How to move website to new domain?
-
We have a website that has run under the same domain name for the past 10 years. We have built up a decent amount of SEO "mojo" (and traffic) over time, however, the original domain name no longer applies to the business model.
A little over 1 year ago we started using a new brand name for the website and created a landing page for that domain name. Everything on that landing page links over to pages on the original domain name (to preserve the SEO value that we have built up over the years).
We would like to move all (or most) of the pages/content to the new domain name. Would using 301 redirects be the safest, most effective way of doing this? I have heard of other people doing it this way, and often they will see their traffic drop for a few weeks before it eventually comes back.
Anyone else had experience with this? What worked? What didn't?
Thanks!
-
Hi Doug,
301's are the right way to go as they pass link juice from the old domain and will preserve the traffic from existing external links.
The key here is "301's" (plural). Redirect each page on the old domain to the corresponding or relevant page on the new domain and also notify in Webmaster Tools that you have moved the site to the new domain.
There is some discussion of moving sites and using 301's in this SEOmoz Q&A post where I added a link to a Google Webmasters video that explains the process.
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
-
Delay to rank for authority website versus new website
Hello, I have a website that has been existing for years. How long does it take if I have a good content on a page for it to rank ? I read here and that that it can take 4 to 6 months but it never says if it is for a brand new website or a old website that has an authority and some links. I also read that some people publish content and rank within a week on competitive keywords. So who is right, what is there to read in between the lines ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Can I define that one area of my website is a regualr news (no subscription) and the other part of the website is news that only subscribers can read?
Hi I have a client that have a news website, he asked me if he can define one area of his website to be a regular news that google can show on google news search results (no subscription) and the other part of the website is news that only subscribers can read? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
New Website - Un-natural link warning with 2 weeks of going live
I have a customer who has a website, 8 years old. The business has changed, and he has launched a new website (and sub-business_ to handle a particular service. As such the main website will no longer be handling the new service. For purpose of example; The service in question had it's own are set aside on his website, so what we have done is to 301 that part of the site (a single URL) to the homepage of his new website. Old Business Site
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | makeusawebsite
Service 1
Services 2 (301 to new site)
Service 3 New Business Site This worked well, and within a week his new site was gaining traffic for the service keyword. However, we have now had a un-natural link wartning in webmaster tools. The old page on the old site had minimal links to it (around 400). It had a page authority of 42, and 142 linking domains. The new website has been live a few weeks now, and has had 3 links to it, all genuine. He was on page one for the new business name, and is now page 6. Has anyone else ever seen this happen, and how should we deal with it. We could of course remove the 301 redirect and put in a recon-request, but the 301 seems like thje right thing to have done, and is genuine. Any advice greatly appreciated.0 -
Launching 20 new URLs to branch out from a multi brand website. How do I make sure the rankings stay?
I have a client with a multiple brand website currently. The site has landing pages and directories for each of its 20 brands under one URL. The plan is to build 20 separate brand websites with new domains and have the old content redirect to its corresponding new URL. The problem that I envision is being able to successfully carry all of the existing indexed content over while only using 301 redirects and submitting the new domains to Webmaster tools. Has anyone done this in the past successfully and do you have any recommendations?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Empower_MediaMarketing0 -
Multi domain redirect to single domain
Hello, all SEOers. Today, I would like to get some ideas about handling multiple domains. I have a client who bought numerous domains under purpose of prevent abuse of their brand name and at the same time for future uses. This client bought more than 100 domains. Some domains are paused, parked, lived and redirected to other site. I don't worry too much of parked domains and paused domains. However, what I am worrying is that there are about 40 different domains are now redirected to single domain and meta refresh was used for redirections. As far as I know, this can raise red flag for Google. I asked clients to clean up unnecessary domains, yet they want to keep them all. So now I have to figure out how to handle all domains which are redirect to single domain. So far, I came up with following ideas. 1. Build gateway page which shows lists of my client sites and redirect all domains to gateway page. 2. Implement robots.txt file to all different domains 3. Delete the redirects and leave it as parked domains. Could anyone can share other ideas in order to handling current status? Please people, share your ideas for me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Artience0 -
I run an (unusual) clothing company. And I'm about to set up a version of our existing site for kids. Should I use a different domain? Or keep the current root domain?
Hello. I have a burning question which I have been trying to answer for a while. I keep getting conflicting answers and I could really do with your help. I currently run an animal fancy dress (onesie) company in the UK called Kigu through the domain www.kigu.co.uk. We're the exclusive distributor for a supplier of Japanese animal costumes and we've been selling directly through this domain for about 3 years. We rank well across most of our key words and get about 2000 hits each day. We're about to start selling a Kids range - miniature versions of the same costumes. We're planning on doing this through a different domain which is currently live - www.kigu-kids.co.uk. It' been live for about 3-4 weeks. The idea behind keeping them on separate domains is that it is a different target market and we could promote the Kids site separately without having to bring people through the adult site. We want to keep the adult site (or at least the homepage) relatively free from anything kiddy as we promote fancy dress events in nightclubs and at festivals for over 18s (don't worry, nothing kinky) and we wouldn't want to confuse that message. I've since been advised by an expert in the field that that we should set up a redirect from www.kigu-kids.co.uk and house the kids website under www.kigu.co.uk/kids as this will be better from an SEO perspective and if we don't we'll only be competing with ourselves. Are we making a big mistake by not using the same root domain for both thus getting the most of the link juice for the kids site? And if we do decide to switch to have the domain as www.kigu.co.uk/kids, is it a mistake to still promote the www.kigu-kids.co.uk (redirecting) as our domain online? Would these be wasted links? Or would we still see the benefit? Is it better to combine or is two websites better than one? Any help and advice would be much appreciated. Tom.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KIGUCREW0 -
Need bullet points for a new website on what to do for SEO
Hello, My company just launched a new website and its a competitve market it looks like. Its for moving boxes and moving supplies. They want a bullet point list (nothing real specific) of what I will be doing for SEO for the new website. I have been out of the loop for more than a year with SEO so not sure what the best things to do first are. Any help would be great. Thanks John
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maximumrank0 -
Moving wordpress to main website - errors galore
Hi there A while back I asked whether I should move my established blog on wordpress over to my main website http://www.gardenbeet.com. The overwhelming response was to move it. I still have not seen any benefit other than problems (2mths later). Maybe something is Not Quite Right? Here is a list of issues? Any insights would be welcome. I have installed Yeost SEO plugins 1. A blog category (garden art) ended up outranking my main website for the term Garden Art - so I did a 301 on the garden art category - main website has now regained its ranking in the top 3 position (was number 2 before the move). 2. I have removed the categories from the blog as a 301 on the Garden Art catgegory would not make sense to a user. I decided to use tags as a navigational tool instead. I figured that because I have over 500 tags I could not have had the tags out rank my main website for any key term. So far correct. But now i have wanings from SEO moz 500 missing meta tags,(for the tags) - do i really have to write over 500 meta? over 160 long urls and titles - when i commenced the blog I had no idea that Urls and headings were linked in wordpress ( my developer does not think i should rename the urls and use a 301 as I already have a tonne due to a site rebuild) - is it OK to leave the long urls and fix the title only? On wordpress I had bewteen 400-900 users on my blog a day (using wordpress analytics) - now only 200 (using GA) - Yes I now have increased links to my website but have seen no imrpovement on my SERPS - will i see an improvement in my rankings? my wordpress site use to have page rank of 3 -
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GardenBeet0