How to switch brand domain and address previous use of domain
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We recently acquired a new domain to replace existing as it better fits our brand. We have little/no organic value on existing domain so switching is not an issue. However the newly acquired domain was previously used in a different industry and has inbound links with significant spam scores. How can we let Google know that these links are not valid for our business and start rebuilding reputation of the domain? Disavow tool?
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Howdy,
This brings into question if you should use the new domain name at all. You are going to have to start at a "negative" SEO standpoint and you may or may not be able to work your way out of it. Here is what I would do.
Setup Google Search Console and Google Analytics for the new domain. Start getting some data on how Google looks at this domain and if it sends traffic. If you do not have access to the old website setup, look at the Search Console errors to see what pages Google expects to see and get an idea of the URL structure. You can also use the wayback machine potentially for this. Search Console will also give you sites that link to this domain and what URLs they were pointing to.
Just because this domain has links from sites with significant spam scores according to Moz, does not mean that your new domain is penalized, it just has a higher potential.
Perform a link audit using the links you find in OSE, Google Search Console and any other tools such as Majestic, Ahrefs, etc. This will allow you to find all the bad links. Go ahead and disavow the low quality links at the domain level.
All the pages that these "bad links" pointed, just let them 404. I would let every referenced URL from the old site 404. Do not 301 redirect them to the home page or to new pages you have setup. The 301 will not pass any link equity unless they are semantically related, and it sounds like you are setting up a completely new site. Don't worry about all the 404 errors in Google Search Console. Just check them to make sure they are for pages from the old site, vs pages on the new site. The 404 errors will fade away. Likewise, any bad (and good) link equity to the pages are gone as they are going to pages that do not exist.
Some folks around here would say that if you simply 404 the old pages, you do not need to disavow, but you would not be able to do this for the home page. Plus, if you want a conservative, "belt and suspenders" approach to eliminate link equity from the old links, this has you covered.
Finally, even if you only have a little organic SEO on your current site, I would 301 redirect it to the new site to cover that base.
This will hopefully start you from zero, but just know that you will still have an uphill battle. Google has looked at this site before and had it associated with "Red Widgets" and so if the new site is about "Blue Bunnies" it may take a while for the basic classification to change in the Google system, let alone the impact of links etc. Really take some time to consider if you feel like the new domain name is that much better than your old domain name, or some other domain that is related to your current site and does not have a significant spam score.
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you need to check your Backlinks on the new domain I agree you should definitely not start from a negative place.
If you do decide to make the switch
https://moz.com/blog/seo-guide-how-to-properly-move-domains
https://yoast.com/move-wordpress-blog-domain-10-steps/
https://moz.com/researchtools/crawl-test
https://www.deepcrawl.com/ ( My personal favorite)
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
https://varvy.com/tools/ is showing you have a domain rank of five that is good.
Make sure you did the 301 redirects that are needed to keep your old URLs pointing to your new URLs
https://moz.com/community/q/how-to-keep-old-url-juice-during-site-switch
https://moz.com/blog/achieving-an-seo-friendly-domain-migration-the-infographic
http://www.aleydasolis.com/images/seo-website-domain-migration.gif
https://moz.com/community/q/changing-domains-how-much-link-juice-is-lost-with-301-redirect
**More (might want to come back to this) **
https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/guide-to-url-design/
https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/domain-design-for-seos/
https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/expired-content-for-seos/
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when the migration is made, you obviously need to check your all and monitor your backlinks carefully. Some of they may can be damaged (we've got this problem after domain name migration). I would recommend to check all your web site for broken links also (moz, sreamingfrog) and broken backlinks (atomseo, ahrefs).
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Great response, Thomas!
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