Want to move old site to a new domain.

[BAC Ops Manager]

Good Day,

I am handling seo for a website which has a terrible domain for local search engine rankings. I am not the admin of that site though.

I am planning to purchase a new domain (location-chiro.com). for SEO purposes.

I want to retain the rankings and backlinks of the old domain name.

How do you suggest I move forward?

Thank you,

Teddy

[kodshi]

Hi Teddy,

There a lot of parameters to consider in your case,

For example

*Age of the old domain
*Backlinks
*Pages that are already indexed

Don't move to a new domain just because your location is not in the url, you can still optimize the old domain to your location with other methods, like including your location to the page title, adding the business address to the website pages, open google places profile to your client.

In case you decide to move to other domain, you need to map all the old urls and 301 redirect them to the new urls and also you need to update in google webmaster tools the new domain, go to your client google webmaster tools > Site Configuration > Change of Address and choose the new domain.

hope that helps
Roy

[BAC Ops Manager]

Originally Posted by kodshi

Hi Teddy,

There a lot of parameters to consider in your case,

For example

*Age of the old domain
*Backlinks
*Pages that are already indexed

Don't move to a new domain just because your location is not in the url, you can still optimize the old domain to your location with other methods, like including your location to the page title, adding the business address to the website pages, open google places profile to your client.

In case you decide to move to other domain, you need to map all the old urls and 301 redirect them to the new urls and also you need to update in google webmaster tools the new domain, go to your client google webmaster tools > Site Configuration > Change of Address and choose the new domain.

hope that helps
Roy

Thanks for the input!

Can you give me more details on how I can still optimize the old domain pages?

[BAC Ops Manager]

What if I purchased a new domain and pointed it to the old domain?

[kodshi]

Hi Teddy,

It wouldn't help you if you purchase a new domain and redirect it to your old domain,

Create a profile to the business on Google Places, Bing local and Yahoo! Local

Add your business address information to all the pages in your website in microdata/microformat.

here you will find information about it
support[dot]google[dot]com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99170

Try to get backlinks from other local websites, and link to your website from google places profile

Add your location to the titles of your pages in your website, make sure in doesn't exceed 70 characters


All the best
Roy

[MagnusOMX]

Originally Posted by BAC Ops Manager

I am planning to purchase a new domain (location-chiro.com). for SEO purposes.

For SEO purposes? If you are supposed to start a new domain with the same content (duplicating the original site), then if you are really into SEO purposes you shouldn't buy that extra domain and copy the site at all.

Originally Posted by BAC Ops Manager

I want to retain the rankings and backlinks of the old domain name.

How do you suggest I move forward?

Well, it's a bit dependent on what you want to achieve. If the new domain is supposed to live a life as a copy of the other, then you need to decide which domain you really want to be the original and set canonicals from the "copy" to the original (page per page), otherwise there is a chance that the "copysite" will get penalties for duplicate content.

After a while you can check the progress of that by typing "info:<copied-sites-domain-name>" into the search field of Google and see if Google identifies the original site as the original of the copied domain/site.


Another way would be to set a 301 redirect (=permanent redirect) to the new site, but that way you will tell Google that the old site is soon due and this is not what you wanted, huh!?


No matter what you do, it will not be beneficial for BOTH sites, just one of them.


I hope I didn't misinterpret you.