Hello,
I need a little help from the fine expert community here regarding my site…
I have a site that’s building some nice traffic in a given niche. However, I now plan to expand beyond my niche into a much broader niche of the same topic (if that makes sense).
My dilemma is I would like to move to a different domain that reflects the broader niche of the same topic. BUT, is this possible?
(NOTE: I’m not interested in building a second site)
Here’s my concerns:
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Backlinking: I don’t want to lose my back links. Will the right redirects preserve my backlinks/rankings?
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Domain age: If #1 is doable then I assume that a new domain name could hurt rankings also…so do I need to get an aged domain?
I’m not sure if there are other issues but if anyone can comment on the above and add anything that would be great!
Ken
Not technically true - Google does pay attention to how long your website has been on that domain, and sites that have been around for longer are given a few more points than those that have not. (If a completely new site is launched on an old domain, rather than a rewrite of the old site, the timer is reset to zero). I don’t know to what extent the longevity bonus transfers when you 301 to a new domain - you are likely to see a (smallish) drop after moving to a new domain for a variety of reasons.
The age of a domain has nothing to do with it’s traffic and search engine appearance. It’s mostly about back-linking.
What you can do is set up a 301 redirect (permanent redirect) which will send anyone from that domain name to the appropriate page of your new domain now. Eventually the search engines will pick this up and start giving that domain name the credit that your old domain used to obtain.
It’d also help if you could get those linking to you to use your new domain name, but isn’t essentially.
Also note though that the domain name does play a part of it’s ranking, so if you rank well for some keywords found in your current domain name that are absent in your new one, you may lose a bit of ranking for those keywords.
Moving your plan to a new domain always hurts, and you can only afford it when you are too big a business, that you don’t care for some search engine losses. This is what will happen to you when you will shift to a new domain …
Google will think of the content on the new site as a duplicate content and gives you a slight negative rating in this case …
All your backlinks, page rank, sear4ch engine ranking will melt away with the older domain, new domain will be like a new born kid, with 0 or, o backlinks, no search engine value. You will have to start it all over again …
My sincere advice don’t start it all over again … i have done it and repented in past …
Thanks for the feedback guys.
Clearly I have to think carefully about this.
Ken
Well, yes. I was however referring to a new site on old domain, which does not have any bonus.