Redirecting main www. subdomain to new domain. Can you then create a new subdomain on the old domain?

[edlondon]

Hi there,

The scenario is this:

• We have been working on a rebrand and have changed the company name
• So, we want to redirect www.old-name.com to www.new-name.com
• However, the parent company is retaining the old brand name for corporate purposes
• So, in an ideal world, we'd be able to keep www.old-name.com active - but clearly that would sacrifice all of the authority built up over the years, so we do have to redirect the main www. subdomain in it's entirity.
• However - one suggested solution is to redirect www.old-domain.com to www.new-domain.com... but then create a new corporate subdomain: for example, business.old-domain.com
• business.old-domain.com will not be competing with the new site on any service/product related terms; it will only need to appear in SERPs for the company name

I'd appreciate some thoughts on this, as I've not done this before or found any examples of anyone that has.

Is that a massive risk in terms of sending a confusing message to Google?

Thanks for your help

[GastonRiera]

Hi,

The risk that you're taking depends on how different are the old and the new brand. Also, considering the case that this change implies a change in the category of the site. (i.e. technology to furniture).

In the part of the subdomains, I dont see any complications on redirecting the subdomains and creating the new "business.old-brand.com". Of course you do have to analyze the linkbuilding profile of the old domain, and how it would impact in the new domain.
A quick and easy example, old domain has 10k links and new domain has 2k links. After the redirect, 10k links will go to the new domain, this could do much harm to the new domain linkbuilding.

Hope I was clear enough to make me understand.
GR.

[RobertFisher]

You need to separate SEO from branding for a minute.

You are saying subdomain and then presenting the www subdomain and I want to be clear that is what your intent was? If instead you are saying we have domain old-company.com and now we are going to be under domain new-company.com and we want the authority built on old-company.com then, YES, you need to do the 301 redirect of urls on old-company.com to new-company.com urls.

Now, in terms of the parent owning brand Old-Company you need to first be clear with them they do not own domain old-company.com in any way as that would negate your ability to keep the redirects once they start using it.

Google is looking at the brand only in terms of branded searches, etc. There is no branding issue beyond that. So, if the parent has domain oldcompany.com vs old-company.com or they add in The-old-company, etc. they are ok if they are ok from a business sense with that change. they do not need to have a subdomain to the previous domain like best.old-company.com

I cannot see them using the old domain in any way as being good for you. But, any variant of that old domain (not your sub domain variant with something.old-company.com) would be fine.

If I were parent and brand were a real issue, I would not relinquish the domain for any reason. If I were you and you believe you must have the redirects, I would negotiate with, "we cannot do the deal if we cannot "retire" the domain and use it as we wish except not visible on the Internet." I think you understand.

Hope that helps,

Robert

[RobertFisher]

How does redirecting the old domain to the new harm new domain link building? I can't see it even if the new domain had one link and the old had 20K.

[GastonRiera]

Robert,

when redirecting one domain to another, all the links pointing to the old domain will be pointing to the new domain, that will increase drastically the number of liks on the new domain. That could be taken as a SPAM action by Google.

Well, technically speaking it would not harm the new domain linkbuilding. It would make look it really unnatural.

[RobertFisher]

I have done this many times and if you are sending the redirects to appropriate urls on the other site this is a non issue. I have done it with sites with 100K links.

If they were in some way buying non relevant domains and redirecting that would be different.