Moving Site with #1 Ranking to New Domain
-
I want to move a site of mine that ranks #1 for many keywords to a new domain name. I have already redirected many smaller less important sites to the new domain, but have held off on my most popular site. If I redirect the entire site with a 301 redirect, what can I expect with my number one ranking, particular for coveted search terms..thanks for the input.
-
Also - if the only change is the domain name, (URLs are otherwise identical, content is otherwise identical), then you may see more of a hit at Bing than Google simply because Bing emphasizes age of content a bit more.
Also I'd highly suggest a comprehensive link building initiative as the new domain goes live so while you're working to get as many existing links pointing directly (to bypass 301s on those 3rd party authority signals), you'll also want to have a variety of new quality links to show that "this new domain really is still authoritative and trustworthy". That should help ensure any hit you take is not as long as it would otherwise be.
I'd also encourage a press release sent out through PRWeb.com or PRNewswire.com, and social push announcing the change. All these are as much for signals confirming it's a legit transfer as they are for other SEO reasons.
-
There is always a risk when doing 301.
In my experiences, they are not very big, when the 301 is done properly.
One potential pitfall can be keyword-rich domains. If you rank #1 for [Blue Widgets] and redirect from bluewidgets.com to xyz.com, you'll probably take a hit in the ranking.
If you are not redirecting from a keyword rich domain, it shouldn't cause any problems over the long term. Just remember to try to contact as many of the ingoing linking websites and have them change the link.
Also, although a 301 is called a permanent redirect, it can usually be undone and old rankings will be restored.
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
-
Is 301 redirects a deal breaker for Migrating content or moving to new software?
I have this forum with about 2 million posts for 16 years on root of the domain. I am looking to switch softwares but the top ones won’t help setup 301 redirects. But I can still migrate all my members and all my content (threads/posts), would Google still reindex all our content or if we don’t setup redirects would it really kill our entire traffic for a long time or maybe just a month or so? I really want to migrate to software that isn’t forum based but rather something that offers courses, chat, live video streaming, subscription based etc. and this is the only way to do so OR to set it up on an entirely new domain OR subdomain but to me that is like starting all over from scratch? I could archive the forum to read only and set it up on subdomain or another root domain - then on the archived forum setup banners and a pop up linking to the new site or new subdomain? . This is such a hard decision for us as the current forum we have had for so many years has lost members posting from 1k a day to just a handful a day, our fb group though gets 1k a day so I’m trying to revive a site into something more modern and has all the training features we can offer as well.
Technical SEO | | vbsk1 -
A new client has image urls showing above their page rankings for the same key phrase.
New client website https://yorkshirefoodguide.co.uk/ has for some key phrase searches the URL for an image showing above or as well as the url for the landing page. I'd be happy for it to show in the image pack but I want to url to rank in the main serp. The site is in WordPress and I'm sure this is just a setting I need to manage. Can you help please?
Technical SEO | | Marketing_Optimist0 -
Migrating Customers Off Domain, DO NOT Want to Pass Ranking Signals
Hey everyone! Thanks in advance for any help on this. I work for a SaaS company that has all of our customer apps and assets on our company domain. This has resulted in a lot of backlinks pointing to our domain, and a lot of pages indexed as well. I'm working with product to migrate all customers onto a separate domain, but a concern is that we need to still move the customer content to the new domains somehow without passing any of this backlink info. Am I correct in my assumption that if we 301 all of the apps and assets, all of that backlink info stays the same? What would be the best way to do this? Could we 302 everything and then wait like, 30 days and delete the 302? Would that still fix the problem, or does all of that backlink data "stick" after the 302 is deleted? Any additional thoughts would be extremely helpful!!
Technical SEO | | rachelmeyer0 -
We switched the domain from www.blog.domain.com to domain.com/blog.
We switched the domain from www.blog.domain.com to domain.com/blog. This was done with the purpose of gaining backlinks to our main website as well along with to our blog. This set us very low in organic traffic and not to mention, lost the backlinks. For anything, they are being redirected to 301 code. Kindly suggest changes to bring back all the traffic.
Technical SEO | | arun.negi0 -
Why would my domain and page authority drop from 11 and 21, respectively, to 1 overnight?
Overnight the domain authority dropped from 11 to 1 and the page authority dropped from 21 to 1 with out any changes being made to the website.
Technical SEO | | dkyle0 -
Can the sudden addition of a new section of a website cause the site to be sandboxed?
Hi there, We have noticed a sudden drop in traffic for certain keywords. It seems to correlate precisely with a different department adding a whole new recruitment section to the site. However there doesn't appear to be any keyword cannibalization or duplicate content issues. Any ideas would be most appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Blaze-Communication0 -
What should the combined domain rank of 2 sites?
We have just combined 2 sites by redirecting a site with a domain ranking of 35 to a site with a domain ranking of 27 (this is because the we want to use the address with a ranking of 27) After a week I now have 1 domain with a ranking of 26?? So my questions are; Should the ranking have increased already? What should I expect the ranking to increase to if at all? Is there something I could have done wrong when transferring? Thanks
Technical SEO | | benj450 -
I want to create a new web site, I have to choose between:....
Hello I want to create a new web site, I have to choose between: 1/ using one of my former domain name that dates about 10 years ago, which has a lot of backlink (PageRank 4) but without the anchor text of the new area of activity that I want to launch ... 2/or purchase a new domain name with two keywords which I want to be positioned in the first place: P Which method is better for good and quickly results ? Thank you for your help
Technical SEO | | Moncer0