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@taisadesigner said in Would my site's DA be transferred if I redirect to another?:

"keep your old domain ... for some time ... years normally"

Completely agree with that - we kept our old domain active and redirecting for about 3 years. During that time we periodically analysed the server logs and when the traffic coming in on the old domain was 99% junk (i.e. overseas search spiders, position trackers, etc) we dropped the redirects and threw up a static holding page with a few links on it, just to give any humans who chanced upon the old domain a way to find the new one.

And also that you keep your urls consistent. So the same url from the old goes to the new.

Also agree. It's probably not absolutely essential - you're highly likely to lose some organic positions from this process anyway, so you could take the view that it's as good a time as any to change your structure - but it'll make a hard job even harder. You'd need to be really well organised to do it (i.e. with a very clear old/new site structure mapped out and total clarity on the mappings) and you'll have more variables to consider when trying to work out why you've lost traffic.
We maintained identical URLs between old and new domains for this reason though and it's still no guarantee of success.

@hayleybowyer You're most welcome - it was a helpful bit of catharsis for me!

I did a domain migration a few years ago and got severely burned by it despite taking all possible precautions (i.e. months of planning, identification of all "best practices" in this area, use of all relevant Google migration tools, enlisting the support of a well-respected SEO agency, etc. etc.). Despite all of that we lost the majority of our organic traffic almost overnight and despite working on it for almost a year afterwards, it has never fully returned to previous levels.

So my advice, for what it's worth, would be to avoid changing your domain name, unless it is an absolute commercial necessity for your business and/or if you can withstand the loss of your organic traffic. No matter what precautions you might take, that is a very real risk.

The next bit is not intended as advice and I'm not offering it as such, but I'll outline what I'd do if I had my time again.

Firstly, read everything that's out there on domain migration and get the best possible understanding of the process, the techniques and the risks. Don't start anything until you feel like you know it inside out.

Almost all of that material will talk about using 301 redirects, but personally, that would not be my approach. No matter how well prepared you think you are don't just drop a site-wide redirect in place. My approach would be to host the site on both the old and new domains but with a no-index instruction on the new domain. I'd then deploy cross-domain canonical links on a section-by-section basis, starting with a relatively low-risk section and removing the no-index instructions for each section on the new site as I worked through it.

It's complex: you'll need to pay close attention to the internal link structure on the new site as you go along and work out at which points to start using the new domain in those URLs. It'll also take longer, but you'll be able to monitor the transition and the impact on search visibility for each section of your site as you migrate it.

Even with this approach, based on my previous experience with cross-domain canonicals, I'd expect roughly a 30% drop in organic traffic but you'll be in control of the process: you can take it at your own pace and evaluate/mange/mitigate the risk at each stage.

Only when you've got the site moved over to the new domain would I look at closing-off the old domain with redirects and the other "normal" domain migration measures.

Before anyone gets upset, I'm not posting this to troll the SEO community. I'm not an SEO professional and I know that many of those who are will regard this as bad advice - that's fine by me. As I tried to make clear above, this is not my advice: My advice is not to attempt it in the first place.

This is purely a description of what I'd do differently with the benefit of hindsight.

I wish you all success with your migration.

Yep - Product category pages are already quite strong.

Part of whats behind the question is that I've previously come into contact with a "bigger sites rank better" SEO philosophy.

So when I see that we've got over 1m+ pages in Search Console that are excluded on the basis of NoIndex tags it makes me wonder if I'm missing a trick!

Thanks John.

By "short term" do you mean until we've improved the UX on the 410 pages?

Then remove the noindex after that?

Hello,

I have a large number of product pages on my site that are relatively short-lived: probably in the region of a million+ pages that are created and then removed within a 24 hour period.

Previously these pages were being indexed by Google and did receive landings, but in recent times I've been applying a NoIndex tag to them.

I've been doing that as a way of managing our crawl budget but also because the 410 pages that we serve when one of these product pages is gone are quite weak and deliver a relatively poor user experience.

We're working to address the quality of those 410 pages but my question is should I be no-indexing these product pages in the first place?

Any thoughts or comments would be welcome.

Thanks.

I did a domain migration a few years ago and got severely burned by it despite taking all possible precautions (i.e. months of planning, identification of all "best practices" in this area, use of all relevant Google migration tools, enlisting the support of a well-respected SEO agency, etc. etc.). Despite all of that we lost the majority of our organic traffic almost overnight and despite working on it for almost a year afterwards, it has never fully returned to previous levels.

So my advice, for what it's worth, would be to avoid changing your domain name, unless it is an absolute commercial necessity for your business and/or if you can withstand the loss of your organic traffic. No matter what precautions you might take, that is a very real risk.

The next bit is not intended as advice and I'm not offering it as such, but I'll outline what I'd do if I had my time again.

Firstly, read everything that's out there on domain migration and get the best possible understanding of the process, the techniques and the risks. Don't start anything until you feel like you know it inside out.

Almost all of that material will talk about using 301 redirects, but personally, that would not be my approach. No matter how well prepared you think you are don't just drop a site-wide redirect in place. My approach would be to host the site on both the old and new domains but with a no-index instruction on the new domain. I'd then deploy cross-domain canonical links on a section-by-section basis, starting with a relatively low-risk section and removing the no-index instructions for each section on the new site as I worked through it.

It's complex: you'll need to pay close attention to the internal link structure on the new site as you go along and work out at which points to start using the new domain in those URLs. It'll also take longer, but you'll be able to monitor the transition and the impact on search visibility for each section of your site as you migrate it.

Even with this approach, based on my previous experience with cross-domain canonicals, I'd expect roughly a 30% drop in organic traffic but you'll be in control of the process: you can take it at your own pace and evaluate/mange/mitigate the risk at each stage.

Only when you've got the site moved over to the new domain would I look at closing-off the old domain with redirects and the other "normal" domain migration measures.

Before anyone gets upset, I'm not posting this to troll the SEO community. I'm not an SEO professional and I know that many of those who are will regard this as bad advice - that's fine by me. As I tried to make clear above, this is not my advice: My advice is not to attempt it in the first place.

This is purely a description of what I'd do differently with the benefit of hindsight.

I wish you all success with your migration.