New Domain Name For Site That Ranks Highly on Key Terms
-
Here's my problem -- which is actually a pretty good problem to have.
My client is a speciality service provider in an extremely competitive field. It charges 3 to 5 times what others do for providing a super-premium level of service. It doesn't have -- nor does it want -- many customers. I can't go into details, but let's just say the business model is a bit like the charity or premium newsletter publishing model. It is extremely hard to recruit new members -- but once recruited, members tend to stay for a long time at high price points. Personal referral is key.
As result of my efforts over the last 90 days, the client's SEO results have skyrocketed. After a couple of false starts, we have focussed on key terms the target demographic is likely to search, rather than the generic terms others in the industry use. We have also had great success with a social media strategy -- since the few people likely to be interested in paying such high prices know like-minded folks.
For the first time, my client is getting "walk in" prospects. They are delighted! But they are not really walk-ins. They have already found the site -- either through SERPs or Facebook or Twitter.
Now we need to get to the next level.
Here's the problem: the client's domain name sucks. It is short, but combines an acronym with one of the words in its long-version name. It uses the British spelling version of the long name fragment, even though most Canadians now use American spelling. And it is a .ca, rather than a dot.com
So I think we have to bite the bullet and change to the long, dot com version of the name, which is available and has the additional benefit of having embedded within it a key search term.
I am basically an editorial/content guy and not a tech guy. The IT guys at my firm are strongly encouraging me to make the change...in very "colorful" language. We can certainly do 301 redirects at the page level.
But I would like some additional validation before proceeding.
My questions are:
-
how much link juice might we lose? I've seen the figure of 10% bandied around. Is it accurate?
-
might we see a temporary dip in results? If so, how long would it last?
-
what questions did I forget to ask? What additional info do you need to offer informed advice ?
-
-
Here's the problem: the client's domain name sucks. It is short, but combines an acronym with one of the words in its long-version name. It uses the British spelling version of the long name fragment, even though most Canadians now use American spelling. And it is a .ca, rather than a dot.com
I would be using "colorful" language too!
But I would like some additional validation before proceeding.
More colorful language.
- how much link juice might we lose? I've seen the figure of 10% bandied around. Is it accurate?
Nobody knows for sure. Not an awful lot.
- might we see a temporary dip in results? If so, how long would it last?
You might have unstable SERPs for a few days to a couple of weeks. It's possible that your rankings could drop a place or two. But most of the time there is very little damage if you do the switch properly.
- what questions did I forget to ask? What additional info do you need to offer informed advice
Your question seems to be... "Should I do this?" If this was my site the answer would be yes.
In the past year we have done two domain moves. One was positive results all around, great results. The other was up everywhere except the trophy KW which we slipped from #1,2,3 to #2,3,4 but are working to get it back. Sales are still very strong.
-
Thanks. Very helpful.
-
how much link juice might we lose? I've seen the figure of 10% bandied around. Is it accurate?
I am not aware of any solid measuring tool which can offer an exact analysis of how much link juice is lost. All the information I have ever encountered offers the 10% figure as the maximum amount of link juice lost. The actual figure is 1 - 10%, not a flat 10%.
might we see a temporary dip in results? If so, how log would it last.
The loss of link juice is permanent as long as the re-directed links are used. Once your migration is complete, Google and other search engines will update their links as they crawl the site. This can take several weeks depending on the size and depth of the site. Once complete, then all of your search traffic will go straight to your site.
You can further help by cleaning up your site. Often you may have articles with anchor links using the old URL. If you update these links to the new URL, then they wont require the re-directs. This change is important because readers often copy your content and paste it to other sites. Use your crawl report for this process.
The last thing you can do is try to update anyone who links to your site with your new URL. In many cases this may not be feasible. Sometimes you have a strong relation with a site who links to you, and can request for your link to be updated. This also works with any directory links to your site.
In summary, you may see a dip but that is not likely. Links are just one of 200+ factors involved in calculating your placement in search results, and the re-direct juice loss is very small. You should gain a boost by the .com name along with the keyword added to your URL. Your benefits should outweigh the cost.
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
-
What will happen if we 302 a page that is ranking #1 in google for a high traffic term?
We're planning to test something and we want to 302 a page to another page for a period of time. The question is, the original page is ranking #1 for a high traffic term. I want to know what will happen if we do this? Will we lose our rank? Will the traffic remain the same? Ultimately I do not want to lose traffic and I do not want to 301 until it has been properly tested.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maxcdn0 -
New Domain Vs. Existing Domain
Hello, A potential client of mine has been blacklisted because of bad SEO process basically they have over 1,500 toxic links on their site. They have penalised to such an extent that they are now on page 12 for most of their keywords and not ranking well on brand terms either. They are keen to on to a new domain entirely and ditch their current domain when we design their new site. I wanted to get people's opinion on whether this is the best course of action or should we try to salvage the current domain? Many thanks, Mat
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Barques-Design0 -
Want to merge high ranking niche websites into a new mega site, but don't want to lose authority from old top level pages
I have a few older websites that SERP well, and I am considering merging some or all of them into a new related website that I will be launching regardless. My old websites display real estate listings and not much else. Each website is devoted to showing homes for sale in a specific neighborhood. The domains are all in the form of Neighborhood1CityHomes.com, Neighborhood2CityHomes.com, etc. These sites SERP well for searches like "Neighborhood1 City homes for sale" and also "Neighborhood1 City real estate" where some or all of the query is in the domain name. Google simply points to the top of the domain although each site has a few interior pages that are rarely used. There is next to zero backlinking to the old domains, but each links to the other with anchor text like "Neighborhood1 Cityname real estate". That's pretty much the extent of the link profile. The new website will be a more comprehensive search portal where many neighborhoods and cities can be searched. The domain name is a nonsense word .com not related to actual key words. The structure will be like newdomain.com/cityname/neighborhood-name/ where the neighborhood real estate listings are that would replace the old websites, and I'd 301 the old sites to the appropriate internal directories of the new site. The content on the old websites is all on the home page of each, at least the content for searches that matter to me and rank well, and I read an article suggesting that Google assigns additional authority for top level pages (can I link to that here?). I'd be 301-ing each old domain from a top level to a 3rd level interior page like www. newdomain/cityname/neighborhood1/. The new site is better than the old sites by a wide margin, especially on mobile, but I don't want to lose all my top positions for some tough phrases. I'm not running analytics on the old sites in question, but each of the old sites has extensive past history with AdWords (which I don't run any more). So in theory Google knows these old sites are good quality.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gogogomez0 -
Site rankings down
Our site is over 10 years old and has consistently ranked highly in google.co.uk for over 100 key phrases. Until the middle of April, we were 7th for 'nuts and bolts' and 5th for 'bolts and nuts' - we have been around these positions for 5-6 years easily now. Our rankings dropped mid-April, but now (presumably as a result of Penguin 2.0), we've seen larger decreases across the board. We are now 5th page on 'nuts and bolts', and second page on 'bolts and nuts'. Can anyone please shed any light on this? Although we'd fallen some before Penguin 2.0, we've fallen quite a bit further since. So I'm wondering if it's that. We do still rank well on our more specialised terms though - 'imperial bolts', 'bsw bolts', 'bsf bolts', we're still top 5. We've lost out with the more generic terms. In the past we did a bit of (relevant) blog commenting and obtained some business directory links, before realising the gain was tiny if at all. Are those likely to be the issue? I'm guessing so. It's hard to know which to get rid of though! Now, I use social media sparingly, just Facebook, Twitter and G+. The only linkbuilding I do now is by sending polite emails to people who run classic car clubs that would use our bolts, stuff like that. I've had a decent response from that, and a few have become customers directly. Here's our link profile if anyone would be kind enough as to have a look: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.thomassmithfasteners.com Also, SEOMOZ says we have too many links on our homepage (107) - the dropdown navigation is the culprit here. Should I simply get rid of the dropdown and take users to the categories? Any advice here would be appreciated before I make changes! If anyone wants to take a look at the site, the URL is in the link profile above - I'm terrified of posting links anywhere now! Thanks for your time, and I'd be very grateful for any advice. Best Regards, Stephen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stephenshone1 -
A question of rankings (with actual domains)
Working with the main site featured in this Open Site Explorer comparison (you'll need a pro account to view this), and have been for quite some time. Recently we've slid behind Ebay (huge brand, I get it), but the other competitors don't really make sense to me. Main phrase is pontoon boats, and maybe I'm too close to this, but we seem to be in the best shape overall in terms of the domain, the page itself, and even our social media is pretty successful (we're closing in on 5,000 likes and have a pretty engaged audience). More internal linking is an opportunity, but I'd like another set of eyes (or several for that matter) to weigh in on opinions. I'm a bit stumped. Thanks Mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NetvantageMarketing0 -
New Site Launch- Bad Rankings
So I am slightly stumped. I work on a few eCom sites and over the past few months we have been launching new products as well as some site updates/upgrades. The issue that I am having is this. Product that is actually new this season, as in we did not carry it before, is ranking fine...generally speaking we are top 3 in Google with Brand/Product name. However product that is not new, meaning it has a new color or graphic but has been in the catalog for years is not ranking. In Prior years the URL's ended with the product name, now however they have additional information added to the end for this season. Would not directing the old URL to the new URL effect the rankings of these pages? I am open to suggestions beyond redirecting as well. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | K2_Sports0 -
High Rankings, Search Volumes & Low CTR
I'm hitting a roadblock: I've successfully optimized our company website for 5 keyphrases, 3 of which we're ranking #1 in Google.com for, and for which monthly search volumes in the US are > 10,000. Yet, our CTR for those searches is below 1%!!! In plain words: people are looking for our industry, find us on as the first result, yet don't click on us! It's the first time I've experienced this in SEO and I'm wondering what is going on - and if anyone has suggestions. Any help is appreciated...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | quickmobile0 -
Strategies to compete with a new domain/site
Hi all, What would be ( highlights ) your strategy in order to rank and compete with a new domain against competitors that have an average of 50% domain authority and around 2000 root domain linking to them, if you would start with a completely new website/domain? How long would you estimate the new site to be competitive? In the retail area. Working on it a month full time I would go with On page SEO off course, detailling each products and building the internal link structure Get back links, backlinks, backlinks and... backlinks... Build the social media network feed a blog Thanks for your input Considering working on the site for a month full time, I would estimate a ranking after a month or 2 although the competitions very high. Your thoughts ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Derek_A0