Domain Name Change-Negative Ranking Effect?
-
I am considering redirecting my domain name from www.nyc-officespace-leader.com to www.metro-manhattan.com. My company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc. so the new domain will be more consistent our identity. The Metro domain was registered with GoDaddy five years ago but has only been used for email and for forwarding (entering www.metro-manhattan.com will forward visitor to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com).
What is the likely hood that redirecting to the Metro-manhattan.com domain will result in a drop in traffic and ranking? I asked this question a year ago and the results were mixed. But one year is an eternity for Google. I am hoping that re-directs work better now and that if this is implemented correctly there will be no ranking/traffic/domain authority loss.
Thoughts??
Thanks, Alan
-
Well, in my views yes you will get benefit out of this change. I would suggest you to run a backlink audit of your old site and make disallow list of all toxic links. Disallow all those and put a 301 redirect as soon as you can.
Another tip, when you do it, try to change your onsite content. This will add up another plus point for your site.
I checked your site, its look amzing i think you will not only retain but will get good result. Moreover, you second domain has more branded power than the current one along with age of the domain.
So Good luck with your change.
-
Thanks, that is a very informative response!!
In our case we will change the top level domain. However the company is called Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc. and we are changing the domain to www.metro-manhattan.com, really much closer than the current domain of www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Furthermore the Metro-Manhattan domain was registered about 5 years ago with Godaddy.
If the 301 redirects are done properly, do you think we can more or less retain ranking, traffic and domain authority? Or do you think we are going to take a hit?
Also, is the www.metro-manhattan.com domain OK? It does have a hyphen.
Thanks so much!!
Alan
-
Hi, Frankly there are few things to be consider while you thinking to change your domain. We did the same for one of our client but result for them was perfectly fine.
Our client, domainn was (www.webuycarstoday.com) this site was poorly developed and has very low due to Google penalty we change to (www.webuycarstoday.co.uk) as you can see we did not change brand name but the TLD. After changing its TLD, we secure top page positions for all main keywords and since than its getting good customers attention.Now, In my opinion if you moved your site permanently by using 301 redirect, it will not have major impact however, if you planning to rebrand yourselves with new business name there might be risk of fall in traffic as a result. I think, you may use the similar kind of site but with different TLD that will work.
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
-
Not ranking at all for generic term which is also our brand name
Hello, I am working with a client in the indoor / outdoor wicker furniture area. They have "wicker" in their domain. However using the moz keyword ranking tool they do not appear at all in 51+ results. There was a time that we were appearing on page 1 but then dropped off. Anyone have any ideas on what could be causing us not to rank at all for that generic term? Our google places listing does come up for when people are local to the store and search, but the website does not.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | creatingdigital1 -
What's the average rank update time after site and/or backlink changes?
What's currently the typical time, ON AVERAGE, it takes to see ranking changes when significant improvements are made to significant ranking signals on a long-established (as opposed to brand new) website? Does the rank update associated with on-page optimization happen sooner than addition of quality backlinks?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JCCMoz0 -
NEW WEBSITE WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO RECOVERY THE AUTHORITY OF OLD DOMAIN NAME?
HOW TO DO RECOVERY AUTHORITY OF OLD DOMAIN NAME? I got some advise on this in another post here on MOZ based on this i need a few answers TO SUMMERIZE**:****.** My client got some REALLY bad advice when they got their new website. So they ended up changing the domain name and just redirecting everything from the old domain and old website to the front page of the new domain and new website. As the new domain not optimized for SEO they of cause now are not ranking on anything in Google anymore. QUESTION 1 According to my client, they use to rank well on keywords for the old domain and get a lot of organic traffic. They don’t have access to their old google analytics account, and don’t have any reports on their rankings. Can anyone suggestions how I can find out what keywords they were ranking on? QUESTION 2 I will change the domain name back to the old domnain name (the client actually prefer the old domain name) But how to get back most possible page authority: For information titles, descriptions, content has all been rewritten. A - Redirect I will try to match the old urls with the new ones. B - Recreate site structure Make the URL structure of the new website look like the old URL structure Etc. the old structure use to be like olddomain.com/our-destinations/cambadia.html (old) newdomain.com/destinations/Cambodia (new) Or olddomain.com/private-tours.html (old) newdomain.com/tailor-made (new) does the html in the old urls need any attention when recreating the permalinks in the new websites. Look forward to hear your thoughts on this, thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nm19770 -
Lower quality new domain link vs higher quality repeat domain link
First time poster here with a dilemma that head scratching and spreadsheets can't solve! I'm trying to work out whether to focus on getting links from new domains or to nurture relationships with the bigger sites in our business and get more links. Of the two links below which does the community here think would be more valuable a signal to Google? Both would be links from within relevant text/post copy. Link 1. Site DA 30. No links currently from this domain. Link 2. Site DA 60. Many links over last 12 months already from this domain. I suspect link 1 but given the enormous disparity in ranking power am I correct?! Thanks for any considered opinions out there! Matthew
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mat20150 -
Negative SEO and big decrease in main keyword ranking
Hi about 4 months ago, I had ranking #1 to #4 for "SEO" in Persian in my country; but someone made about 1000 spam links to my site and some other industry sites. I disavowed the links when I see (after 2-3 days of OSE detection). But now I'm in the page 2 of rankings for the most important keyword I ever had. The point is, My visits increased in this months, but I lost my rankings for this keyword not others. The spammy links targeted my main keyword. Whats you idea to get my ranking back? I'm writing content about SEO, Marketing and blogging for about 4 years and I don't have any bad resume in buying links or stuffing keywords or ... All natural.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | masoudfatemi0 -
Domain registered with US provider; hosted with UK - SEO effects?
My boss wants me to register a domain with a US company. However, most of our customers are in the UK. Though I would host any future website using a UK hosting provider, I don't know if registering the domain with a US provider would make any difference SEO-wise?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JacobFunnell0 -
Domain change - slow & easy, or rip off the bandaid?
We are laying the foundation for a domain change. I'm gathering all of the requirements listed from Google (301's, sign up the new domain with WMT, etc), customer communications, email system changes, social updates, etc. But through everything I've read, I'm not quite clear on one thing. We have the option of keeping our current domain and the new domain running off the same eCommerce database at the same time. This means that we have the option of running two exact duplicates simultaneously. The thought is that we would slowly, quietly turn on the new domain, start the link building and link domain changing processes, and generally give the new domain time to make sure it's not going to croak for some reason. Then, after a week or so, flip on a full 301 rewrite for the old domain. There are no concerns regarding order databases, as both domains would be running off of the same system. The only concern I have in the user experience is making sure I have internal links all set to relative, so visitors to the new domain aren't flipped over and freaked out by an absolute URL. I'm not confident that this co-existing strategy is the best approach, though. I'm wondering if it would be better from an SEO (and customer) perspective to Have the new domain active and performing a 302 redirect from the new domain to the corresponding page on the old domain When we're ready to flip the switch, implement the 301 redirect from old to new (removing the 302, of course) at switch time. Any thoughts or suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Goedekers0 -
Does duplicate content on a sub-domain affect the rankings of root domain?
We recently moved a community website that we own to our main domain. It now lives on our website as a sub-domain. This new sub-domain has a lot of duplicate page titles. We are going to clean it up but it's huge project. (We had tried to clean it even before migrating the community website) I am wondering if this duplicate content on the new sub-domain could be hurting rankings of our root domain? How does Google treat it? From SEO best practices, I know duplicate content within site is always bad. How severe is it given the fact that it is present on a different sub-domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Amjath0