Redirecting a Page from Domain A to Domain B
-
We have a page on Domain A, an established and well-ranking website, that would be more appropriate on Domain B, a site that we launched about two years ago.
This page ranks well, pulls nice search traffic and has traffic from external links.
We would like to move the page and its traffic from Domain A to Domain B using a 301 redirect.
Have you ever done this or have you heard of how it has worked for someone else?
Thanks!
-
Thank you John! I'll remember to edit the links.
-
Awesome! Thank you Cyrus.
-
I didn't know that it would drop over time. Thanks!
-
Yep. I figured this, but will accept it.
-
Yep. Will do this!
-
-
Hi Egol,
Let me add my 2 cents. In my experience this sort of thing works, but there are quite a few things that can go wrong. Some general thoughts:
1. The 301 redirect will only pass about 80% of the pre-existing link juice, and drop over time.
2. If the new domain has a lower domain authority or vastly different backlink profile, this can hurt the new page's ability to rank.
3. Works best to keep the title tag and other html elements as close to the original as possible, including page layout.
I've found it also helps to build new links to the redirected page as soon as possible. Really, I don't like to redirect pages if I can help it, and usually do so only out of necessity.
-
Do any pages on Domain A link to this page? Is it going to be off-putting or strange for users to get whisked off to Domain B when they follow these links? If so, is this a place where a cross-domain canonical might make more sense?
If you go the redirect route, do make sure to update all your internal links from Domain A to go directly to the page on Domain B as to not bleed any link juice by going through the redirect, and to help mitigate the surprise of changing domains (some people look at link destinations before clicking links).
-
Thank you, Streamline. Should be really easy here because we have .html pages.
-
Thank you, Chenzo.!
-
I would just add the 301 redirect directly on the page. If you are using PHP, this should work -
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); header("Location: http://www.domainb.com/page.php"); ?>
-
Not a fun process - but I have done migrations like this in the past.
From what platform to the next is it?
Example: PHP to wordpress or wordpress to wordpress kind of move?
- I had did a php to .html (wordpress platform) - using canonical link methods as well - and the migration/indexing went flawless.
Would like to see if I can help ;o)
Your pal
Chenzo
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
-
A question related to domain authority and Page Authority.
What are the factors that matter to increase domain or page authority because we know domain authority is crucial, it's the best and easy way to tell someone about your website that how worthy your site is.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hfameraya198
Is backlinks only the metric to increase domain authority?0 -
Is there a way to forward banklink benefits from one domain to another without a redirect?
In this situation I have SiteA, and SiteB on completely separate domains. SiteA is the marketing front for the company and SiteB is an app that company owns. SiteB receives a fair amount of backlinks as it has the login page of the application where customers link to a branded version for their members to login. Additionally none of that domain is indexable including the login page. SiteB's domain can't be changed to be a subdomain of SiteA as it isn't technically feasible. Initially I was reluctant to use canonical because as it isn't really duplicate content. Is there a method for forwarding any link-juice from SiteB to SiteA without the use of a redirect and would canonical be appropriate in this case? Additionally would SiteB's not being indexed negate any link benefit? Edit: Typo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OCN0 -
Redirect closed shop to main shop, or keep the domain and content alive and use it for link building?
Hello, We used to have two shops selling our products, a small shop with a small selection of only our best quality products (domain smallshop.com), and a big shop with everything (bigshop.com). It used to make sense (without going into full detail), but it's not relevant anymore, and so we decided to stop maintaining the small shop, because it was time consuming and not worth it. There is some really good links pointing to smallshop.com, and the content is original (the product descriptions are different between both shops). So far, we just switch the "add to cart" button on the small shop into a link to the same product on the big shop, and did links from the small shop to the big shop also on categories pages. So the question is: in your opinion, is it better to do that, keep the small shop and content alive and build links to our big shop, or do 301 redirections and shut down completely the small shop ? Thanks for your opinion!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Colage0 -
Where/how do you set up 301 redirects when keeping the same domain and not preserving the filename?
Hi there, I'm just reaching to to ask for some help in understanding where 301 redirects should be set up on a website when keeping the same domain but not preserving the original filenames? Essentially what is happening is an old website is being completely overhauled and brought up to date from a technical and usability standpoint. While the SEO isn't great naturally many of the pages have been indexed by google over time. A few pages have decent statistics and I don't want to lose the juice from them, but they do still need a lot of improving. So my question is this, would all the redirection take place in the .htaccess file only in this case? From reading here on Moz I think this is the case, but I need to confirm that. I was reading this article which has thrown me slightly: https://mza.bundledseo.com/learn/seo/redirection but this seems more complex as the website was actually moving domains. Open to any insight and if you need further clarification or information let me know.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODarren0 -
Community inside the domain or in a separate domain
Hi there, I work for an ecommerce company as an online marketing consultant. They make kitchenware, microware and so on. The are reviewing their overall strategy and as such they want to build up a community. Ideally, they would want to have the community in a separate domain. This domain wouldn't have the logo of the brand. This community wouldn't promote the brand itself. The brand would post content occassionally and link the store domain. The reasoning of this approach is to not interfere in the way of the community users and also the fact that the branded traffic acquired doesn't end up buying at the store I like this approach but I am concerned because the brand is not that big to have two domains separated and lose all the authority associated with one strong domain. I would definitely have everything under the same domain, store and community, otherwise we would have to acquire traffic for two domains. 1. What do you think of both scenarios, one domain versus two? Which one is better? 2. Do you know any examples of ecommerce companies with successful communities within the store domain? Thanks and regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | footd0 -
Multiple 301 Redirects for the Same Page
Hi Mozzers, What happens if I have a trail of 301 redirects for the same page? For example,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
SiteA.com/10 --> SiteA.com/11 --> SiteA.com/13 --> SiteA.com/14 I know I lose a little bit of link juice by 301 redirecting.
The question is, would the link juice look like this for the example above? 100% --> 90% --> 81% -->72.9%
Or just 100% -----------------------------------------> 90% Does this link juice refer to juice from inbound links or links between internal pages on my site? Thanks!0 -
How to get around Google Removal tool not removing redirected and 404 pages? Or if you don't know the anchor text?
Hello! I can’t get squat for an answer in GWT forums. Should have brought this problem here first… The Google Removal Tool doesn't work when the original page you're trying to get recached redirects to another site. Google still reads the site as being okay, so there is no way for me to get the cache reset since I don't what text was previously on the page. For example: This: | http://0creditbalancetransfer.com/article375451_influencial_search_results_for_.htm | Redirects to this: http://abacusmortgageloans.com/GuaranteedPersonaLoanCKBK.htm?hop=duc01996 I don't even know what was on the first page. And when it redirects, I have no way of telling Google to recache the page. It's almost as if the site got deindexed, and they put in a redirect. Then there is crap like this: http://aniga.x90x.net/index.php?q=Recuperacion+Discos+Fujitsu+www.articulo.org/articulo/182/recuperacion_de_disco_duro_recuperar_datos_discos_duros_ii.html No links to my site are on there, yet Google's indexed links say that the page is linking to me. It isn't, but because I don't know HOW the page changed text-wise, I can't get the page recached. The tool also doesn't work when a page 404s. Google still reads the page as being active, but it isn't. What are my options? I literally have hundreds of such URLs. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeanGodier0 -
Category Pages up - Product Pages down... what would help?
Hi I mentioned yesterday how one of our sites was losing rank on product pages. What steps do you take to improve the SERPS of product pages, in this case home/category/product is the tree. There isn't really any internal linking, except one link from the category page to each product, would setting up a host of internal links perhaps "similar products" linking them together be a place to start? How can I improve my ranking of these more deeply internal pages? Not just internal links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | xoffie0