Changing domain names... Bad idea?
-
We are re-doing a clients e-commerce website. Before I had entered them on SEO moz we had decided to change their domain name to one with a keyword inside. I had not known that they had an online marketing company previous working for them. They have a domain authority of 42 right now.
It would be a horrible idea to switch their domain right? I looked at some of the links, they all have a variety of good anchor text. But alot of the links are coming from sites or directory categories that are not relative.
We are also planning on doing 301 re-directs for the links. But this will not transfer the domain authority to the new domain right?
Any thoughts?
-
Janice: Curious how your changing the domain name went a few years ago. Did you experience any negatives to doing so? What about positives? -- Thanks. (yes, i know this was over a year ago)
-
Thanks guys. This was helpful, we decided to just go ahead with the original plan and change the domain.
-
Irving, I understand where you are coming from, but I think it is easy for us to get a little too worried about Pandas, Penguins, and the other animals. If you look at GWM Guidelines they are fairly clear on what the link schemes are:
- Links intended to manipulate PageRank (This is the only grey area I see)
- Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
- Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")
- Buying or selling links that pass PageRank
So, unless they are adding to the manipulation or purchase of links I don't see a problem. This site is currently up and I have to believe if it was not hit by Penguin 1.1 on the 25th of May, I don't see a redirect causing it to happen.
Good thought though.
-
"But a lot of the links are coming from sites or directory categories that are not relative."
sounds like a penguin smack down waiting to happen, I would look at what these links are and what pages they are pointing to. If someone has been buying links and pointing them to specific internal pages you might want to exclude them from the list of URLs that get 301'd and let them 404.
-
Anderson,
With a 301 you are redirecting page to page. So www.olddomain.com/page1 to www.newdomain.com/page1. This is done in the .htacess file and it is important as it will transfer the link juice 90 to 99% (my experience is that it is always closer to 99%). We are doing that with a 1,000 page ecommerce site now and do not foresee an issue.
If you follow the protocol, you will not have an immediate increase in domain authority, but will gain it gradually within two to three months based on my experience. MAKE SURE YOU EXPLAIN IT TO THE CLIENT BEFOREHAND. I meant this for emphasis, I am not yelling.
Most of us keep believing at some point the value of an exact match domain will go away and I still see value in them. I also believe having the keyword in the domain is important if you can do that. Here is a link to a handy 301 guide (Courtesy of Sha Menz): http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php
Hope this helps,
-
I think you have the right idea and are on the right track. I believe with 301 redirects to new site you will transfer most if not all link juice and page authority to new domain name. And you should see a boost in rankings having the keyword in there as well. So I think its a win win all the way around for you.
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
-
How do Domain Authority and the Price of a Paid Listing Relate?
I'm just starting to do some in-house link building for the first time. Having looked at some of our competitors it seems that they have paid for links on some B2B sites and I was wondering how the Domain authority and the price charged were related. The follow up question is then how do you estimate the ROI of a link? So for example looking at a site with a DA of 30 and a page authority of 17 how much should one pay for the link? How do you decide how much you should pay for a link - and whether it is value for money? btw I'm not interested in buying links I'm curious 🙂 Thanks for any thoughts
Link Building | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
Multiple on-page links to single domain
Hi, the main focus of my question is to add a bit more information to my client as to where they are going wrong. Firstly they have a directory on a third party domain with subdirectories containing all their product listings. All the links need to be no-follow for sure. However, from a link juice passing perspective if there are per page say 20-30 links to varying URLs on the same domain is it still the same sort of calculation that the link juice is sufficiently weakened that each link has little value, or because the links are to the same domain there is an extra (potential) filter going on?
Link Building | | MickEdwards0 -
Reposting my articles on other blogs - good or bad?
Hi there! Our blog is full of really good articles on consumer finance topics. Recently we established contact with some local media and even government agencies who said they will be happy to repost our articles on their sites. Question: is it ok to repost our articles as they are and link back to us, or shall we rewrite them to make them 100% original? The media doesn't insist on original content, but I'd like to get SEO benefit from it (the sites are really good). If original content gives us more SEO value, we're happy to do it Please advise. P.S. Using rel=canonicals is not an option (it's government websites and some old school media - they are very not tech savvy).
Link Building | | imoney0 -
Domain name holding pages link back, good or bad?
We are a web design and hosting company http://www.spiralsites.com But when we register domains for clients, or they take email only or a name is parked we have it using a holding page which can be seen as follows: http://www.jcevents.co.uk/ is this a good thing? Bad thing? Could it would it should it benefit our rankings? Should we do more to make it look less like our main site and actually try to use it better to help rank our other services pages?
Link Building | | spiralsites0 -
Are there benifits to aquiring domain names with keywords of a niche site and redirecting them to the niche site?
I f i purchased a domain with keyword another one of my sites targeted and redirected it to that site are there benefits in doing so? & as long as the domain contained the keywords would it matter if the domain name contained another word?. also would it be better to put just a few articles on the site and then point keywords in the article to the niche site?.
Link Building | | askshopper0 -
Combining two domains
Hi guys, a friend of mine has two sites. They both have a fair few links pointing to them, so I think it would be a shame to lose/ignore one of them. Some of the links are low quality, from previous link building efforts, however at the moment I can't see any real penalisation from Google, so my guess is that it's currently ok... I'm aware that I'll have to remove some of the legacy low quality links soon. My question is what should I do? Will combining the two websites help? The main site is Gazebo Shop, but there's another exact match domain to consider... I'd like to keep the main website on the first URL, as that's the one I'm redeveloping now. Thanks for any help! Edit: I should add to my question: Should I redirect individual pages to my new category pages to pass Page Authorty/Rank?
Link Building | | tomcraig860 -
Remove links or change anchor text?
I am currently in the process of cleaning up the link profile for a website that has been hit by Penguin thanks to loads of links from free directories with exact match keyword anchor texts (about 200 root domains from total of 300 root domains). I was wondering whether it's best to remove these un-natrual keyword anchor text links altogether, or change the anchor texts to brand (domain name, domainname.com, www.domainname.com, http://www.domainname.com)? I am currently trying to remove these links but was thinking it would be quicker to get to a healthier link profile (in terms of brand/commercial anchor text split) by altering the anchor texts and not removing them. Some of these directories are the worst of the worst on the other hand. Also note that I'm only really getting about a 30% response rate from the owners of these directories. Any thoughts? Many thanks in advance.
Link Building | | ec9awp0 -
Because a domain appears twice in the organic?
Good Day staff I have a small doubt .... I'm from Brazil, I have a client who is www.tiffanybrasil.com.br and the key word it is -> "cadeiras tiffany" or "cadeira tiffany" are coming in 3rd in the organic. Only the domain www.cadeirastiffany.com.br is appearing in the 1st and 2nd Place. Question 1: Why is that? appearing in the 1st and 2nd Place. Question 2: It shall be possible to pass an absolute domain?
Link Building | | AlexOliveira0