When to 301 a No1 ranking site to the new domain?
-
I have a site [company.com] that ranks number one for the products of my brand but I'm moving all the efforts to a dedicated brand domain. The old site covered a number of small brands and we had no dedicated brand sites, but we now focus on just this one brand and it doesn't belong on the old company domain name. BRAND belongs on the new brand.com
Because of the age of the old company site and because it had the first copy about the brand, it's still ranking well for the brand product names, and the new site has some duplicate content issues that I'm in the throws of resolving.
RANKS
- Company.com : number one for all product names
- Brand.com : nowhere for product brand names but top for the brand name (as I say, the product pages on this site have duplicate content issues which is likely keeping them ranked low - Hades low.
I would rather not maintain two websites and I want to give brand.com every bit of available oomph , so should I at some point 301 the old company site to the new one?
If so, is now the time?
Thanks
-
I would determine a top/important page as one that is not only ranking well for your terms, but pages that may be receiving traffic from other sources. Check out Google Analytics and sort by top pages and filter by source and redirect the ones that are actually seeing inbound traffic.
-
Thanks FUM
I was wondering whether I needed to redirect individual pages, it makes sense that I would.
There are 6 important pages on the site with one-to-one relationships with the new site, and quite a few pages besides, but webmaster tools is telling me there are 100 indexed pages and 700 crawled but not indexed pages. There are not 100 valuable pages on the site, and I think the not-indexed is because the cart has dynamically created all those urls.
I suppose I just need to determine which pages are worthwhile redirecting individually. Oddly, seomoz site explorer is giving me two top pages. How else might I determine the top pages?
-
One thing to keep in mind is that you will probably lose your rankings for that 2-4 week period. So do it ASAP but not during a peak sales period.
-
Sooner is better than later.
Make sure when you 301 redirect the site, you not only redirect the site, but redirect the individual pages to the new pages also so that any of the internal ranking pages pass the rank also.
Make sure to verity the new site in Google webmaster tools and notify them that the old domain has permanently moved to the new domain. In my experience, you will usually see direct ranking transfer within 2-4 weeks max.
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
-
Reason for reducing site authority domain?
Hi;
Technical SEO | | 5mizo
I have a website that had an authoritative domain of 10 but today it has reached 5. I wanted to know what the reason for these changes was.
No backlinks from my site have disappeared and even more, but today my authoritative domain has reached 5 authoritative domain.
Can you guide my servant? My website to troubleshoot : bonianservice.com Thank you very much mxyv_untitled-2.jpg0 -
301 Old Domain Name with relevant domain name
We have a number of historical domain names that we are thinking of 301 redirecting to industry relevant domains.
Technical SEO | | barry.oneil
Currently the domains we wish to redirect are not active and have been down since march 2018.
As far as we know there is no bad reputation on these domains, but we think there are still links out there in the wild on possibly relevant blog posts. Would there be any negative affect on the target domain? Thanks0 -
How do we build rank on a domain with an offsite blog?
We have a site (domain y) that we'd like to integrate a blog into but our team doesn't have the bandwidth to do this. So, we've been exploring the option of building the blog in WP and hosting on a separate domain (domain x) and redirecting from domain y to it. My concern is how this affects or undermines rank value on domain y (effectively all the value from the blog resides on the blog domain x). How might we go about integrating an offsite blog into the core domain while maintaining search value? Is there a way? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | J-Me0 -
New website on new url?
We have a new website on a new url (been up for around 2 years now) and our old website is slowly fading in the background, we are now at the point where the money is still ok but we are having issues running both side by side, we have a calculator on each page and are thinking about removing this and adding a box with please order from our new site here (with url of similar page). Now the issue is we don't want to link for SEO purposes and google hammer us (thinking of no - following these) and we also have a penalty we got in 2012 on the site but we did get out of this, would this cause any issue to the new site?
Technical SEO | | BobAnderson1 -
Undo a 301 or Starting New Domain?
Hi Guys & Gals, I have a question I'd appreciate your input on. Quick History
Technical SEO | | Nobody1560986989723
When I first started in web design it was just me and a couple of clients. I had a website based on my name on the domain moxby.org.uk. The only 'SEO' work done on it was a bit of on-site work, various links based on forum and blog activity I was involved in (genuine involvement not crappy link building) and of course, building websites with a credit in the footer. When we got serious about the business we considered and finally put in place a new website, new branding and 301'd old URLs to their shiny new location on the new domain: _summitweb.net _(put in place about 12 months ago) Ranks were pretty much maintained and until recently we ranked well locally (still figuring the fallout from the last week or so's changes). The Question I would like to build a personal website, well I'm going to anyway. But as it's a personal/showcase website I need a personal URL for it and my natural choice would be my old url moxby.org.uk. However it is not that simple because summitweb.net is benefitting from redirected links and I don't want to harm our business' rankings just to reclaim a personal URL. So... is there benefit or would it be to my detriment to undo the 301 and build a website on moxby.org.uk or would it, in fact, just make more sense to buy a new domain and have a clean slate?0 -
What should I do with 10 Similar Domains pointing to one site?
Hello,
Technical SEO | | thealika
I was recently put in charge of one website with about 15 extra Domains. I previously asked if Domain Parking hurts your SEO as duplicate content - and i learned that the answer seems to be yes. My next logical question is:
What should I do with all those EMD, keyword friendly domains? As I understand, 301 redirecting the domains to the root domain is a safe bet, but that means the extra domains will point to the original root domain no mater what comes after the forward slash. So www.ExtraDomain.com/AboutUS will point to www.OriginalDomain.com - is there a way to keep the forward slashes relavent to the content on the original root domain, if so How? Your Advice, Links, and Comments are greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Nikita0 -
Duplicate Content Issues - Should I build a new site?
I'm currently working on a site which is built using Zen Cart. The client also has another version which has the same products on it. The product descriptions and the vast majority of the text has been re-written. I've used the duplicate content tool and these are the results: HTML fingerprint: 0000a7ee1f07a131 0000a7ec1f07a931 92.31% Total HTML similarity: 76.33% Standard text similarity: 66.72% Smart text similarity: 45.81% Total text similarity 56.27% I considered using a different eCommerce system like Magento or Volusion. So I had a look at a few templates, chose one and then used the tool again and got the following: HTML fingerprint: 0000a7e41b012111 0000a7ec1f07a931 72.00% Total HTML similarity: 64.65% Standard text similarity: 11.69% Smart text similarity: 17.90% Total text similarity 14.80% Do you think its worth doing this? thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | TheYeti0 -
301 redirect while keeping OLD domain for branding
Say you have CharityName.com. They use a dedicated domain name CharityNameEvent.com to advertise their main event. They use this domain on posters, flyers,etc and want to keep using it because it's easier to remember. CharityNameEvent.com has far, far more inbound links than CharityName.com (about 8 times more). Current problem: their current web developer has put the SAME content on both websites instead of setting up a redirect from CharityNameEvent.com (easy to remember) to CharityName.com/Event which would have made more sense. My intention is to consolidate the 2 websites and make sure CharityName.com benefits from links to the Event. I plan to move and 301 redirect CharityNameEvent.com to CharityName.com/Event. I know this would keep links and PR intact but I have a couple of questions: 1. Is it enough to set up the 301 redirect or would they have to ask websites to ACTUALLY change the links to CharityName.com/Event? 2. They plan and need to keep using CharityNameEvent.com for its ease of use on posters, flyers, etc. The 301 redirect would be in place. Would this cause any problems with search engines, especially when/if some people STILL link to CharityNameEvent.com instead of CharityName.com/Event? Basically, my understanding of 301 redirects is that they're used when a website permanently moves. In this case, the OLD DOMAIN name would still be used for reasons mentioned above but would be 301 redirected to CharityName.com/Event. Any chance this might not maximise the potential of new/old links? Any other way to go about it? Anything I'm missing with this scenario? Thanks
Technical SEO | | carmenmardiros0