really find the reason why my site is not ranking as well as my competitors. The only one possible glaring element I've thought about is my website URL. This company is in the heating and cooling industry and majority of my competitors have either "heating" or "cooling" or both in their website URL's but mine does not.
Does anyone have any thoughts or recommendations on if changing my URL and then redirecting my current URL would be a step in the right direction help me to climb the rankings in Google Search?
Thanks!
-
Thank you so much for the reply!
I've been working on tracking, analyzing and optimizing this particular website for about a year now. I've optimized my homepage for the best and most specific keyword I can and I've got a 94% optimization score on the page (I can't put the keyword in the URL as it's the homepage). I've added in my competitors into OSE and reviewed their backlinks and besides some local advertising backlinks they have received, my Moz stats are much better than the competition. There is one competitor in particular that is mult-national company and I know that as a small business I don't stand a change in ranking higher than them, however, the other top competitor I have in my local market - does not optimize and still ranks higher than my site. One of the largest frustrations I have with this particular competitor is that the page that results higher than mine has little to no content on it and in other searches (because we are in the same industry) - their homepage will rank higher than my optimized interior pages. We use facebook and link back to our service pages which contain our keywords as often as possible and my crawl from Moz shows 1 missing meta description tag (on a category) and that's it.
I did read up on the Moz Blog today and it seems like everything is on-track but there's no progress. I should also mention that the website is built on Wordpress and as far as I know from the stats I am pulling from Moz - I've covered my bases.
I'm not sure what other specifics I can offer that might assist me with this challenge.
I guess at this point - maybe a second set of eyes on an audit (outside of Moz - because I look at that all the time) is what I need????
If you have any recommendations on a comprehensive site audit, I'd be very interested.
Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to this.
-
Thank you so much for the reply!
I've been working on tracking, analyzing and optimizing this particular website for about a year now. I've optimized my homepage for the best and most specific keyword I can and I've got a 94% optimization score on the page (I can't put the keyword in the URL as it's the homepage). I've added in my competitors into OSE and reviewed their backlinks and besides some local advertising backlinks they have received, my Moz stats are much better than the competition. There is one competitor in particular that is mult-national company and I know that as a small business I don't stand a change in ranking higher than them, however, the other top competitor I have in my local market - does not optimize and still ranks higher than my site. One of the largest frustrations I have with this particular competitor is that the page that results higher than mine has little to no content on it and in other searches (because we are in the same industry) - their homepage will rank higher than my optimized interior pages. We use facebook and link back to our service pages which contain our keywords as often as possible and my crawl from Moz shows 1 missing meta description tag (on a category) and that's it.
I did read up on the Moz Blog today and it seems like everything is on-track but there's no progress. I should also mention that the website is built on Wordpress and as far as I know from the stats I am pulling from Moz - I've covered my bases.
I'm not sure what other specifics I can offer that might assist me with this challenge.
I guess at this point - maybe a second set of eyes on an audit (outside of Moz - because I look at that all the time) is what I need????
If you have any recommendations on a comprehensive site audit, I'd be very interested.
Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to this.
-
Hi Matt - As Bernadette said, there are many, many reasons why your site could not be gaining on your competitors in the SERPs. And without specifics, it's tough to say why... but unlikely to be the URL. It's actually probably due to not just one, but several reasons. As you are at the point where you are considering something as drastic as moving your site to a new domain, it sounds like now would be a good time to invest in a comprehensive site audit.
Oh, and did you happen to read today's post on The Moz Blog? I've Optimized My Site, But I'm Still Not Ranking—Help!
-
Matt, there are really a lot of reasons why a site won't seem to gain any ground when it comes to ranking in Google. It could be links, it could be content, it could be lack of social media, it could be a lack of local links and citations, or it could be something else. It could be just that you're in a competitive market and that the competition is doing more (or has been around longer).
Regardless, it's most likely NOT the URL. Every domain name has an equal chance of ranking in the search results. So whether or not your keyword is in the URL really doesn't make any difference. It could still be a URL issue or domain name issue, such as if you have other domain names redirecting to your site or if you have used another domain name in the past that has the same content on it.
Without specifics, it's tough to pinpoint a specific reason why the site's not ranking well.
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
-
Website Refresh - Lost Rankings
Hi, we refreshed our website a few weeks ago, with a new design. The structure has changed and pages do have new URLs. But the content, meta titles, etc have stayed the same and I have put 301 redirects in for all of the new pages (using the redirection plugin in word press). I have found that pages which ranked in the top 3 in the past are now nowhere. The page authority also shows as 1 for all of the pages. Is there something we should do to get the rankings and page authority back? Many Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | danieldunn100 -
Multi Keyword URL Ranking at Number 1
Here is part of a URL that takes the local number 1 spot for "implant dentist glasgow" [website] /implant-dentistry-glasgow-scotland/implant-dentistry-glasgow-scotland.html The first /implant-dentistry-glasgow-scotland/ directory or page is protected and presumably just exists for ranking reasons. I am tempted to copy that URL on a client's implant page to compete for the keyword (I believe I have better content). Given that it works well for the other site, can you think of any reason that would that be a bad idea? Thanks very much.
On-Page Optimization | | neilmac0 -
How to reduced dns requests on magneto website
How to reduced dns requests on magneto website, really stuck, read many documents but no where near resolving the issues.
On-Page Optimization | | Mikaai0 -
New website launch - Dupilicate content question
Hi, We are going to be launching a US version of our UK E-commerce web store. The US version will be a standalone site, separate URL/hosting etc. My question is that the US website will carry the same products as the UK site - will the product copy have to be written differently for the US website in order to avoid any SEO duplicate copy? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | WalesDragon0 -
Using magentos own url re-writes
We are changing ecommerce platforms. Is it best to use magentos own url re-writes to redirect every page of a site from its old url to it new one?
On-Page Optimization | | LadyApollo0 -
The URL Inside
Howdy SEO'ers, I have a quick question for the SEO gurus out there. When constructing "better" search friendly URLs would one of these be better than the other? Example 1: http://Domain.com/Category/Sub-Category/Product-name Example 2: http://Category.Domain.com/Sub-Category/Product-name In this example the category could be phones and the sub-category brands of phones. Is either one of these URLs "better" than the other in terms of ranking? Thanks! I'll hang-up and listen to your answer. 🙂 Jonathan
On-Page Optimization | | creativedepartment0 -
Impact of website redesign when changing to wordpress
Agency designed website and not sure what platform was used. Are now working minor redesign of site but wants to do so in word press. I don't have any problem with word press but don't want to start over ranking for key phrases. I don't want to change URL from mysite.com for the home page. What is the right way to make sure this is done correctly. I could not find a resource on the site. I don't mind researching this but am not sure what to search for to find info. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | arainey0070 -
Product sorting and dynamic urls
On our weekly SEOmoz crawls, we get thousands of warnings about overly dynamic URLs as a result of our product sorting options at the top of our category pages. It seems like the ability to sort products by price, name, etc., is nice for the customer. For SEO is this really a problem or can we ignore these warnings?
On-Page Optimization | | teatable0