Domain transfer
-
Hi Everyone!
I work for a company that had a new website built through a digital agency and that website went live 2 months ago. I have only been with the company for 2 months and find myself under the gun, because they are not coming up in organic search results that they used to. The old domain was 301'ed to point to the new domain. There were also 1 to 1 redirects set up to transfer the old page authority to the new, equivalent pages. In everyone's experience, how long does it take for a domain to start populating for search terms that it used to? I know there are mixed reviews on 301 transfers and how much of the old domain authority is preserved when you take this route. What is your experience? Just looking for some answers.
Thanks in advance!
John
-
My experience is similar to EGOL's. A carefully-implemented domain migration usually settles out within two or three weeks. There will still be some hiccups in certain terms etc for an additional couple of weeks, but those are usually in an upward direction as the new site is an improvement over the old.
If it's been two months and you haven't' yet at least returned to previous levels, it's time to get going on a thorough audit to figure out why and correct.
Tough spot to be in as someone who wasn't involved in the original build, but it does give you the benefit of fresh eyes. The key is to question everything - don't take anyone's assurance about what was done in the migration. Prove each item for yourself before accepting that it's been done properly.
Good luck!
Paul
-
If the old domain is strong, the new domain will start getting some stable traffic in about a week. Two at most.
That is if the new domain has all of the same on-page optimization of the old page, but if that digital agency took shortcuts - such as duplicate title and description tags across the site, or made mistakes such as a bad htaccess... they it will take forever unless they are fixed.
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
-
:Pointing hreflang to a different domain
Hi all, Let's say I have two websites: www.mywebsite.com and www.mywebsite.de - they share a lot of content but the main categories and URLs are almost always different. Am I right in saying I can't just set the hreflang tag on every page of www.mywebsite.com to read: rel='alternate' hreflang='de' href='http://mywebsite.de' /> That just won't do anything, right? Am I also right in saying that the only way to use hreflang properly across two domains is to have a customer hreflang tag on every page that has identical content translated into German? So for this page: www.mywebsite.com/page.html my hreflang tag for the german users would be: <link < span="">rel='alternate' hreflang='de' href='http://mywebsite.de/page.html' /></link <> Thanks for your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bee1590 -
Better Domain and Page Authority Than my compeitors
Hi All, I have a pretty extensive question but wanted a starting point if you don't mind. I have a situation where I created 4 sites that I would say are almost identical other than I have loaned my other websites to other agents. My content is rewritten but it's still roughly the same. You will see, when I give the URL's, that they are similar, and almost identical in templates.My question is going to be, Since I have built some authority on all of these sites, is it wise to simply take them down, or just change the templates and take away the content and start over. If so, what do I do with the existing pages? Or is there a better idea I'm not thinking of? My other question is, this site: goo.gl/Tf00rc Is my main site. It has a higher domain authority and page authority than any of my other local competitors, yet I'm still ranked #13-15 for my main keywords. I will say, many of my other competitors have older domains and I'm sure didn't try to manipulate the serps either. Thoughts and recommendations? Here are my other similar sites which have almost identical templates and very similar content but not copied and pasted content. 1. goo.gl/Wwb0Tg 2. goo.gl/3gpR1X 3. goo.gl/FwD8Bk 4. goo.gl/vpuQv2 My dilemma: I want to make sure that my other agents have a great site that can perform well, as well. If I completely remove these sites, they have no site. I'll say that right now the sites that get the most traffic are the goo.gl/Tf00rc and goo.gl/Wwb0Tg then is the goo.gl3gpR1X, and lastly goo.gl/FwD8Bk so they all get about 3k, 2k, and 1k and 500 visits a month respectively. The total visits of all of these is pretty good. I feel like the max would visits would be around 10k per month in my market. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have spent a lot of time and money getting these sites where they are only to be penalized, I'm sure, for duplicate content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Veebs0 -
Is a .tv domain good for video optimization?
Does anybody know of any information or resources that point out .tv domains are helpful for video optimization? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
How can i redirect my site to other domain ?
I have been running an eCommerce site since 2008 and have a PR3 with mostly have an authority link from reputed sites, how can I transfer my existing eCommerce site to the new domain so in the new domain i get SEO value from the old domain. Please advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chandubaba0 -
Help needed for a domain
I have a small translation agency in Brazil (this website), totally dependent on SEM. We are in business since 2007, and we were on top position for many relevant keywords until the middle of 2011, when the ranking for the most important keywords started dropping. In that time, we believed that we needed to redesign the old static website and replace it by a new modern one, with fresh content and with weekly updates, which we did, and it's now hosted on Squarespace. I took care to keep the old links working with 301 redirections. When we made the transfer from the static site to Squarespace (Mar/2012, see the attachment), the ranking dropping became even more serious. Today, we have less than 50 unique visitors per day, in a total desperate situation! To make things worse, we received an alert from Google on 23/September/2012 talking about unnatural inbound links, but Google said that "As a result, for this specific incident we are taking very targeted action on the unnatural links instead of your site as a whole", so we thought we didn't need to worry about. Google was correct, I worked many hours to register our website in web directories, I thought there would be no problem since I was doing this manually. My conclusions are: Something happened prior to Mar/2012 that was making us losing territory. I just don't know what! The migration to Squarespace was a huge mistake. I lost control over the html, and squarespace doesn't do a good job optimizing the pages for SEO. We also were also blasted by Penguin on September, but I believe this is not the main cause of the drop. We were already running very badly at this time. My actions are: a) I generated a DTOX report and I'm trying to clean up the links marked as toxic. That's a hard work! After that I will submit a reconsideration request. b) I'm working on the site: Improving internal link building for relevant keywords Recently I removed a "tag cloud" which I believe was hurting my SEO. Also, I did some redirections that were missing. c) I trying to generate new content to improve link building to my site. d) I'm also considering to stop putting all my coins on this domain, and maybe start a fresh new one. Yes, I'm desperate! 🙂 I would appreciate a lot to hear from you guys, expert people! Thanks a lot, MWcEdPa.png?1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rodrigofreitas0 -
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!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EGOL0 -
Help! My Domain Authority keeps dropping! What do I do?
Hey! I just noticed my Domain Authority keeps dropping? What's happening? What do I do to get it better. I'm scared and dont know the next move to make to get this site better. Help please! Thanks! http://www.moondoggieinc.com Kristy O
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KristyO1 -
Sub-domain and Sub-directory - Is there no difference
Hi, Last year Google announced that it will treat links from a sub-domain as internal links and not external - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.in/2011/08/reorganizing-internal-vs-external.html. Does it means that now there is no difference between a sub-domain and a sub-directory and anyone of them can be used? Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IM_Learner0